What type of plants are you interested in growing? This poll is closed. |
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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 |
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Any advice on propogating old fashioned roses from cuttings? I stuck like 70 cuttings last December from my plants and have two living roses to show for it (Duchesse de Brabant and a Reve d'Or-both very tough, hardy varieties in my experience). I'm in south Alabama where our seasons are completely wrong from the rest of the country, but a few folks told me that was about the right time to take cuttings for roses here. Stuck them in a sand/compost mix in the open air but protected them from freezing, and kept them watered etc. and put rooting hormone on a about half of them. I had a ton of them leaf out in the spring, but then they just died. Pulling them up showed they hadn't actually grown any roots over the winter, just leafed out with whatever energy was in the cutting. I can root easy stuff like herbs, but haven't tried much with woody plants before.
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# ¿ Sep 12, 2018 00:46 |
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# ¿ Mar 28, 2024 21:29 |
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They look like zinnias to me, but I’ve never seen zinnias with dark leaves like that. Butterflies and bees do love zinnias though, and they’re easy easy to grow. I planted some a few years ago and they’ve seeded themselves back in every year.
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# ¿ Sep 16, 2018 15:28 |
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Jealous of those delphiniums. We can grow them and foxgloves for a few months in the spring but then it gets too hot and they fry. I have zinnias randomly popping up in all kinds of places because I put them in my compost pile one year and so anywhere I used compost I've got zinnias. Not complaining about too many zinnias.
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# ¿ Sep 16, 2018 17:28 |
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Looks like a tree root? You can chop it off and dig it up if it’s in your way.
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# ¿ Oct 10, 2018 22:13 |
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there wolf posted:I don't know whether to ask this here or the food gardening thread, but does anybody have any recommended resources on landscaping? Just bought a new place and want to make the backyard something other than thicket and ivy. If you just want to know how to kill ivy, like 3oz of 41% glyphosate (Round Up-its available as a generic now, just read the label) with a few tablespoons of dish soap per gallon of water in a pump sprayer should kill it pretty dead. That mix will also kill anything green it touches, so be careful. Spray it now, wait a week or two, then cut it down. Whatever comes back in the spring you can spray again. Johnny Truant posted:Quick question! I bought some English Ivy a couple months ago, and I've noticed it's not looking too hot.
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# ¿ Oct 11, 2018 00:45 |
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Fitzy Fitz posted:Apparently Michael Pollan has recently turned his focus toward LSD..? Was not expecting that. Johnny Truant posted:Thanks for the input! I've thought we've keep the soil pretty damp, but we may move up to watering like 3 times a week. You can take some cuttings from the ends of the vines about 6” long and strip off the lower leaves and stick them in a glass of water in bright light indoors and they’ll probably root in a few weeks and give you more ivy plants in case this one does die.
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# ¿ Oct 11, 2018 15:51 |
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enraged_camel posted:Well, since posting that, the plant in the picture got ALL of its leaves eaten. I'm gonna have to rip it out and plant a new one.
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# ¿ Oct 12, 2018 14:43 |
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Probably some sort of leaf scale-weird bugs that cover themselves in a hard coating and don’t move and suck juice out of your plant. If you’ve noticed any sticky spots around the plant it’s almost certainly scale (and you just touched some bug poop) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_insect?wprov=sfti1
Kaiser Schnitzel fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Oct 15, 2018 |
# ¿ Oct 15, 2018 01:33 |
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Johnny Truant posted:Oh, gently caress. The instructions on the bottle didn't say anything about that, only that you should use at absolute max a 2% solution of it. We approximated, and I'd say it wasn't more than that, but this is good to know, thanks! Fitzy Fitz posted:Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the oil itself is harmful to leaves. It's the interaction with sunlight that causes damage. I've definitely burned plants with it in the past, but I've also had good luck with spraying in the evening, moving the plant to shade, and then rinsing thoroughly with water before returning to the light.
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# ¿ Nov 1, 2018 14:10 |
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enraged_camel posted:what's bt? It’s an organic pesticide that kills the gently caress out of caterpillars of all types. TheMightyHandful posted:Theres a lemon tree out the front so Id be surprised if there was a second, I guess Ill have to wait and see?
