|
What type of plants are you interested in growing? This poll is closed. |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| Perennials! |
|
142 | 20.91% |
| Annuals! |
|
30 | 4.42% |
| Woody plants! |
|
62 | 9.13% |
| Succulent plants! |
|
171 | 25.18% |
| Tropical plants! |
|
60 | 8.84% |
| Non-vascular plants are the best! |
|
31 | 4.57% |
| Screw you, I'd rather eat them! |
|
183 | 26.95% |
| Total: | 679 votes | ||
|
We've lived in our house (New Jersey) for about three years now, and aside from some half-assed starts, I haven't done nearly as much as I should with the potential gardening space we have. Part of that I blame on the fact that like all old houses, this one's previous owners decided they just loving loved lovely plants. The only things we have/had on the property were a metric fuckton of ivy, a lot of periwinkle, a privet hedgerow, and some random hostas and bulb plants that I almost think are there by accident rather than any effort. We also have the problem of having almost no full sun anywhere once all the trees grow their leaves except in the front where we keep our vegetable planters. My first effort to get rid of the ivy was ripping it out of a side plot a couple years ago. Somehow I managed to do a good enough job that it hasn't noticeably come back since then. But my attempts at actually growing things there have been relatively unsuccessful. I've had several plants just die. I didn't do anything to the soil, so I'm wondering if it's just not great.  Our property line basically goes down the middle of this - the bigger plants are all our neighbor's. The mulched area used to be entirely ivy. I planted the two small clumps of some type of grass (I don't even remember what) a couple years ago and they're still hanging on. Some new growth this year, which is encouraging. I also have two silver ferns that are coming back, a couple hostas, and something else I don't recall the name of. I tried some hakone grass. One died and the other is smaller each year but is making an effort. This spring I tore up a smaller mixed patch of ivy and periwinkle and direct sowed some wildflowers.  The red stuff is red pepper flakes to try to deter the squirrels a bit. You can see they've been having their way anyway. Still stuff is coming up and I think it will be a nice plot in the future. To the left is the big challenge:  I'm not ready to tackle it this year. I think I'll just have to try to do it in phases. Aside from the scale, the problem is that it runs down a steep slope to the street:  I need a way to remove it but also keep everything from sliding off at the first hint of rain. In the meantime, the back is my project this year:  The privet hedge. Below that was covered in ivy a few weeks ago. The are still main stems in the ground behind it, so it'll come back. Note also the random cluster of hostas, which I love so I'll keep those. There's also a couple bluebells to the left, and an assortment of daphodils and crocuses spread throughout the yard. In the future I want to pull out all of those privets and plant something. Maybe azaleas? I want a native shrub that will get roughly the same height. The next couple weeks I'm going to be yanking out all the ivy along this fence:  There's a nice little flowering dogwood for some reason, but I really like having it. The neighbor on that side is a gardener and said she'd take care of the ivy on her side as long as I was clearing it on ours. Yesterday I did that weird corner.  The ground underneath is kind of gross and is filled with roots, bricks, and some plastic sheeting that somehow is under the roots, which suggests it was there for a long time. I might have to dump some soil on top of this, I want to turn it into a native shade garden. I bought a couple lady in red ferns and foam flowers to start. I'm planning on doing maybe wild ginger for ground cover. There's actually a lot of space here so it could really be something special if I can get things to work. Sorry for the long post/image dump, but being home full time now has me becoming kind of obsessed with trying to get things looking better. If anyone has suggestions for how to improve the beds or plants that might work well, I'm all ears.
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2020 17:23
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 16, 2024 16:03 |
|
|
Solkanar512 posted:Nah, this sort of think is really interesting and I think you have a lot of potential here. What zone and region are you in? We're in 6a/6b - New Jersey suburbs, just outside NYC. I've thought about terraces but got scared off at how much work it seemed like it would be. On the flipside, as you say it would be a ton of good gardening space and could look amazing from the street. Is terracing even something that could be reasonably DIY? I'm not sure we'd have the money to hire it out for a while. The ivy is hideous and I hate it, but I can sympathize somewhat with planting it on the hill since it requires no care or maintenance outside of cutting it back. I also am hoping getting rid of it will cut down on the mosquitoes a little. Edit: I think we'd probably need to hire someone regardless. Even if I wanted to try it on my own, it slopes down to the street and no way would I want to risk anything falling/sliding off while someone walks by. z0331 fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Apr 20, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2020 18:23
|
|
|
Solkanar512 posted:Yeah, given that you’re talking about structural issues, discretion may be the better part of valor. But if you have the time and money to do it right, it would really look incredible. I like them very much, especially after seeing some posts in this thread. I was considering doing a dwarf potted one on our back deck, but hadn't really thought about planting one. This is mostly because I wasn't really sure where to put it. A lot of the beds we do have are difficult to dig large holes in because of how many roots/trees there already are. There's apparently a nursery about 45 minutes away that has a good selection of them that I've wanted to go to.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2020 19:50
|
|
|
Oil of Paris posted:I mean this is an amazing opportunity and there is just an insane amount of improvement that can happen. At this point it really depends upon your taste because you basically have a blank canvas. First step I would take is to decide what areas you want to make into your first beds. Cover those areas with cardboard and then cover that with mulch/compost. That'll kill the weeds and help you visualize the shape your garden will take. If you're in a hurry to plant stuff NOW, get some soil conditioner (its just bark mulch) to mix in with new plantings. In terms of where to plant, I was going to try planting immediately in the back corner of the yard that I cleared, but given the state of the uncovered ground, I think we'll try to dump a couple inches of topsoil before doing anything with it. In the meantime, I'll give the remaining ivy roots some time to reveal themselves so I can pull more out. I was planning on doing native plants like foamflowers, baptisia, wild ginger, some lady ferns, maybe red beebalm? From looking around those seem like decent shade plants that also have color. I want to get a few more things in the ground on the side plot. So far not a lot has thrived there, but this year I have several things coming back so I'm hopeful. It doesn't get a lot of sun, especially in the summer when foliage blocks any direct sunlight. Right now I have a couple Japanese silver ferns, a couple hostas, and some other random things. I love mountain laurels, so was thinking of maybe trying one of those. My parents have two big ones next to their house and when they're in bloom they're stunning. I don't want to put too many big items in that space but I think that would look really nice if it can thrive. And yeah, definitely keeping the dogwood. I love it when it blooms, and it's just overall a really attractive tree.  Someday maybe we'll convert the lawn around it to gardening space. (You can also see the ivy I tore up in the background.)
