Spotted spurge — the low summer mat
A flat, fast-spreading mat that hugs the gravel, with small leaves and milky sap when you snap a stem. It loves hot rock yards and shows up through summer. Pull it before it mats over a whole bed — it seeds prolifically and small plants come out clean.
Puncturevine (goathead) — the one that hurts
Low trailing vine with fern-like leaves, tiny yellow flowers, and the infamous spiked burrs that puncture bare feet, dog paws, and bike tires. It explodes after monsoon rain. Pull it before the burrs harden and drop — once they're in the gravel they hurt for months.
London rocket — the winter annual
Upright weed with deeply lobed leaves and small yellow flowers that greens up in cool season, especially after winter rain. It bolts tall fast in spring. Catch it before it flowers and seeds, or you'll fight a bigger crop next winter.
Tumbleweed (Russian thistle) — the bushy one
Starts as a soft seedling, grows into a round spiny bush, then dries, breaks off, and tumbles — scattering seed across the whole neighborhood. Pull while it's young and soft; once it's a hardened spiny ball it's miserable to handle and has already seeded.
The common thread: pull early, before seed
Every one of these is easy small and awful large, and each drops seed for the next round. Removing them young — before flowers and burrs — is what actually breaks the cycle, which is the entire case for catching them on a schedule.
Not sure what's in your yard? Text a photo — we'll tell you what it is and quote the pull. We hand-remove all of these, roots and all, before they seed the next flush.
Updated 2026-06-05.