"Roger" sherry roger at comcast dot net wrote in message
...
Oxalis stricta (?) or common yellow oxalis annually invades my streetside
ground cover plants for about six months, from November through May, and
starves them of light, making for very spotty spring growth for the
invaded
prostrate rosemary, red apple succulent, myoporum, and miniature ice plant
cover. They are persistent, nearly alien in their tenacity, and seem to
spread by seed, rhizome, and bulblets, so pulling does little good, even
in
our soft loamy coastal soil in N. California. Since they die out from
June
to October, letting them take over means barren ground in the summer
months.
Is there any practical control solution outside of individually digging
the
thousands of plants?
I would guess oxalis is in the clover family, but wouldn't clover control
chemicals also damage my four ground cover plants?
Thanks for any ideas!

roger, I have that (or similar) in my lawn though the oxalis is a very small
leafed variety. Spraying it with a broadleaf spray knocks it back I have
noted in previous years. Check with a garden centre about the susceptibility
of your ground covers to the chemicals used. That is the cheap, nasty and
easy way of doing it.

Maybe a more enduring solution is to find a ground cover that grows well
over summer that can shade out much of the oxalis. Don't ask me what however
something that grows well late spring and dies back early autumn allowing
the other plants to take over. I have a succulent ground cover through some
of my gardens (the succulent essentially took over) that does well keeping
the weeds, including oxaslis, down. It does need a pruning every so often
and is a year round cover so not ideally what you want.

rob