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# ¿ Nov 3, 2018 13:11 |
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When I had a grapefruit tree I would cover it with a blanket and plastic sheet and hang a 100w incandescent light bulb or two in the branches as an easy heater, and I’ve built a little tent on the same principle to cover some little baby gingers so they could get established. Without something to contain the heat and keep the wind away, a heat lamp is going to be heating the entire neighborhood and not do any good. At some point I got tired of it and decided if a plant I didn’t just adore couldn’t take a little freeze it didn’t have a place in my yard, and now I don’t have a grapefruit tree. So, you probably can save it but it might also be a huge pain in the butt that isn’t really worth it.
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# ¿ Nov 13, 2018 21:42 |
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McSlaughter posted:Any good recommendations or suggested reading for plants, botany, etc.? Technical books, interesting reads, histories; I am interested in a lot of different types of texts on the various innumerable forms of gardening, plant biology, and that sort of thing. So if you've got anything you've read personally that enlightened you or that you thoroughly enjoyed or learned from, let me know. "The Forest Unseen" by David George Haskell-University biology professor tells you everything you never knew about that happens in a square meter of Appalachian cove forest. Not just about plants, but it has a whole lot about plants and is an excellent excellent book. There's a cool chapter about how fungi mate that blew my mind. His other book, "The Songs of the Trees" is good too, but more specifically about trees and a bit preachy at times. "The Tree" by Colin Tudge-Pretty exhaustive look at the trees of the world (and you had no idea how many wildly different types of trees there are in tropical forests) but also great stuff on tree biology. Some of it gets a bit technical, and he describes about every major family of trees which can get a bit exhausting, but also very fascinating. "Dirt" by William Bryant Logan-Its a book about dirt, and some of the different things that happen in dirt. Not very technical, very enjoyable to read. His book "Air" is also great. He wrote a book "Oak" which I wouldn't really recommend. "Second Nature" by Michael Pollan-His first book, and one of my favorites. More a philosophical musing about gardens and gardening and funny stories than a technical or how to book, but it's always an enjoyable read to me. "Botany of Desire" is good too if you haven't read that. "Native Trees for North American Landscapes" by Guy Sternberg and James Wilson-Sort of a tour of native North American trees with their culture requirements and use in the landscape, as well as a bit about propagation and uses/cultural facts about trees. More a guide for a gardener, and kind of an expensive book, but beautifully photographed and it will make you want to go plant some trees (which you should do!). A good one to borrow from the library. Gardening in the Humid South" by Edmund O'Rourke and Leon Standifer -Two very folksy retired LSU Horticulture professors talk about gardening in the unique climate of the hot, wet, humid Gulf Coast of the US. Very useful for me personally because that's where I live, but more broadly it is a superb book. I've learned more practical stuff about fertilizer and plant nutrient requirements from this book than anywhere else. They've taught farmers and nurserymen and county extension agents, and are very good at explaining complex, technical stuff about plant biology in layman's terms, and they've got a good sense of humor. They're scientists that know their stuff and have done the research to back it up but still can explain it to folks with a high school education. They have a great explanation of the air-soil-root continuum that I've never seen anywhere else. I can't recommend this book highly enough, especially if you live in the Southeast. You can get it used on Amazon for like $4 so there's no reason not to own it.
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# ¿ Dec 8, 2018 23:20 |
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Harry Potter on Ice posted:I remember liking this a while ago https://www.amazon.com/Wild-Trees-Story-Passion-Daring/dp/0812975596 It can be exhausting in its detail, but it's fascinating to me. Much better on western and northern trees than southern-I think all the southern pines combined get about a paragraph and each species of western tree gets pages. It was written in the early 1950s in the real golden age of much of American lumbering, and he has lots of statistics about timber reserves and harvest rates. I come from a long line of foresters and its incredible to read about virgin redwoods/sequoia with hundreds of thousands of board feet of lumber in a single tree. There's lots about the industrial uses of different tree species at that time which is neat to me. A better reference book than one you want to read straight through. elgarbo posted:The most interesting book about plants I've read is 'The Hidden Life of Trees' by Peter Wohlleben. It's just an absolute joy to read - exploring all the unexpected processes that happen in forests.
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# ¿ Dec 9, 2018 03:50 |
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Fitzy Fitz posted:
PS if anyone knows a good way to kill wrist thick wisteria vines please let me know.
