Siberian Squill

I've pretty much decided that Siberian Squill is the evil, dark side of my garden. If by some miracle I could banish one weed forever it would be this one. And I have creeping charlie! It starts out playing nice and then gets totally out of hand. When it's done flowering the leaves enlarge and elongate to outgrow whatever it's next to becoming almost succulent. For years I didn't even know I had trilliums because they were so choked out by this menace. Then, it forms marble-sized pods of seeds that have what appears to be a 300% germination rate.

I've begun a multi-front campaign against squill. Not that I have any delusions of eradicating it, but I'd like to at least contain it and set it back some. Where it has invaded the lawn, I go out when it's in bloom and cut it to ground level with a sickle. I also cut back as much as I can in the beds where there are no early emerging perennials to suffer collateral damage. Among the more desirable early spring wildflowers like trillium and hepatica, I rip out handfuls of leaves and flowers. This has to be done more than once to get as many of the little buggers as possible. My hope is to exhaust the little bulbs. It may take years. In the front yard it hasn't gained such a strong foothold so I've been more extreme there, digging out every single little bulb I can find. Unfortunately I think I destroyed some Fritillaria meleagris this spring because I mistook it for squill. I also take care to remove all the soil from the roots of any plants that I transplant from the back yard to the front. It sounds extreme, but when I noticed a cluster of squill on the opposite side of the back yard from where it usually is, I realized it was localized around some perennials I had moved from the infested area when the bulbs were dormant. I've also stopped putting any of the ripped out plants in the compost. I put them in their own black garbage bag and let them lay in the sun for a few weeks to bake, or I pour boiling water over them in a five-gallon pail. Seriously, I really detest this stuff.

So, to make an already long story short, don't ever plant this if you have small, spring wildflowers you would like to see. It will quickly overwhelm them.