Driveway crack gardening

The cracks in my driveway apparently contain about the most fertile soil I have in my yard.

They're full of volunteer plants and weeds, some of them large enough to trip over. I pull the plants out a few times each summer, but they come back quickly. Here's a look at what's growing there.

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There's rudbeckia -- two different types:

Agastache foeniculum:

Crabgrass and other grassy weeds, plus yellow woodsorrel:

Most of these weeds come up so easily since the soil is only an inch or so deep, but it is incredibly hard to pull crabgrass out once it reaches a certain size, at least in my experience. Pull them when small, or get a tool to pry them out and save your fingers!

There's purslane, dandelions, hensbit, smartweed, and this unknown weed which is all over my yard this year:

I think it's in the nightshade family, but I haven't been able to identify it yet.

I need to interrupt this post for an important announcement:

 MoleMeter 2010 mole capture count: 07

Sorry for the interruption. Back to the driveway cracks...

There are, of course, also silver maple seedlings. There is no place in my yard that these are not growing:

Then there are the plants growing from birdseed (the feeder is over the driveway).

Sunflowers:

What is this, corn?:

No, I think it's a millet of some sort, but it might be corn. Here are a couple of sunflowers that are out of the path of the cars, so I let them grow:

Deer pruned the tops for me, but they're about 3 feet tall. Sunflowers have grown in these cracks for the past few years, and it amazes me that a 3-4 foot tall plant with large heavy flowers can grow in a driveway crack that is only a couple of inches wide and deep. Maybe some of the roots are making it down to the soil that's underneath the driveway, but that can't be an ideal way to grow. Still, gotta love the sunflowers!

Weeds, birdfeeder volunteers, perennials -- there is even a bit of grass growing in some of the cracks:

So these driveway cracks are really more representative of my lawn than my garden as a whole: lots of weeds and just a little bit of grass.