Help needed by gardening novice

ZOLTAN28

Hi

I am trying to get my back garden in order and am fighting a batle against various weeds and other problems.

One weed is really brutal - grows really fast and wraps around wverything (including other plants) - irritates the skin and has little green balls all over it that stick to your clothing.

Just removed a barell full of it but cannot find any roots - I presume it's quite a common plant - a quick search of gardening websites did no good and if you search the internet for weed you get discussios on matijuana.

So - what is this and how do I stop it coming back?

Mothman

Cleavers, and numberous other names.

It is an annual and setting seed very quickly at moment. Pull it out and remove to prevent seed drop.
It is a very thin stem at ground level and roots don't pull out, but it doedn't regrow strongly if at all. The issue is the seedbank in soil. More will germinate, but this is like any weed

looksee

I think you mean goosegrass, cleavers, or stickyback, it probably has a dozen other names. Goosegrass is also used for a number of other plants so maybe use one of the other names.

The bit of stem where the plant goes into the ground is very weak, presumably so the roots continue if you pull up the top. Once you have pulled up the greenery though it doesn't seem to come back very quickly, I have never done more than remove the tops.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galium_aparine just checked this up, its interesting, apparently it has all sorts of medicinal uses, but no-one seems to want to weed it out!

Polynomial

Pull it up now.
"One year of seed, seven years of weed".

ZOLTAN28

Thanks people.

It has been thoroughly pulled up.