What does Creeping Charlie look like? The bright green, round or kidney-shaped leaves have scalloped edges and are produced opposite each other on the square (four-sided) stem. In spring small, bluish-purple, funnel-shaped flowers bloom on short stems.
The only way to kill Creeping Charlie is with Borax/water solution IN THE FALL -- (that is the best time to kill all weeds and also the best time to start new grass).
Creeping Charlie produces a toxin that can stunt or kill nearby plants, so it can be a problem if it spreads to plant beds or to neighbors. Less of a problem if it's just killing grass.
The big difference is the color of the flowers. Creeping Jenny blooms yellow and creeping Charlie blooms purple. Creeping Jenny is sometimes mistaken for creeping Charlies, but the flowers are yellow and the leaves are not scalloped.
With that in mind, mowing an area of creeping charlie can cause it to spread if the plant is mowed and the clippings are left behind. Remember to bag clippings when mowing an area that is infested with the plant.
Kill Creeping Charlie Using Chemicals
While creeping Charlie is considered a broadleaf weed, most broadleaf spectrum herbicides don't affect it. That's why we recommend using herbicides that contain dicamba or triclopyr.
The presence of creeping Charlie signals that the growing conditions for your lawn may need to be addressed. Too much shade, wet soil, or poor fertility could be issues. A healthy stand of turf makes it harder for creeping Charlie to invade your yard.
Creeping Charlie thrives in moist, shady spots such as under trees and shrubs. If you can alter these conditions, it will be easier to discourage this weed. If possible, improve soil drainage or water less frequently, or prune trees up so the area receives more light.
This European species can be invasive (so planting the green type is not recommended), but the yellow cultivar is much less aggressive and suitable for judicious use in ornamental plantings.
Plants bloom from April through August. Coming soon, Creeping Charlie, Glechoma hederacea, also known as ground ivy, is a low-growing perennial weed which creeps through lawns and landscape beds.
The only time that using Roundup makes sense for killing creeping Charlie, is when you want to kill the entire lawn and all of the weeds prior to starting a new lawn over from scratch, via seeding, hydro seeding, or sodding.
Creeping Charlie (Glechoma hederacea) is Toxic to Dogs 🐶 Safeguard your dog's health by learning to combat the toxic threat of Creeping Charlie 🐾🚫. Toxins in Creeping Charlie cause digestive issues and can affect liver or kidneys.
Creeping Charlie is considered by many to be a nuisance weed in lawns. Creeping Charlie will infiltrate lawn areas that have been neglected or otherwise poorly managed. Once established within a lawn, creeping Charlie may suppress the growth of surrounding plants, due to a characteristic called “allelopathy”.
Vinegar helps to get rid of creeping Charlie by causing foliage dieback. However, creeping Charlie is a notoriously tricky plant and will likely regrow from its roots. So, to get rid of creeping Charlie permanently, you'll likely need multiple vinegar applications in conjunction with some hand-pulling.
When used as directed, it kills broadleaf weeds without damaging your lawn. To control a large creeping Charlie problem in your lawn, use Ortho® WeedClear™ Lawn Weed Killer Concentrate. It can be used with a tank sprayer or connect it to your hose with the Ortho® Dial N Spray® Hose End Sprayer.
Borax contains boron, so if you apply a solution of borax to the soil, you can raise the level of boron in the soil enough to kill the creeping Charlie.
Creeping Jenny, specifically Lysimachia nummularia, is not listed as being toxic to cats and dogs. However, it's essential to note that the plant contains substances that, if ingested in large quantities, can potentially cause mild gastrointestinal upset in pets.
Another method of controlling creeping jenny is starving it of light. After digging up all visible plants, lay down a thick layer of mulch or black plastic. With any luck, this will keep the roots from putting up new shoots and eventually kill them.
Moisten the soil to make it easier to pull the weeds. Using a pitchfork or rooting tool, loosen the soil around the stems. Then dig each one out with a weed-pulling tool designed for the job. Creeping Charlie has shallow roots, but make sure you dig as deeply as you need to get all of it out.
High in Vitamin C, it was often made into a tea to prevent scurvy. All parts of the plant can be used; it was often made into a tea, tincture and poultice. Because this mint plant runs so rampant, one way to embrace and use Creeping Charlie is to make it into a tea. It has a pleasantly subtle mint-like flavor.
Charlie's a perennial, so it comes back every year, like it or not. In the spring it produces small, funnel-shaped blue flowers. Like many invasive plants, creeping Charlie was brought to North America by Europeans who thought it would make a great groundcover for shady places where little else would grow.
Introduce dense, shade-tolerant ground covers to outcompete Creeping Charlie. Plants like Pachysandra and Myrtle can help fill in spaces, leaving less room for the invasive weed to establish itself.
Use a hand cultivator tool to pull the weeds and roots out of the soil to pick out the remains of the Creeping Charlie, then cover the soil with 2 inches of wood mulch. This will suffocate the ground ivy and eradicate the creeping Charlie.
The quickest way to tell these two plants apart is to crush a leaf and check the smell. If the leaf does smells like garlic, then the plant is garlic mustard; if it smells like mint, then it is creeping Charlie. Garlic mustard also has white flowers while creeping Charlie has lavender flowers.