MY garden is overrun with grape hyacinths and they have taken over. Even though they are beautiful in flower, they look messy just as leaves and they are choking all the other plants. Can you please suggest a solution?
J YEATES

REG SAYS: Yes, the common grape hyacinths (muscari) can become a real nuisance if they are left to their own devices for even a relatively short time and this happened in my own garden a few years ago. So, from personal experience I can tell you that there is no easy short-term answer to this question, but these are my recommendations on the subject.

As soon as the flowers fade cut them off so that they do not produce those thin papery seed heads that soon spread, producing seedlings all over the garden, but while this is going on the bulbs themselves are producing offsets under the soil and spreading themselves that way, too.

Where possible the best way is to dig the land over and remove the bulbs, yes I know this is tedious and laborious and you will have to do it more than once but it is really the most effective way.

If this is impossible what about using weedkillers? The one most people recommend for the job would be one containing the chemical glyphosate, such as Round-Up or Resolva 24H as they are systemic, meaning that they enter through the leaves and travel down into the root system killing the whole plant.

Although this works with most weeds it will not wipe out the muscari because not enough of the active ingredient gets down into the bulb to cause it any great harm.

So, if I were going to rely on killing them with weedkiller I would keep treating them with a simple contact herbicide that just burns off the foliage, like Weedol, Weedol Max or Bayer 3 Hour weedkiller.

These will rapidly kill the foliage then, when the bulbs shoot again, repeat the treatment straightaway, so that you are gradually starving the bulbs by removing their food factories – the leaves.

Of course, with all weedkillers you must be careful not to allow the spray to drift over wanted plants as they will also be damaged. I wish you the best of luck in your quest for a muscari free garden.

REG MOULE

YOUR QUESTIONS ● Do you have a question for Reg? Write to Reg Moule Gardeners’ Questions, Editorial, Worcester News, Hylton Road, Worcester WR2 5JX. No correspondence can be entered into. Reg Moule answers your questions courtesy of David’s Nurseries, Martin Hussingtree.