We are battling violets this year and those dang gladiolus.

Violets in the flower beds -- love em everywhere else.
Grass -- I hate grass!
monkey grass -- one word -- AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGG. It laughs at Roundup. I keep saying I'm gonna take a flame thrower to it this year.

This year I am working with the Polygonum instead of against it. Of course, I don't have a huge veggie garden to weed! I'm letting it grow in the part of the yard it likes best -- the sunniest, driest part out by the street. I'm taking all the other "weeds" out of the area, and calling the Polygonum my groundcover. And hey, it does make pretty flowers. :-)

I'm very fond of putting down black plastic when I have an infestation too large to battle by other means. This year my neighbor decided to pitch a fit that my vegetable garden had crept 3 feet onto his property last year, so I couldn't plant there without ripping up the gardening fabric and soaker hoses, etc. This was a big job and I thought I wanted to save the mulch that was on top of it all, so I did nothing... The smartweed grew up, the crabgrass grew up, the dandelions grew up, the bindweed grew up, all in and around my mulch, which has turned to compost anyway I've discovered. So we have now put black plastic down over the whole thing... we'll germinate all seeds, and then it will kill them as well as the adults. The only thing I've ever seen survive this treatment is wild Clematis.

How long will I have it down? About 2 weeks if we get a lot of sun. Everything should be crispy under there by then.

My award for the Most Scary Weed goes to Dioscorea oppositifolia. I note that it has rolled down the hill from the site of my original infestation and if I don't move quickly it will reach nighmarish proportions by August because the pea-sized bulbils will fall off the vines, ready to start a new crop.

Bindweed everywhere--does anything kill it?
horse nettle- does anything kill it??
Johnson grass
nut grass

I agree with Marty, after the rain all weeds decided to grow and grow as fast as possible. Crab grass sprouted and grew 5-6 inches in 3 days! I was in the yard Friday and Saturday pulling weeds. I still have not gotten flowers planted that have been sitting in pots too long. Too many WEEDS.

Horse nettle and Johnson Grass.
It amazes me how a whiff of rain will set the weeds to prolific growth and leave the flowers sitting there sulking.

Gill o'er the Ground aka Ground Ivy aka Ale Hoof (Glechoma hederacea). Grows in sun and shade. It's trying to engulf everything - the flower beds, garden beds and even the lawn. It's beautiful in bloom, but I would happily live without it. At this point I even dream about pulling it up.

Here is a link that might be useful: Gill o'er the Ground

I vote for Microstegium vimineum. I've pulled out three pickup loads full already this year, and I'm not half done. What a disastrous weed that is.

I'll also give runnerup to ailanthus (Tree of Heaven). A vile, pernicious tree with zero wildlife value, and would probably survive a hit of napalm....

Grassy weed something or other has me inclined to purchase a machete. I will brave the heat to weed the flower beds but too skeered to brave the vegetable garden. There's just not enough mulch there this year.

That nutgrass is something else. I wait till it rains because even if I try to pull it up then, I have to carefully wiggle it back and forth slowly like I do most of the weeds to loosen the roots, but it will break almost every time, so I can't get the little bugger root and I know it will come back with even healthier growth the next time. It is everywhere, in my yard, in my mulched around landscaping, in my garden, between the cracks of my sidewalk and in between the bricks my hubby so carefully laid around our front yard landscaping.

Katie

I need to see pics of these weeds! I'm sort of new to identifying weeds in the south.

My problem plants include:
--Bermuda grass in the flowerbeds & veggie garden. I'd like to get rid of the lawn to get rid of this...
--Some kind of ivy-looking vine that seems to magically regenerate even when I yank it out by the roots. It has a cousin with thorns on it. Likes to grow next to the house. It's lighter green than most ivy, but has that sort of leaves.
--Monkey grass--in the lawn, and everywhere else! I'm waiting to find it growing in the house.

2 "weeds" that I love--spiderwort, and mullein!

Your ivy-looking vine may be bindweed. Hint: it can't live without sunlight. I'm telling you, black plastic does wonders, but you have to cover a large area because it will travel a great distance to try to find the light. I'm not sure this plant really even has "one" root anywhere. It's a series of roots along the length of the plant. So when you pull it up "by the roots", really, you didn't get much of the plant at all.

Its thorny "cousin" is Smilax. Smilax has a huge tuber about two feet down underground so you will have to dig that out to ever be rid of this pest. It laughs at round-up.

Bindweed? Hmm.I used to know a plant we called bindweed in the SW and it was different--had smaller, morning glory-like flowers...I'll look into it... Yes! that thorny stuff has the large tuber. I've dug that up and clearly didn't get all of it! Know that i know it's name, it's days are numbered ;) Hmm...I have not resorted to herbicides like Round-up--and if these things laugh at it, well, I'll just keep pulling & digging & perhaps smother with something.
Thanks for the helpful tips!

Farmerbell, when you get all your bindweed taken care of, come by my farm, I have 25 acres of it. LOL

I was reading a post on the Conifer Forum that I have to tell you all about. This guy was seriously (at least it seems) asking if anyone had cultivars of poison ivy he could grow. He wasn't alergic to it and wanted to grow different types as a novelty to freak out his garden visitors.

My weed award would be: most likely to take revenge on you personally when you tried to erradicate it - poison ivy.

Some kind of ground ivy, probably the Glechoma hederacea. If I let it go it creeps and chokes out everything. Drives me nuts ! And plain old clover. I have it in one of my beds and those runners are hard to pull out of the clay.

Cheryl

It's not a "weed" in most books, but in my book it might as well be - privet. Cursed stuff. And I agree with durtgrrl about burmuda grass too. Then there is the wild vinca taking over everything . . . Oh, I could go on and on, but I won't.

What I call "bindweed" gets white (sometimes with a tinge of pink) morning glory-type flowers that don't last more than a day or so. The seed pods even dry looking similar to dried morning glory pods. But the seeds are not the primary means of reporduction for this plant - it's the runners. They stay alive over winter under the soil and reappear in late spring... and take over the universe by summer. It secretes a noxious milky substance when pulled. The other difference between these and morning glories is that the vine is not hairy, nor are the leaves, and they are shaped more like arrowheads than hearts. The vine, if pulled and let to dessicate a bit, is very useful for binding other plants - I sometimes use it as a staking twine. Supple but strong. That's about the only useful purpose for the stuff that I've found.

So I'm not the only one to use bindweed like twine! Quite a few times I've been walking through my garden, noticed something needed to be tied up, and decided that grabbing a couple pieces of bindweed is easier than going back into the house for twine.

The ground ivy laughs at me every day. It started out as a manageable size patch under my magnolia tree when I moved in, now it's taken over half of the backyard.

I HATE Ground Ivy and am on a mission to eradicate it from my yard and at least 6 feet into each of my neighbors' yards (or it will just creep right back in again!)

I'm a weirdo. I kinda *like* ground ivy. ;-) It's just so easy to pull up! I'd a lot rather deal with it than violets or grass!