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# ¿ Feb 14, 2019 22:06 |
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Eat them until they are gone? You can put a strong glyphosate solution on your (gloved) hand and grab the leaves to kill the onions and not the surrounding grass. If you don’t like chemicals for whatever reason, then just keep pulling and pulling-getting the bulb out of the ground is what counts. They spread by seed though, so there’s a decent chance they’re in your neighbors yard and when you clear them out of yours they’ll just blow in again. Sometimes it’s easier to just pretend you want them there and be glad of the free green onions. My garlic chives have totally taken over a bed and I just pretend that’s what I wanted all along because I’m too lazy to fight them.
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# ¿ Mar 16, 2019 02:59 |
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Silver Nitrate posted:I want to put in some day lillies this spring but I haven’t bought bulbs before. How much should I be paying for bulbs? The price ranges are insane. Some of my daylilies set seed 2 years ago and I propagated them and I think they'll finally bloom this year. Daylilies don't come true from seed so I'm super excited to see what they look like. I've had good luck ordering all kinds of things from these folks before: http://www.marysgardenpatch.com/ They'll sell them to you by the half bushel if you want.
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# ¿ Mar 22, 2019 00:58 |
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vonnegutt posted:Day lilies are pretty popular plants to breed and therefore come in hundreds if not thousands of variations, which is why the price ranges are so wide. The rarer ones are the expensive ones, which may or may not be less hardy. They really are a great pass-along plant. A neighbor gave me some and they've been sitting in a pot with no dirt in it for a few weeks now and don't seem to mind at all.
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# ¿ Mar 24, 2019 15:20 |
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I. M. Gei posted:My dad got a gift card from a local plant nursery, and now we’re thinking about planting a fruit tree or two in our backyard. You should be able to plant where the old tree was immediately if it is small. If it's a stump that has to be ground, it's going to take a few years for all that to rot down. For your new tree, dig a big wide hole 3x as wide as the root ball and add some compost to your native dirt. IIRC, most peaches are self-fertile and don't need a pollinator, but a different variety will usually increase yields. I'd ask at the nursery to make sure whatever you are picking is self-pollinating. I think apples are not usually self pollinating, so it is best to have two compatible varieties. You should just cut down the bradford pear. Otherwise, make sure it is outside the furthest branches of the tree.
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# ¿ Mar 31, 2019 18:40 |
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https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/extension/peach/fig1.html It looks like Gala's only need 500ish hours. Apples in the south like to get fire blight, so watch out for it. This might help you too: https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/extension/homefruit/apple/apple.html
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# ¿ Mar 31, 2019 20:44 |
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I. M. Gei posted:I have other tree questions. Post a picture of your poplar. Generally, prune off branches with narrow, V shaped crotches (u shaped ones are good) if two branches cross/rub, cut the lower one. Open grown tulip poplars will be bushier/more conical than the big tall straight ones you see in the woods, but by limbing them up you can force them to grow up more than out. Tulip trees usually have good natural branch structure and shouldn’t need much pruning for structure, unlike your Bradford pear. It’s waaaau easier and better for the tree to prune with clippers while they’re young than prune with a chainsaw when they’re old.
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# ¿ Apr 2, 2019 03:00 |
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It’s usually safe to cut 1/3 of the canopy out of a tree per year. I would either do it now before it leafs out or wait until late summer. If you prune right after it leafs out, the tree has just spent a ton of energy making all those leaves but can’t use them to recover that energy-if you wait until later in the summer the tree will have stored more energy and will put out lots of new growth the following spring. That being said, the best time to prune a tree is usually just whenever you have the time to do it. You might lose a season’s fruit or slow the tree down a little bit you’re not going to kill it. If you’re pruning them for fruit production, look around at extension service publications etc. It’s a bit different from just pruning for size and you can do some things to help increase yield/accessibility.
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# ¿ Apr 6, 2019 22:43 |
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Fitzy Fitz posted:Be careful learning proper pruning. Once you've learned it, you can't unsee all the lovely rear end trees that are basically everywhere. Every parking lot is full of lion-tailed, mulch volcanoed, topped, codominant garbage trees. It is amazing how few people prune their trees. I’ve never seen a landscape installer prune a tree after planting and it shows 10 years later (assuming the landscaper hasn’t killed the tree with a string trimmer or mulch volcano). In 10 minutes with hand pruners on a 6 foot tall tree you can pretty much get it sorted out for life and save someone thousands of dollars of very disruptive tree work in 50 years.
