A general gardening thread

[HenrikOlsen]

Most of the weeds I have are grasses milkweed and horseradish. The horseradish pops up everywhere. I think it is similar to goutweed in the method it spreads. It was started by grandfather years ago. He liked chopped up and put into chopped up pickled beets in kind of a relish. Now I am the only one that likes spicy food so it does not get used at all.

The goutweed's rhizomes are fairly shallow, horseradish goes deep as well as sending out underground shoots.

To be honest I wouldn't want either in my garden, horseradish can also be hard to get rid of once it's established.

[The Backroad Astronomer]

I have got to start using it myself.

[HenrikOlsen]

Note that the old roots grow woody and tasteless, but dig them up (helps control them too) and plant one or two 10cm pieces, then harvest when they've grown next year.

[Sententia]

Sententia, have you checked the ph of you soil some plants like more acidic then others. If you soil is too acidic get some lime. The local garden supply place should have some. Also some plants like more nutrients then others, so you might need to get a couple of different kinds of fertilizer. I found out beets might like more potassium the most and wood ashes are a good source. I am going burn some branches roughly where I am going to plant the beets. To keep the weeds down on thing to do is put something like shredded newspapers where you don't want weeds.
Mine main problem in the past few years was my work schedule. I did not get tilling until the end of May when I had my vacation. Also I had to work like seven days in a row then on my days off it would raining or just rained. Some plants like beans and tomatoes do not like being touched while wet so I stayed away from the garden.

I never got that deep into the whole thing. I know I got a decent amount of beans... Huge cucumbers, some I picked earlier than others.. and I got around.. 20 decent tomatoes. I'm forgetting some others.

I used organic fertilizer, I'll probably use that again because it was good

[HenrikOlsen]

Have you been taking good care of your earthworms?

One philosophy of gardening is that if you treat your garden as a zoo with a main purpose of growing earthworms, everything you put in the ground will flourish.

[Sententia]

Have you been taking good care of your earthworms?

One philosophy of gardening is that if you treat your garden as a zoo with a main purpose of growing earthworms, everything you put in the ground will flourish.

I chased a few chipmunks , rabbits out of there .. I know I got a possom living around here somewhere ... I'd like to build some kind of fence to really prevent the wild, instead of inviting it into the area.. But I have seen worms in my garden.

[The Backroad Astronomer]

The only wildlife that bugs my garden is deer, but one trick is to plant marigolds and the scent keeps them out. I have noticed that there aren't many worms in the garden I would like more.

[The Backroad Astronomer]

I never got that deep into the whole thing. I know I got a decent amount of beans... Huge cucumbers, some I picked earlier than others.. and I got around.. 20 decent tomatoes. I'm forgetting some others.

I used organic fertilizer, I'll probably use that again because it was good

Cucumbers, squash and pumpkins are heavy feeders so if you have enough fertilizer they will do well.

[jokergirl]

You can plant squashes straight on the compost heap, they love it...

[Trebuchet]

Most of the weeds I have are grasses milkweed and horseradish. The horseradish pops up everywhere. I think it is similar to goutweed in the method it spreads. It was started by grandfather years ago. He liked chopped up and put into chopped up pickled beets in kind of a relish. Now I am the only one that likes spicy food so it does not get used at all.

I spent 3 years getting rid of the horseradish the former owner had planted when bought our vacation home. We like horseradish and did harvest and use some but I couldn't tolerate the way it spread into everything else. When we moved in, it had been planted in a small raised box but was coming up around the edges. The next summer it had spread to a five foot radius and I started taking it out. We had it coming up as much as 20 feet away by the time I finally got rid of it.

The eradication method boiled down to nothing more than persistence. Daily visits to the garden (when we were there) and digging out of any new sprouts, with careful attention to removing every possible bit of root.

The garden, which was a thing of beauty a few years ago, is now a total mess. I haven't been able to tend it the past couple of years due to caring for my parents. Now that they are gone, I'm thinking of retiring and spending the summer there. Perhaps I can get it back into shape.

[The Backroad Astronomer]

The horseradish is spread out over several acres so I have the feeling it is pretty much immortal at this point.

[Trebuchet]

The horseradish is spread out over several acres so I have the feeling it is pretty much immortal at this point.

Ouch. The less green side of me wants to suggest chemicals except when I was battling it I found them not very effective.

