Garden Question? How do you tell a weed from a flower or plant?
How do you tell a weed from a flower or plant?
Weeds grow excessively at the expense of other plants while flowers usually don't. There's actually one variety of "weed flower" that I like profoundly. It's called "creeping buttercup". :-)
Years of practice. . . and even afterwards :) If you plant something, always do it surrounded by rows, and it is hard not to miss, or nut them in pods/pots, and transplant. . . Good luck, I've be gardening for over 20 years and still am learning :)
Edit: I also sometimes bestow some weeds to grow up next to the plants, until I'm sure what they are :)
Answers: Years of experience.
When they're small - it's harder.
When within doubt, let it grow until it's big adequate that you can ID it. You can learn a few tentative ones each year. On the plus side, if you don't verbs it until you CAN identify it - sometimes you'll get interesting "volunteers" (plants that you want - but that you didn't plant intentionally) My favorite volunteers be a Mexican Sunflower (no idea where on earth it came from - hadn't see any in the neighborhood the previous year), and a exceptionally intensely purple fall aster.