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# ¿ Apr 11, 2019 17:44 |
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What can I do with leftover fertilizer? I always have some leftover after I fertilize my grass and it's so humid here it turns into a giant sticky mess in about an hour. Dump it in my compost pile or on an old tree stump to rot it down or something? This is like 30-0-0 or something. Also here's some roses. Two of the late David Austen's: The pretty much perfect 'Graham Thomas.' Nice, subtle scent like fresh rain or something. 'Windermere' I've only had this in the ground a year or two and it hasn't quite thrived, but it's doing okay. Nice lemony sort of scent. And one of my favorite old fashioned climbing roses, 'Clotilde Soupert,' first grown in 1896. Its always crazy to me that this plant I am growing is actually the same plant and it's almost 125 yrs old. Plants are amazing-it's like you could cut off a person's arm and stick them in a pile of rotten people and they would grow a whole new identical person that could be basically immortal. This rose is totally bulletproof, and super vigorous. It' was grown from a cutting by a friend and has been in the ground 5 years and its 20' wide at least? It needs a serious haircut. If it has a flaw, it's that the flowers dont always open in humid weather, but this year it's doing fine. It basically blooms sporadically year round here, but puts on its big show in the spring and early fall. Very strong, wonderful rose scent. Grow old roses! They're incredible and nothing ever happens to them, unlike tea roses. They get black spot and all their leaves fall off and they just don't care and grow new leaves where a tea rose would give up the ghost. They're just as tough and good of repeat bloomers as nasty old Knockouts, but they smell incredible and have some neat history to them! I. M. Gei posted:No, it was just sitting there in a hole with no dirt along its sides.
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# ¿ Apr 13, 2019 00:33 |
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Southern Heel posted:Hi guys, the kooky-but-untamed 1930's garden we moved into has stayed untamed for the last 18mo and now it's just about to be summer. I was wondering if anyone had any advice on some affordable, low maintenance options to keep it looking neat and nice? Depending on sunlight etc. some old roses would look great in the back growing up the wall, but that might need to wait a little while. Just weeding and pruning a bit will instantly make it all look a whole lot better.
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# ¿ Apr 14, 2019 14:51 |
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I would plant in mostly native dirt. Dig a hole a good 3’ wide, break up the edges of the hole a little so they aren’t smooth if it’s heavy clay soil. You want roots to go out. Add a bag of black cow or some other compost if you want, but don’t overdo it. If your soil is heavy and has poor drainage, add some rotted pine bark (sold as soil conditioner at big box places) and mix it in with the native dirt at the bottom of the hole. If you’re getting a tree in a pot, make sure you break up the root ball so that there aren’t any encircling roots. You want to cut a bunch of those roots so they make new growth going out into the hole. Most importantly, make sure the tree is not planted too deep. The root collar should be level with or slightly above the level of the surrounding soil. You can add some lime now when you dig the hole, but you’re going to have to add lime over the next few years to try and get the soil more neutral. Some plants are super sensitive about pH (azaleas, camellias) but most can tolerate a pretty wide range-they just will grow best at pH X.Y so I wouldn’t obsess about that too much. There are lots of flowering cherries here growing in very acidic soil and they do fine. The first year or two after you plant a tree, it probably won’t grow much and you’ll think it’s not happy. Don’t gently caress with it-it’s just growing roots. Usually in the third year they will really take off. It’s a bit late to be planting (I think you said your in the south on the Gulf Coast-ish?) so its probably going to need a good, deep soaking every week or two if the weather gets dry.
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# ¿ Apr 15, 2019 13:15 |
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Solkanar512 posted:I took a small workshop on Japanese maples this weekend,
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# ¿ Apr 16, 2019 02:00 |
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It’s maybe planted a little high, but that’s way better than planted too deep. Put and inch of compost over the roots if you’re really worried, but probably with mulch it will be fine. I’ll be pretty amazed if you actually get cherries in east Texas. I always thought they just grew in Michigan or somewhere much colder, but I would love to be surprised.