[The Backroad Astronomer]

I'll just have to just dig up the ones in the garden. There are also some poplar trees that are probably just stems of the same tree with a similar root system as the horse radish. I just cut down the ones I don't want and keep a few for shade for the house and lawn.

[HenrikOlsen]

Went to the garden today, ground is still frozen about a foot down.
Going to be a bit of a mess as I'll be receiving 24 bare rooted apple trees for grafting Tuesday or Wednesday.

Anyone have any suggestions for keeping them alive for a couple of weeks until I can get them permanently planted?

[Torsten]

Not sure of what to do to ensure their survival for that period, but perhaps you can hasten the thawing by placing some clear plastic over the ground in which you intend to plant them, in essence creating a temporary green house over that area so that a stronger wave of heat penetrates the ground.

[Ivan Viehoff]

Went to the garden today, ground is still frozen about a foot down.
Going to be a bit of a mess as I'll be receiving 24 bare rooted apple trees for grafting Tuesday or Wednesday.
Anyone have any suggestions for keeping them alive for a couple of weeks until I can get them permanently planted?

Do you have access to some unfrozen soil? Lie the trees on their sides, with the roots in a bit of a trench if possible, and cover their roots over with a mound of soil. This is called "heeling them in" and is a technique to delay permanent planting of bare root fruit trees.

[closetgeek]

This winter killed my baby palm tree and we are currently waiting to be sure the frost is over before planting another. My garden is a sad state of affairs, at the moment. There are no longer pretty green shrubs lining the edge, just masses of brown bare sticks. I've been told to cut them down to the base and they will grow back but I would like to do something to stop the Munsters Go Home, notes left in my mailbox.

[Fazor]

Looking for some advice on killing trees. We get these annoying little saplings [edit to clarify: I said 'saplings', but at the base they're about the diameter of a quarter, on the small side, and silver dollar on the larger]that grow, and most of them are just that--annoying. But there are a few that grow in some very inconvenient places. For instance, there's on that comes up between the brick chimney (that runs, obviously, all the way to the ground) and the sidewalk. The gap between the two is probably only two inches, making it impossible to dig very far down. We cut it back all the time, but I get tired of having to cut every other week (stupid things grow like weeds!).

There's another that's growing from beneath the sidewalk. (Root comes out and curves around so that the tree grows next to the side walk, but we can't get to the main root). And there's one or two that grow in the fence, where I likewise can't really get at the roots.

I've read that salting the area will kill them, but most of these trees come up in the garden, and I don't want the things that are supposed to grow to get killed off. Would cutting them back and burning the ends of the stump keep them from growing until they die? Or would they just sprout a new "branch"?

[HenrikOlsen]

Before anyone suggests it, the copper nail "trick" is a myth.

[Fazor]

Before anyone suggests it, the copper nail "trick" is a myth.

I had seen that one, and a few other "interesting" suggestions on various other sites. No mention yet on whether or not "rare earth magnets can channel the growth energy away from the plant, killing the roots!" . . . hell, maybe I just discovered the next great infomercial product!

. . . anyway, I saw a lot of suggestions for various herbicides, but again, I don't want to risk the soil/plants around the trees. Also, I have dogs, and I'd much prefer a method that won't poison them.

[rommel543]

We had a problem with carigannas growing in my parent's yard. The only way you can get rid of those is rip out the roots, and the roots go all over the place. A single bush of them that above ground 3 foot radius coved about 8 underground. Huge mess ripping it out.

[HenrikOlsen]

Caragana?

[Trebuchet]

Looking for some advice on killing trees. We get these annoying little saplings [edit to clarify: I said 'saplings', but at the base they're about the diameter of a quarter, on the small side, and silver dollar on the larger]that grow, and most of them are just that--annoying. But there are a few that grow in some very inconvenient places. For instance, there's on that comes up between the brick chimney (that runs, obviously, all the way to the ground) and the sidewalk. The gap between the two is probably only two inches, making it impossible to dig very far down. We cut it back all the time, but I get tired of having to cut every other week (stupid things grow like weeds!).

There's another that's growing from beneath the sidewalk. (Root comes out and curves around so that the tree grows next to the side walk, but we can't get to the main root). And there's one or two that grow in the fence, where I likewise can't really get at the roots.

I've read that salting the area will kill them, but most of these trees come up in the garden, and I don't want the things that are supposed to grow to get killed off. Would cutting them back and burning the ends of the stump keep them from growing until they die? Or would they just sprout a new "branch"?

