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B33rChiller posted:I saw this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHRgY8fZNv4 the other day, and thought of your adventures spreading mycelium! 
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Apr 22, 2021 18:59
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since I can’t find the Critterquest thread in GBS, can y’all help me identify what kind of wasp this is? it’s kinda brown and yellow and I think maybe like 3/4 of an inch long, give or take. I Raid-ed the poo poo out of several of their nests near my apple trees not too long ago, and now the little fuckers are retaliating by building a new nest ON one of the trees. weirdly they don’t seem to give much of a gently caress about me but I want them gone regardless again, I’m in northeast Texas    sorry for the poo poo photos but it was moving around a lot and this was the closest to it I could get
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Apr 22, 2021 19:03
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I. M. Gei posted:since I can’t find the Critterquest thread in GBS, can y’all help me identify what kind of wasp this is?  Seems like a paper wasp
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Apr 22, 2021 20:30
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Hirayuki posted:The channel's About page describes him as a "Misanthropic Chicago Italian". d'oh. thanks
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Apr 22, 2021 21:24
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Chicago. Edit: Didn’t see there was another page. Since I'm here, I moved to the North Shore of Lake Superior from Sonoma County and want to get some native plants going to replace the buckthorn in my woods. Is there a place to buy Ilex verticillata -- (winterberry holly) or Symphoricarpos albus -- (common snowberry) or is there anything else that can outcompete the buckthorn? I plan to yank it with one of those buckthorn jacks like this:https://pullerbear.com/. Stitecin fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Apr 22, 2021 |
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Apr 22, 2021 21:42
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Today I learned that London sports a rather large avocado tree.
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Apr 22, 2021 21:44
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Stitecin posted:Chicago. The only thing that out competes the buckthorn in that part of the country is a chainsaw and digging out as many roots as possible. It took my dad a few years to clear all of his out and they only have 3/4 acre. He's planted trees and understory plants to fill the space, but he still has to pull some out every year. Much easier now at least. But then you should absolutely replace it and continue to cull the buckthorn because it'll keep trying to come back. Good luck, it's nasty stuff to live surrounded by.
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Apr 22, 2021 21:53
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hell yeah, freeze last night didnt get low enough to hurt anything. time for all these plants to go back outside!
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Apr 23, 2021 12:20
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:We should make a list of good resources for XYZ area! poo poo, I'd settle for good resources in general. Finding good plant info that's up to date and not sprinkled with weird nonsense superstition is rough. I often find myself googling something when I'm in a nursery to try and figure out care requirements (because labels are often poo poo) and half or more of the first page will be full of results that are clearly wrong or intentionally misleading to sell more plants (the people who have decided to label everything "part shade to full sun" should be decapitated). I've found far more decent places to buy plants than decent places to get information about them  . Have some bookmarks!Plant info/identification
Outdoor nurseries There's obviously a ton more but these are the ones I have ordered plants from and been happy with what they sent me.
Supplies
I'm always looking for more places to brutalize my poor wallet and/or learn poo poo about plants; if anyone has any sweet finds I'll edit them in and put it in the third post or something. Wallet fucked around with this message at 14:30 on Apr 23, 2021 |
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Apr 23, 2021 14:22
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So we bought a mature queen of the night (Epiphyllum Oxypetalum) a few weeks ago, not expecting it to bloom anytime soon. We were wrong - apparently it likes the full moon. We woke up to a bud this morning, and tonight it decided to just go ahead and open. Our golden retriever, our sweetest girl in the whole world, died last week, so we're hoping this is her visiting us or whatever dead dogs do. The flower is really a spectacle in person - the low light doesn't do it justice. I'll try to get a better shot once it's fully open.   edit some additional images. It went from closed bud to completely open between 830p and 930p! It smells sweet like a Magnolia but not overpowering, it's really pleasant. Anyways that's my story.  
