Common chickweed

How to recognise it

Habit

Annual, sprawling to ascending, 5–40 cm long, often in loose mats; stems weak, round and juicy.

Stem

With a single line of hairs that switches to the other side at every node: the best identification feature.

Leaf

Opposite, oval with a pointed tip, 0.5–2.5 cm; the lower ones stalked, the upper ones stalkless. Smooth and fresh green.

Flower

White, barely 1 cm across, with five deeply two-lobed petals no longer than the green sepals; three styles. Almost all year round.

Fruit/Seed

Oblong capsule on a down-turned stalk, opening with six teeth; small, reddish-brown, warty seeds.

Confusion with

Scarlet pimpernel also has opposite leaves, but a square, hairless stem, black dots under the leaves and orange-red flowers; it is poisonous. Common mouse-ear is hairy all over with darker, felty leaves. Greater stitchwort is much larger, with narrow, stiff leaves, and grows in woodland.

Flowering: January–December

Why grow it?

• Flowers almost all year, even in winter: on mild days small flies and hoverflies find pollen on it.
• Finches, sparrows and chickens love its seed and greenery; that is where its name comes from.
• Covers bare soil in the vegetable garden in autumn and winter, protecting it from leaching and capping.
• An indicator of good, fertile and loose garden soil.
• The young, fresh tips are edible, raw in a salad or on a sandwich, with a mild, fresh taste.
• Caterpillars of various moths feed on the leaves.

Common chickweed: where does it grow best?

• In the wild: fields, woodland edges, rough ground, waste ground, manure heaps, riverbanks and the foot of hedges and walls.
• Loose, moist and fertile soil; on dry, poor soil it stays small or is absent.
• Sun to partial shade; in summer heat it does best with some shade.
• In the garden: as temporary ground cover in vegetable beds and borders, under shrubs and hedges or in a chicken run.

Goes well with

• Red dead-nettle: Like chickweed it flowers early in the year and is an early food source for bumblebees.
• Shepherd’s purse: Another annual of open garden soil, with seed for finches.
• Ground-ivy: Low ground cover under shrubs, with purple spring flowers for bumblebees.
• Field pansy: A small cream and yellow pansy on the same open ground.

Common chickweed: when and how to plant it?

1. You rarely need to sow it: the seed is in almost every garden soil and germinates as soon as the ground is bare and moist.
2. If you want it on purpose, for chickens, birds or the kitchen, buy seed from a wild-plant seed supplier or ask for some seed from a garden where it grows.
3. Sow in March–May or August–October on loosened, moist soil and rake the seed in lightly.
4. Keep the soil moist; the seedlings appear after 1–2 weeks. No need to thin.
5. Sow it where it will not smother young vegetables, for example under shrubs or in a separate container.
6. Never dig up plants from the wild, not even of a common species: seed is easy to get and establishes better.

Care

Water

Only in dry weather if you want to keep it; in dry summers it withers quickly and germinates again after rain.

Feeding

Not needed: on fertile garden soil it grows lushly by itself.

Weeding

In the vegetable garden, hoe it off as seedlings in dry weather. Larger mats pull out easily: the roots are shallow.

Self-seeding

It sets seed only a few weeks after germinating. Weed before flowering if you don’t want it to seed itself.

Ground cover

Let it cover empty vegetable beds in autumn and winter, and take it off for the compost heap in spring, before it sets seed.

Tip: Use chickweed as free ground cover: let it cover empty vegetable beds in autumn and remove it in spring before it goes to seed.

Pruning and mowing

When: Not needed: it is an annual. Weed or harvest it before it sets seed if you want to limit it.

How:

• For the kitchen or the chickens, snip off the young tips with scissors; the plant regrows.
• Remove large mats before they are full of ripe seed, and put them on the compost heap while they carry no seed yet.

Pruning calendar and basic rules

Propagation

Seed

Sets seed only a few weeks after germinating, over several generations a year. The seed stays viable in the soil for years.

Stem pieces

Stems lying on moist soil can root again at the nodes.

Common chickweed: how does it get through the winter?

Hardy to −20 °C.

• One of the few plants that stay green and flower in mild winters.
• Tolerates light frost; in hard frost the plants die, but the seed in the soil survives.
• Green mats protect the soil, shelter small soil creatures and feed birds.

Diseases and pests

• Smothering: In the vegetable garden dense mats smother young vegetables. Hoe early and often, in dry weather.
• Slugs: Slugs like to hide under dense mats. Keep the soil around slug-prone vegetables free of chickweed.
• Poisonous look-alike: Scarlet pimpernel grows in the same places. For the kitchen, only pick it if you can see the line of hairs on the stem.
• Gone in summer: It withers in heat and drought. It comes back by itself after the first late-summer rain.

Through the year

• January: Flowers in mild winters. Birds search the mats for seed.
• March: Growing strongly. Harvest young tips for salads or chickens.
• April: Hoe the vegetable garden before it sets seed.
• May: Sow in a fixed spot for chickens or birds.
• July: Withers in drought; the seed drops.
• September: New seedlings after the first rain. You can sow.
• October: Leave it as ground cover on empty beds.
• December: Green mats protect the soil; sometimes still in flower.

Did you know?

• Vogelmuur, mouron des oiseaux and chickweed all refer to birds: the plant used to be fed to chickens and cage birds.
• The little flowers close in rain and at night and open in fine weather.
• Because it flowers and sets seed only a few weeks after germinating, a single plant can have several generations of offspring in a year.