Around the Yard

Things to do this week:

* Plant late color. Even planted this late, several flowers will bloom for the rest of summer and into fall. If holes appear in your garden, fill them with alyssum, celosia, coneflower, cosmos, gloriosa daisy, petunia, portulaca, red sage, vinca or zinnia.

* Keep after weeds. Don’t let summer’s weeds grow unnoticed or they will set seed and you’ll have an abundance next year. This is especially true for the several kinds of oxalis and for spurge and purslane.

Oxalis, which looks similar to clover, needs little introduction since it is the most common weed in the West. Spurge may be the most annoying because it so quickly sprouts and spreads in summer. The stems of spurge grow pancake-flat along the ground, with tiny, oval leaves that are directly opposite each other.

The stems on some kinds of spurge are reddish, on others the leaves are spotted. All kinds are adept at growing unnoticed. Purslane grows in a similar fashion, but the leaves are bigger and succulent and are easier to spot.

Spurge is likely to break off just above the roots when you try to pull it out. So have a prying tool handy to loosen the roots, a good idea when pulling any weed. Spurge is a euphorbia that bleeds a whitish sap.

A word of caution: Though I have never been bothered, the sap of some euphorbias burns if you rub your eyes after weeding.

Nurseries have products such as Turflon, Spurge Power and the new Weed-B-Gon that will remove weeds from various kinds of lawns. There also are herbicides that can be used when the weeds grow in paths or paving or on bare ground. But, in areas other than lawn, pulling them by hand works best.