WELCOME TO THE ORGANIC GARDEN WEED MANAGEMENT WEBSITE

Purpose.
The purpose of this website is to provide organic gardeners with information about the biology of garden weeds, including identification, management strategies and ecological facts that will help you understand your weeds.

Philosophy.
The basic philosophy behind the site is that understanding the biology of weeds is critical to organic weed management. The tone of the site is that although weeds can be useful as food and as protection for the soil, most gardeners prefer to eliminate them or strictly limit their abundance. Weeds are neither always bad nor always good, but usually they tend to be bothersome for the garden

This website has several parts:
Toolbox contains a series of short, non-technical essays on various management topics and aspects of weed ecology that are relevant to management.
Weed Database contains plant-by-plant information on many common garden weeds of the northeastern U.S.A. For each weed there is a section on Identification with many color photographs, a section on Management oriented toward gardeners, and a section on Ecology that describes the ecological characteristics of the species.
Resources contains bibliographies of further readings about organic weed management, weed ecology, weed identification, and the principal sources used in compiling the Weed Database
Tables provides some tables of ecological data for common weeds, including some species that are not yet in the Weed Database.
Contact Us provides contact information for commenting on this website. Please realize, however, that we are not in a position to provide free consulting regarding your specific weed problems.
Site Map shows the overall structure of this website.

Tips for using the site:
Words in blue indicate a link to another part of the website. Clicking on these will take you to that location. Words in brown indicate that a definition for the word is available. Clicking on these words will bring up definition that will remain in place as long as you hold down your mouse's button.

About the Toolbox.
The toolbox covers a wide variety of topics. Some are directly oriented toward management, whereas others are more general explanations of the biology of weeds or of particular types of weeds. Understanding these more general topics will assist you in managing weeds that are not specifically treated in the Weed Database, and assist you in developing strategies for controlling several species of weeds at once. Detailed documentation of most statements made in this section can be found the book "Ecological Management of Agricultural Weeds" by Liebman, M., C. L. Mohler and C. P. Staver. Cambridge University Press: New York, 2001. The remaining statements are mostly based on the personal experience of Chuck Mohler and many discussions with organic farmers and other researchers.

About the Weed Database.
Each species entry in the Weed Database is divided into three sections. The first, Identification, gives a description of the weed, color photographs of various stages in the weed's life history, and tips on distinguishing the species from similar looking species. The second, Management, gives a deliberately brief summary of major control strategies. Please use the Toolbox to get more information on particular procedures. The third, Ecology, provides a series of short but specific statements about various aspects of the species' ecology. Some clues to management are explicit in these statements; in most cases, however, the relevance of the information only becomes apparent through study of the Toolbox.
      The species chosen include those that are most common or difficult to control in New York state. They obviously represent only a small fraction of the species encountered by gardeners. We hope to eventually expand treatment to include additional species, so if a weed is giving you trouble, check in occasionally to see if it has become listed.
      The ecological information compiled for each species in the database came from a variety of sources. Since the intent of this database is facilitation of weed management by home and market gardeners, we have not included lists of references documenting each statement. A complete reference list would include many hundreds of citations. Much of the information, however, came from the publications and websites listed under Sources. We are particularly indebted to the series "The biology of Canadian weeds", published in Canadian Journal of Plant Science and compiled in four volumes, to the series "The intriguing world of weeds" published regularly in the journal Weed Technology (see index by Mitich for references prior to 1991), to a series of experiment station bulletins on particular species published by various universities in the Northeast, and to the Ecological Flora of the British Isles at the University of York. References to all of these can be found in Sources. In addition to these formal sources we relied substantially on our 40+ years of personal observations, both published (see Publications) and unpublished, on these weed species.
      Some aspects of the biology of particular species have not been studied or are in dispute, and we have tried to indicate this where possible. If any users are aware of publications that will allow us to fill such gaps we would appreciate the citations (see Contact Us). Similarly, we would appreciate any corrections or comments you might suggest, including your vote for what species to add to the site. If you write, please let us know where you garden.