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2020 17:01
|
|
|
Oil of Paris posted:Loving that native plant list. Put the baptisia in the sunniest spot for max flowers and best growth but it will be fine in shade. I'd also recommend Fothergilla gardenii (a witch hazel relative, best if it gets some sun to help with fall color) and pretty much any Epimedium that you can find, both incredible plants that will flower intensely in deep shade. You could also throw in some hellebores which would thrive in any particularly deep shade spots and spread very well. Native deciduous azaleas are very cool and worth a look into if you like them Thanks for the ideas! Everything you mentioned is beautiful. Epimediums would probably go really well in the back corner. The Fothergilla looks like it has some amazing fall color. I like azaleas a lot. Eventually I'd like to replace the privets with something like azalea shrubs. All it takes is time and money. Speaking of magnolias, a few people in our neighborhood have massive ones that are amazing in the early spring, but given how the petals basically will carpet their property for a couple months, I'm kind of glad I can just enjoy them from a distance. z0331 fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Apr 22, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2020 14:18
|
|
|
Finally got my mountain laurels.  Got two, a peppermint that is mostly white, and a dark pink, almost purple. The white is at the far end, pink in the foreground next to my neighbors rhododendron. I also got a couple bee balm plants. Man they smell good.  You can also see a somewhat sad assortment of stuff that has come up pretty stumpy. I had envisioned two areas with cascading Hakone grass and sedge, with big painted ferns and hostas for texture. And welp things didn’t work out too well. I’m just happy anything came back this year. I’m also terrified with my track record with this plot that the laurels will die. Oh and I also did something on the other side of the house that I really like. Foam flowers with some lady in red ferns. 
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2020 22:26
|
|
|
LoreOfSerpents posted:If you're consistently having trouble in that area, have you considered that there might be something wrong with the soil? Assuming that's not a brand new hosta, it looks pretty stunted, which makes me wonder if you've got a disease in the soil. I had considered that maybe the soil wasn’t very good, though I hadn’t thought about it being diseased. There was nothing but ivy on my side a couple years ago. Not sure if that might do anything. That said, it’s very likely I just didn’t take good enough care until they were established. Ny concept of gardening up until now has been dig hole, put plant in, water every so often. The laurels seem to be doing ok and I see new growth. And the other hosta has filled in a bit.  The Rutgers lab is closed for the moment so I think I just gotta wait and see. Bloody Cat Farm posted:I’m trying garlic spray this year. I put some down yesterday around new plantings to see if it will help. This is the one I bought if you want to give it a try. It’s for mosquitos but is almost entirely made of garlic. We started using that last year and...I honestly don’t know if it works. It rained a lot mid season which made it difficult to tell. We still got a ton of mosquitos end of July into August. I’m trying again this year in concert with ivy removal, which I hope might take away some of their breeding grounds. We also mostly get those tiger mosquitoes, which can go to hell. They’re out at all hours of the day and will just go after you again and again. I’ve read they can breed just in tiny bodies of water, like an overturned bottle cap, so it can be really tough to get rid of breeding areas z0331 fucked around with this message at 14:32 on May 22, 2020 |
|
#
¿
May 22, 2020 14:27
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 16, 2024 16:03 |
|
|
there wolf posted:It's very unlikely that ivy is providing a giant mosquito breeding ground; it's just as much a home for things that eat mosquitoes as it is is for the pests. The more likely culprit is a neighbor with an old pond or a bunch of junk collecting rainwater. You could have at least let me hold on to the hope for a bit.  Like I said, I read that tiger mosquitoes can breed practically anywhere there's a tiny bit of water. We get lots of them all around the house, so I don't think there's one neighbor or area that is the culprit. It could be worse, I guess. My parents in Maine have a screened in porch and last summer you could literally see an army of dozens of regular (ie: not tiger) mosquitoes trying to get in and sitting on the outside of the screen.
|
|
#
¿
May 22, 2020 15:59
|
|