10 Summer Weeds [Best Ways to Remove Them]

Summer weeds are fast-growing plants that produce around 10,000-100,000 seeds in a single healthy growing season.

Generally, summer weeds sprout in the spring, flower in the summer, and die in early winter. Some common summer weeds, such as Crabgrass, Goosegrass, and Chick Weeds, invade your lawn and compete with your plants for nutrients.

However, you may find these leggy and ugly weeds to be a stumbling block around your plant, affecting the ambiance of your garden.

Before these insect-harboring plants invade your garden, let me provide an insight into these culprits and ways to eradicate them.

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Popular Garden Summer Weeds

Based on the development stage, garden summer weeds are categorized into annual, biennial, and perennial.

Equally important, we can identify weeds by examining their structure and dividing them into grass and broad leaves.

Grass Weeds

Grass Weeds are monocotyledons from the Poaceae family that bear long leaves with parallel veins and hollow, rounded, closed, rigid stems.

1. Crabgrass

Crabgrass is an annual summer weed native to Eurasia, growing from spring to late summer.

Their light green leaves are curly along the margins and are covered with large stiff hairs.

Crab Grass in garden — Besides invasibility, Crab Grass is highly nutritious and used by farmers to feed livestock.

Additionally, the weed has green flowers with 3 to 5 spikes forming a long cluster on one side of the flattened stalk.

Crabgrass reproduces by tiny, round seeds that appear like a small corn plant.

2. Barnyard Grass

Do you know Banyard grass is toxic due to the presence of nitrates in the large amount?

Barnyard Grass is an annual weed native to Asia. You can find their clustered blooms on long branches with heads standing erect.

Besides, the weed has flat, folded leaves with a distinct midvein that bears opened or flattened leaf sheath and a rough surface on both sides.

Its oval and tiny seed is produced by a green and brown panicle, which appears shiny. These panicles produce shiny, brown, small, and oval seeds.

3. Goose Grass

Goose Grass has smooth, open, flat foliage with long hairs at the base around the collet. Its leaves have short membranous spikes at the top of the collet region.

Endemic to Eurasia, it reproduces by tiny seeds attached to the zipper appearance in the spike, forming at the tip of the seed stalk.

As the plant matures, it bears a white crown and a lower flat stem with clustered flowers along the spikes.

4. Sandbur

Sandbur has dull green, smooth, flat foliage folded lengthwise and rolled up on edge. Its leaves have a linear shape with rough upper and smooth lower surfaces.

It is native to Eurasia, Africa, and South Pacific.

Sandbur produces pointed flowers in clumps enclosed in the round, spine-covered Bur, which is its distinctive feature.

Besides protecting the roots, Bur also produces seeds and keeps them viable for years in the soil.

5. Yellow Fox Tail

It is a common annual weed, native to Europe.

Yellow Fox Tail’s tall spikes appear needle and thread-shaped, with its bright yellow flower being its central attraction.

It has alternate, linear, flat, loosely spiral leaves with long velvety hair at the bottom at maturity.

Besides, it produces a seed with a yellow, cylindrical head composed of many tightly packed single-flowered spikelets.

Broadleaf Weeds

Broadleaf weeds are dicotyledonous that have broader leaves with distinct veins.

Over time, these weeds may be the hidden reason for destroying your turfgrass stand.

6. Chickweed

Chickweed is an annual summer weed native to Europe and Asia.

You can distinguish it by its oval-shaped leaves with pointed tips and hairy margins at the base growing opposite each other.

Chickweeds growing in summer — Chickweeds contain a high amount of Vitamin C, Calcium, and Iron than Spinach.

Likewise, the plant produces star-shaped flowers with five-lobed petals held by a loop of five sepals from below.

Chickweed is an invasive weed that produces reddish, brown, and yellow rounded seeds with a flat top.

7. Carpet Weed

Carpet Weeds have small white flowers found in the leaf axils, which bloom in mid-late summer.

Besides its snowy flowers, Carpet Weed leaves grow circularly around the stems at a certain distance so that leaves will not touch each other.

Additionally, Carpet Weeds reproduce by tiny, brown, bean-shaped seeds with parallel curved ridges along the sides.

These annual broadleaf weeds are native to America.

8. Lambsquarter

Lambsquarter has trigonal leaves with gray undersides, covered with white coating in the newly grown foliage.

Young Lamsquarter leaves are edible and cooked as spinach, containing a high amount of iron, vitamins, and protein.

Likewise, it has modest green flowers with dense and granular clusters at the end of the stems. Its scant flowers lack petals and bloom from May to November.

Lambsquarter grows annually and is inhabited throughout Europe and Asia. Further, it has round and black seeds, which are narrow with parallel edges.

9. Purslane

Purslane is the annual summer weed native to Eurasia and holds medicinal value.

Common Purslane holds medicinal value as its juice helps to deal with gastronomical worms (hookworms).

Apart from having healing ability, it is a prolific seeder producing round-shaped seed capsules.

Purslane leaves are thick, fleshy, spoon-shaped, and broadest near the rounded tip. Its leaves are succulent, mainly attached to the branching stem rather than the main stem.

Their yellow flowers have five or more petals at the tip of the stems, which bloom throughout the late spring.

10. Prostrate Knotweed

Prostrate Knotweed grows annually that has alternate, linear, and stalkless leaves.

Young leaves are dark green and longer, while the size gets smaller, and the green color fades away in mature leaves.

The plant is native to Europe, Asia, and America and reproduces with brown, narrow, and rounded seeds with a powdery white coating at its tip.

Prostrate Knotweed has a tiny, white, and yellow flower in clusters at the leaf axils. Moreover, its flowers grow from the base of the leaves and bloom in mid-summer.

How To Get Rid of Summer Weeds on Lawn?

Summer weeds have a 1-4 year lifespan, depending on the ideal conditions. They feed on the soil’s supplements, causing nutrient deficiency for other companion plants.

You can remove and prevent these summer weeds on your lawn in the following ways.

Use the traditional method of hand-pulling and disposing of weeds.
Mow your lawn to deal with these stubborn plants.
Add a layer of mulch in the topsoil to reduce weeds in your garden.
You can apply the herbicides targeting the weed after identifying its type.
Spray the vinegar mixture over the weed to obliterate them permanently.
Never leave the lawn’s land barren to prevent the appearance of weeds.
Constantly water the individual plant, not the soil bed. You can use soaker hoses for direct watering.

FAQs Regarding Summer Weeds

Do weed like hot weather?

Yes, weed thrives in hot weather as they respire and function better in high temperatures.

What month do summer weeds stop growing?

The weed overgrows in suitable conditions, but their growth stops between April and May.

Does mowing weeds spread them?

When you mow your lawn, weeds may spread by sticking on the mower as they transfer to other places in the yard while mowing.

From Editorial Team

Winter weeds are also a massive problem for your garden

Winter weeds sprout in the late summer (September and October) and grow throughout the fall and winter.

Some winter weeds include Mouse-ear chickweed, Deadnettle, and Henbit. You can eradicate these invasive plants with the same approach to summer weeds.