Gardening, anyone?
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Junipercat, I feel for you. I have bishop's weed too. Brought two bushels of the nasty roots to the dump today--no longer throwing those things on the compost heap.
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Have been having fun the last couple of days.. Bought this old chair at the op - shop and have converted it into a pot planter.. I can't make up my mind whether to paint it, or leave it rustic..???? It'll look better when the petunias grow up and flower. 😃
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jazzy: the primroses are beautiful!!
Brookside: let me know if you've come up with a solution to the bishop weed dilemma!
Lucy: I love the chair with the plant! Natural aging wood is pretty and rustic
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Monis. . .luv the veggies. I just can't stand the texture and taste of Kale. Thinking about trying to find a way to cook baby kale. I know it's supposed to be a super food.
Two Hobbies. Everyone of my many hydrangeas bloom in dark blue to dark purple, except for my giant whIte ones which are some times pink tinged. Tomorrow we will plant two more pink ones. Next year they will bloom blue. My two hills and side yard are all fill dirt brought in when we built the house. They also have 18 years of composted mulch and pinestraw. Together they must create a high content of aluminum which makes the flowers blue. Here's a good article on them. I think you can keep them pink in a container.
Master Gardner's Sale is tomorrow. Today I finally bought a foldable canvas wagon to shop with, rather than fighting others for the few wagons they have on sight.
Scottie
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I wish I were posting photos of lovely and colorful flowers, however, I'm showing you guys pictures of these horrible weeds that are taking over...0 -
Juniper. . .do you have a lawn care service that can spray for the weeds? That's how we're getting rid of our poison ivy and other pesky weeks.
Some of my hydrangeas. The pinks ones are still in a pot.
Scottie
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So pretty, Jazzy.
So excited to try the lettuce and I may also get around to the hydrangea. We have a huge pot we've never used and I think that would be lovely on my porch. Scottie I'm trying to keep a hydrangea blue. In the ground ours will turn from blue to lavender and then mostly pink, even if you douse it with the stuff that's supposed to turn it blue. I hope I'll have time tomorrow to get to the garden shop and do some planning.
We have bishop's weed too, but not too bad yet. I had some luck getting rid of violets with layers of newspaper and mulch over it. but I think these are going to need cardboard with mulch over it. I seem to have a lot of indestructible stuff in my back yard beds: bishops weed, lilies of the valley, old fashioned orange daylilies and a yucca that could survive a nuclear blast. Just when I think I'm making headway, they laugh at me!!!
Lucy I love the chair rustic but it would sure be pretty in some obnoxiously bright color, too!
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I guess bishop's weed is also called goutweed:
"Preventing goutweed from photosynthesizing in early spring (at the time of leaf-out) can control the plant by depleting its carbohydrate reserves. This can be accomplished by cutting all plants once they've fully leafed out with a mower, scythe, or weed-whacker, and then covering the area with plastic." Attacking the plants later in the season, after they have acquired substantial food reserves, is much less effective, they warn.
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Jazzygirl, DD gave me a potted Senetti last year for Mother's Day. It said to cut it back after the first bloom was done and it would bloom again. It worked, but the 2nd bloom wasn't as spectacular as the first. It is an annual.
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twohobbies, thank for the info.! I will try to eradicate this menace!!0 -
scottiemom, your hydrangeas are lovely!! I have a hydrangea tree that is starting to peter out. I can't use pesticides or herbicides to kill the weeds because use we have a water well and also lots of wildlife. I'll have to pull the weedsup by their pesky roots!!
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Scottie.. Your hydrangeas are very pretty.. I love them! I decided to oil the chair, and sit it on top of the Septic Tank seeing it looks like a commode 😃 So here is a finished pic.. Just have to wait for the plants to grow!
TwoHobbies.. Yes.. I love your idea of an outrages colour.. I'll save that idea for the next one 😃
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OOOOH - loving all the pictures!
Yesterday, I spent the afternoon doing all the garden chores I was supposed to have been doing for the last few years but haven't. I put the granules on the hydrangeas that's supposed to make them blue (but probably won't, as the blooms have already started to form), put the acid food on the camellias, azaleas and rhododendrons, put the rose food and pest control on the roses, peonies, and Rose of Sharon, and painted the concrete piers on my shade shelter we had put in last year.
My cousin in Virginia posted a pic of this on her Facebook page. She said it looked like huge, slimy orange aliens took over all the trees in her back yard. She was worried because her dog might have eaten one and gotten sick. I did a little detective work and found out that this is called
Cedar - Apple Rust, or Gymnosporangium
juniperi-virginianae. It's a fungus from all the rain we've had, especially on the East coast. The info I found said it will spread to all your trees and should be gotten rid of as soon as you see it.Fortunately, we don't have it here in California, but have any of you experienced this? Just seeing it would freak me out, I think... (sorry the pic is so big...)
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Good morning everyone! I love all of the pictures!
I'm so glad I found this Topic! I love to be out in the sun in my vegtable garden or on my deck with all my flower pots and herbs. I'm behind in getting all my pots planted this year and I'm still working on my vegtable garden. We go thru so much of the different lettuces that I've decided to try the bag style of planting. I call it my Bag Lady Garden. I just bought as many bags of top soil and plant directly in the bag. My favorite is called Baccto my plants seem to grow bigger and stronger in it. I still need to get all of my flower bulbs planted around our shed and wood shop, I hope they will still be viable bulbs! We've planted several fruit trees that are growing strong and healthy. Our peach tree is fruiting for the first time since we planted it 3 years ago. I'm looking forward to fresh peach cobbler and canning the majority of the peaches when they are ready to be devoured. I hope my picture helps make your lettuce gardens a little easier. I'll add some straw around the bags once I have them all planted, I hope it will make the area a little more attractive
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What a good idea, WenchLori! Looks like your lettuce will stay nice and clean and more bugproof than most. Do you need to put drainage holes in the bottoms of the bags?