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# ¿ Apr 18, 2019 03:26 |
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Those pretty much look like normal buds to me, but being transplanted is very stressful for trees, especially bareroot. Don’t be surprised of it drops/aborts some buds this spring, and there’s a decent chance it won’t look super healthy this year. If it starts looking real rough, cutting it back a bit may be necessary, but that looks it was pruned pretty heavily when it left the nursery so it should be good. Don’t fertilize it-that will only stress the tree more. You want to let it grow roots at its own pace, not force it to grow a bunch of leaves it can’t support yet. Keep it well mulched and make sure it doesn’t dry out, but don’t overwater. Water it deeply (leave the hose running a 1/4” diameter stream of water, put it by the base of the tree and let the hose run for 30 minutes) every week or two. Waaaay more plants have been killed by excess care than by being ignored. If you dug it a nice deep, wide hole and it isn’t planted too deep, you’ve done all you can do and it should be fine.
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# ¿ Apr 20, 2019 00:20 |
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In my experience blueberries are pretty easy, especially in rich, wet soil. They like plenty of water, but they also like good drainage. If you've got good black dirt they'll be fine. They like acidic soil. And yeah, in the deep south pretty much anything will happily trade full blazing sun for some light shade (especially afternoon shade). A good thick layer of pine bark mulch is great for blueberries-acidic and keeps their roots cool and moist.
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# ¿ Apr 23, 2019 02:42 |
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Your tree is either going to be fine or it isn't, and at this point there isn't really much you can do either way. The bark you're worried about now is probably just the tree shedding a bit as it grows. Staking trees (especially small trees) is generally unnecessary unless it's very tall with a small root ball and usually does more harm than good long-term.
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# ¿ Apr 24, 2019 01:26 |
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It's just usually better to let a tree bounce around a bit as that helps make the trunk and roots smaller. https://www.finegardening.com/article/to-stake-or-not-to-stake
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# ¿ Apr 24, 2019 02:34 |
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Hubis posted:loving Casuals: Oh no, I've got MINT in my garden and it's impossible to get rid of!!!
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# ¿ Apr 28, 2019 05:44 |
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Hubis posted:A pretty beautiful Japanese (I believe) Wisteria that was twined together and trained up into kind of a tree form, but which had seemingly not been well pruned since the previous owners has it put in and so they decided to support it with a few extra nails in the fence. It became massively overgrown and got blown off the supports during a wind storm, and became a horrible bramble instead. I’ve never tried to propagate it, but there’s some in my yard where the vines are running along the ground and it roots itself every so often-maybe just stake it down in a few places and then cut it up in a few months? Kaiser Schnitzel fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Apr 29, 2019 |
# ¿ Apr 29, 2019 03:05 |
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Hubis posted:Well depending on the variety they take 10-15 years from sprouting to start flowering. Interestingly, propagates cutting from a mature parent will apparently flower the next year if they become established.
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# ¿ May 1, 2019 02:24 |
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You can eat the roots of some of them I think. They’re fairly closely related to sweet potatoes.
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# ¿ May 1, 2019 18:18 |
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What are these tiny black bugs in my gardenia flowers? Thrips? I think they are making the flowers turn brown much faster than they should which hurts my feelings because gardenias are the best loving smell in the world. It’s a huge bush, but I did treat it a month or so ago with some Bayer systemic fungicide/insecticide stuff that I thought would help. What else could I try? They’re just now blooming and already covered-I’d hoped the systemic would prevent this.
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# ¿ May 10, 2019 23:56 |
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I. M. Gei posted:I loving love the smell of gardenias. It reminds me of my grandma’s house in Alabama.
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# ¿ May 11, 2019 00:10 |
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I would murder untold thousands of bees for a month of perfect gardenias, but it looks like most systemics aren’t very effective against thrips anyway. The stuff I had used didn’t have acephate in it-I’ll give it a spinosad bath if it ever quits raining and try more drastic measures if that doesn’t work.
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# ¿ May 11, 2019 02:53 |
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Possibly some escaped lantana? Pictures of leaves/stems and the whole plant would help.
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# ¿ May 15, 2019 02:21 |
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# ¿ Mar 28, 2024 21:29 |
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Cogon grass is our local nemesis, and apparently some kind of taro in swamps. The cogon grass is pretty killable with roundup, but hand weeding is completely useless and it always seems to pop up in the middle of something where you can't really spray it.
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# ¿ May 16, 2019 02:10 |