What type of trees? They're likely coming up from the roots of some nearby (or even not so nearby) well established tree. Anything that's a fruit with a pit (cherry, plum, apricot, etc.) is very prone to doing this. I'll never have another of those in my yard, if I can help it. I've not found any good solution to the problem, either. It might be you could dig down and cut the roots nearer the main tree but they'll grow back.

[Fazor]

Silver maple, I'd guess. No trees around anymore, but there was one in the back yard five years ago. But for these to be that root system, they'd have to have gone down under and across the basement. We get thousands of those stupid whirly seeds each fall from trees down the block. I hate those things.

[BigDon]

My post got eaten by the "you are not logged in" monster...

It was a long one too...

[Fazor]

My post got eaten by the "you are not logged in" monster...

It was a long one too...

Bah. And I've been waiting for it since you posted your "I'm back" thread (yesterday?)

[BigDon]

Only for you, Faz... I went and dug out some stumps to blow off steam and my hands are a bit sore.

After the city dept, who did an absolutely fabulous job pruning the trees mistook a loquat I've been tending for eight years for a big weed and dug it out and ran it through a chipper, I was a bit gutted.

It was stunted for it's age due to growing in heavy shade, but I had it well fed and it was beginning to develope three seperate canopies and still not ten feet tall. It was growing next to the city owned tree and had survived two previous pruning episodes, but I was sick most of the winter this time and didn't even think of it when my sister called me and told me the city crews were there. I know the crew's work and actually looked forward to seeing the trees. (And they did yeoman work. I don't have to move a rose bed anymore.)

Then the next week my stepfather went to work in the yard and took out a bed of spider plants I planted when Boo was small, and a bed a small fushias. I then decided I couldn't afford to be sick any more and spent the last couple of weeks working on the yard and my various tanks.

I bought a novelty multigraft plum with four kinds on one root stock. Specific for the peninsula. Found a nice sunny spot for it in the back yard. Also a pair of grapes, Seedless Concords (var. Mars) Put them in a good southern exposure along the last of the bare fence.

[Fazor]

How's the growing season been out there thus far? We've had a warmer than average March-to-April, and so everything here is growing like wildfire. The past two nights there's been some heavy freezing, I guess. I'm in the city, and I haven't seen it, but my co-worker lives a bit further out and said out there was pretty well frozen.

I don't have any plants; haven't planted anything yet this year, and at the end of last year, tore out most of the scraps of whatever we had left in anticipation of some re-working of the gardens this year. The one thing we have that bloomed was our pathetic lilac bush. It just never blooms as fully as our neighbor's, but it was in poor shape until we pruned it back about two years ago, and I think it's just taking a few seasons to fully recover. There's also some very annoying vine plant that grows all through it during the summer; it's not during it's bloom period but it may be stealing enough nutrients to hurt it. I swear I cut that thing down, pull it out, nuke it from space, etc., multiple times every year, but the damnedable thing just keeps coming back. Both plants are along the fence (chainlink) and the vine just loves that.

Two years ago I got sick of fighting the vine and let it go. There's actually two kinds. One's a flowering vine that wouldn't be half bad if it wasn't so pesky. The other turned out to be wild grapes; they were sure fun to gut out of the fence at full size.

I have to head to Columbus this afternoon for a meeting; that puts my parent's house on the way back after work. If the weather holds--and I think it's supposed to--I may try to swing by and borrow my dad's truck and till so I can till up the flowerbed around the deck, the stupid patch of wild grass between our yard and where we park in back, and till up a little garden for us to grow some veggies this year. Tara's bosses' father-in-law (no room mates involved, at least) has some tomato plants he wants to give us. I want to grow some peppers. Not sure what else.

[mike alexander]

I have a similar problem with horsetails (I think of them as dinosaur asparagus), which also spread by underground rhyzomes. Amazingly tough, persistent things. I just wait for them to get about six inches tall and then pull them out, hoping over time to discourage them. Must've pulled a couple of hundred last week from a small bed in front of the house.

[Fazor]

I have a similar problem with horsetails (I think of them as dinosaur asparagus), which also spread by underground rhyzomes. Amazingly tough, persistent things. I just wait for them to get about six inches tall and then pull them out, hoping over time to discourage them. Must've pulled a couple of hundred last week from a small bed in front of the house.

Blah. You're supposed to tell me there's some magical cure made from common household materials, like soda mixed with mustard (of the brown variety), that when a drop is placed on an unwanted plant, it will magically wither and die all the way down through the roots! Oh well.