JuniperCat, I don't know if I have bishop's weed or goutweed. My understanding is that one is variegated and the other has green leaves, both equally horrific. Mine are green. As for how I handle it--Yesterday I took two bushels of roots to the dump. I know the buggers will grow back, but in the spring I just love to dig in the dirt. The one saving grace to these things is that the roots come out clean, not grabbing onto fistfuls of my nice soil.
Last fall I bought a battery-powered weed wacker. It's very lightweight (cheap), but should have no problem whacking down these invaders. I'd thought of using it later in the season, but now that I've read about taking those leaves early, I guess I'll have to charge the battery.
I've kept my veggie garden and the perennial garden next to the driveway pretty much clear of these weeds, but two weeks ago my son visited with his tractor and dumped a couple of big tractor scoops of mulch on the veggie garden. Most of my two bushels of weeds came from there. I'm not planning to plant for a few weeks (May 31 frost date), so there's time to see how much of a disaster I'm facing. If it's bad, I'll put down plastic.
I'm not putting any of these beasts on the compost heap any more. To the dump they go!
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Thank you BrooksideVT for reminding me, I do take a knife and stab holes in the bottom of the bags for drainage. I'll post another picture once I have the straw down. I don't need to put a fence up around it for some reason as the rabbits don't seem to bother the lettuce at all. We have 5 acres and part of it is woodland so we have deer, rabbits, raccons, woodchucks etc that visit on a regular daily and nightly routine.
Depending on how big your compost pile is you can try laying a tarp over it when the temperature rises, this may help to heat your compost up and cook some of the weeds that may be lurking in there?
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I love the chair, Lucy! Over the septic lid is genius, hahaha!
Also what a fabulous idea for the lettuce right in the bags! When the soil gets tired you can dump it in the beds and add some soil amendments to rejuvenate it! The straw will be nice, but it doesn't look bad as it is! All those green sprouts are a wonderful sight!
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Mother's Day morning here.. Hope you all enjoy the day, and may it be filled with with beautiful flowers, and home - grown produce :-)
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From my trip to the nature center today and time spent in the Pollinator Garden!
Blue flax (our favorite from today and my friend found some seeds down the road at the co-op and going to get some of this going for her home!)
Catmint
Desert Penstemone
Chocolate Flower (smells like chocolate!)
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II love that blue flax too. How pretty. I finally have cherry blossoms just like Jazzy and Jackbirdie had weeks ago. It really makes you realize how late spring is here.
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Yikes! The trumpet vine is starting to take over! But the blooms are just now budding, and I think the brilliant orange will look good with the blue birdhouse.
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Good morning everyone! Happy Mother's Day to All!
Thank you Jackbirdie, I have tiles that I have painted with the different veggies on and I put one beside the bag so I know what is what. This way when I pull lettuce, radish etc I can plant the next round at the same time. I have a DBMX coming up (waiting on insurance) this way my DH can fix salads for us while I'm recovering.
Beautiful pictures JazzyGirl! Where in New Mexico do you live? We lived in Alamogordo New Mexico for 5 years while my DH was stationed there. I loved being able to take our kids up to Cloudcroft to play in the snow, then stop for ice cream on the way home as it was warm in the valley. It was nice having two different seasons at the same time.
Blessings, I love the blue birdhouse next to the beautiful trumpet vine! The trumpet vine has a tendacy to take over, I cut the new sprouts off with pruning shears. If you cut the mother vine back your yard will be full of new sprouts. My vine grows up the footing of the deck and blocks the veiw of the pond once it spreads across the deck railing. I cut it back last year and I had it trying to grow everywhere! Now that the main vine is filling out the sprouts have dissapeared. It draws the butterflies and hummingbirds when it blooms and is a very busy place.
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Wenchlori- I live in Albuquerque. Came here from the east coast and been here 20 years now. I love the Southwest.
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Blessings- love the blue birdhouse! I think you are right. The orange will be stunning. I love the dove outside the frame at the bottom.
Happy Mother's Day to all. I felt inspired to make a little slide show of my garden in memory of my mom, gone now for 12 Mother's Days. 😢
Two Hobbies- yay for cherry blossoms !!! A true harbinger of spring. If you watch the slideshow above towards the end is a picture of how big the cherries are now. They are still completely green. Huge though
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That garden is just lovely! And so tidy. Our yard looks like a wild meadow only planted with tame flowers. It's planted so densely that everything grows hip high trying to get some sunshine. I'm not sure what we'll do with the veggie garden now that we've discovered a junko nest on the ground. Last year we had a robin's nest on our patio cover.
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jackbirdie, is that your garden on the slide show? It's beautiful! How do you keep it so weed-free
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My herb "garden" includes mint, arugula and parsley.
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Twohobbies.. Oh I love the cherry blossoms :-)
Blessings.. I think your trumpet vine will look great.. and yes orange and blue are a wonderful colour contrast.. I love our trumpet vine, but ours flower in the winter here.
Katy.. Loved your slide show :-)
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Anyone know what kind of iris this is?
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https://youtu.be/b_XTZM8kpIA