Q. I was overrun with
Mexican primrose but have completed all my weeding. I am thinking about putting wood chips around
my roses to keep the weeds from returning.
Is this a good mulch for the roses? Or might it attract ants or insects
I don't want?
Mexican Primrose is a pretty ground covered the first year but it starts to get a little scraggly in the following years. It looks like it would be easy to control with weed killers. It's not. |
A. Mexican primrose is
very difficult to get rid of once it gets established. Many weed killers won’t
touch it. An effective control technique is to keep removing the top of the
plant as soon as it pops up. It takes lots of repetition and plenty of
diligence but it works.
Remove the tops by cutting them back with a hoe. Some
weed control chemicals “burn” it back and are essentially chemical “hoers”. The
basic idea is to let the plant invest it’s energy into growing new, young tops
and then remove the tops after they get only a couple of inches tall. This
constant removal of the tops exhausts the energy supply stored in the roots and
the plant eventually “gives up”.
Woodchips are a great mulch for roses, combined with an
application of compost on the soil surface underneath the woodchips. In my
experience, the woodchips are no worse than rock mulch or gravel applied to the
soil surface regarding attracting insects.
Insects like to “hang out” in irrigation boxes where
there is water. Spraying the inside of the irrigation boxes with an appropriate
pesticide every couple of months usually takes care of this problem.
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