Does anybody know what this weed is that is taking over my flower beds?
 

I just moved into this house in August, and the previous owners did not care for the lawn and gardens at all. Now I have a huge flower bed in the back yard that is just filled with this invasive weed. It has a long taproot, so even though we've had a lot of rain and the ground is soft, I can't just pull it. I'm considering going full scorched earth on that flower bed and drenching it in Roundup (even though I hate Monsanto and I hate pumping chemicals into the environment. There's not a single good plant in the flower bed that i want to keep. It all needs to go and I need to just start over from nothing.

But does anybody know what this, or how i might get rid of it? I live in the DFW region of Texas (Grand Prairie, specifically), if that helps at all.

Does it smells like parsley?

i would not go chemical...do you have a spiked ho or even better a gas tiller?

if you till the ground in the bed down about 6-10 inches, just enough to break apart the topsoil and (i assume) clay

---------- Post added at 03:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:15 PM ----------

[/COLOR]And yes it smells vaguely of parsley.

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Yes, I have a gas tiller. And yes, the soil is very heavy clay soil. Once I get the weeds under control, i'm going to till in some good garden soil and compost to kind of lighten it up a little.

DC, if she breaks the roots up, they may resprout from the pieces. JScott, I know that weed. However, my mind isn't working right now. I'll get right back to you...

Ok. I was right. It's Cow Parsley.

Anthriscus sylvestris

Yes! Cow parsley is it! I actually did till one end of the flower bed, hoping that I could just chop it up and kill it. After I tilled, I raked away all the pieces that I could, but the taproots are so deep, it was just a few days before it was coming back up, even more plentiful than before. I think I'm going to have go the herbicide route, as much as I hate to. Do you know if this cow parsley is actually in the parsley family? Will the swallowtail caterpillars eat it? If they will, I will definitely leave some for them, but I did a quick search and couldn't find any information one way or the other about whether it's a host plant for swallowtail larvae.

Thanks for everybody's help!

good thinking...i opt to try that first but i think it may be a pandora's box as you suggest.

could be a dumb idea but would a good layer of mulch or newspaper kill it?

When i was prepping the ground for my raised beds i laid cardboard down and staked it so it stayed put for a week and all the grass and weeds were both quite dead underneath...

Oh yeah, I've heard of people doing that, but never tried it myself, but I hear that it works well. That's a good plan, maybe I'll try that first before I resort to chemicals.

The cardboard works well, we even killed some ivy with it once. Double layer, no gaps.

I think we called that weed Wild Carrot. It would be the same family as Cow Parsley, though. Very persistent!!!

Thanks so much for all the great ideas. You regular posters always have good ideas. I just love you guys, as much as you can possibly love strangers you only ever talk to on the internet haha. But thanks, you've given me some great ideas that may help me avoid poisoning the earth while enriching those awful people at Monsanto. If you haven't noticed yet, I really have a thing about Monsanto. I have enough beef with Monsanto to solve world hunger.