skylined! fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Apr 27, 2021 |
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Apr 27, 2021 02:20
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That's a great looking Epiphyllum. I've found the change in conditions from bringing home (or shipping) cacti, in particular, seems to trigger a lot of them to flower. I'll definitely take it over the response of the Dioscorea and the Pelargonium I got a while ago both of which decided that living in a box meant it was time to go dormant. Waiting for a plant you've never had non-dormant to leave dormancy is somehow worse. Wallet posted:I'm always looking for more places to brutalize my poor wallet and/or learn poo poo about plants; if anyone has any sweet finds I'll edit them in and put it in the third post or something. I know you lazy bums have more plant poo poo hiding in your bookmarks 
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Apr 27, 2021 14:02
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Backtracking a bit to talk about garden culture: I too wish there was more of it in the US. It's certainly here, but it's in hyperlocal little pockets. I live in an old neighborhood (by US standards) that dates to the late 19th century, and it's laid out as a grid in a flat area with pretty small lots. I'd say the majority of the houses have proper gardens (aka sufficient step up from basic lawn + shrubbery). There are plenty of carefully manicured crabapples and cherries, also dogwoods, redbuds, tulip trees, and dwarf evergreens. Lots of flowerbeds (especially for bulbs - tulips are out now, irises coming soon), and also potted plants on porches and porch steps. I can't help but feel there's a one-upsmanship factor at play - neighbors have super cute garden, now I want super cute garden. I've felt the pressure and have been slowly working on transforming our lawn + one shrubbery front yard into something nice so our house doesn't look like a rental (note: house next door is a rental and has lots of flowers and stuff in the front yard that the elderly landlord couple come over to maintain, but that's an exception). I think some important contributing factors for a neighborhood successfully fostering garden culture include: - Neighborhood being old and established - No HOA rules dictating boring conformist landscaping - Small, flat yards: if your front yard is 30' wide and 6-20' deep rather than a quarter acre, it's super manageable and not daunting. And the fact that it's flat makes it extremely accessible. - Human-centric urban planning/architecture: This is a big one. These houses are all designed to be approached on foot from the street, which means nice yard and path and welcoming front porch. And a garden meant to be enjoyed by all. The neighborhood is highly walkable. Cars were either not a factor in planning, or they were relegated to alleys and alley-facing garages. Lots of newer developments put a huge garage as the facade of the house, which is not conducive to gardening. - Front porches: this one goes hand in hand with human-centric planning. Where I am, pretty much all the houses have (or used to have) a front porch. This is where you hang out, so making the space around it nice makes perfect sense. - Folks in neighborhood are not rich enough to hire a gardening/landscaping service. I used to take walks through the super nice corner of the neighborhood full of Tudor mansions and poo poo. Gardens were impeccable and beautiful, but impersonal and homogenous and looked like they were all installed and maintained by the same company. But it really does vary by neighborhood. Other prewar neighborhoods with detached single family homes and suitable space for gardens have nothing but grass and concrete. I guess we were lucky to buy into one of the neighborhoods with high gardening participation.
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Apr 27, 2021 23:54
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I agree with those points, especially about older neighborhoods and income. McMansions always have the most generic landscaping.
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Apr 28, 2021 00:56
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I wish I could find it now, but I read a great article talking about the merits of porches, and how they exist as this wonderful intermediary space. Most of us enjoy our privacy and probably wouldn't invite neighbors into our homes, but inviting a neighbor to chat on the porch over some coffee is a nice alternative. Porches are cool.
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Apr 28, 2021 02:16
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I think a big part of what’s helping foster a gardening renaissance is the relatively low cost of entry into the hobby for a high reward. Plants are dirt cheap, unless you’re on one of those insane websites. Even when you buy from places I consider reasonably expensive like Delights, you’re usually looking at 20-30 bucks per super strange plant. That’s like a bar tab for a product that likely took years to make and will hopefully continue to give you pleasure for who knows how long. That makes plants seem like a solid investment for people, even on a limited budget I also think we’re seeing people react to alienation from nature. It’s increasingly difficult to experience something natural, and when you can, it can come at a hefty cost of either money or time. Plants can go pretty much anywhere there’s light, so they give people a chance to connection with a piece of the natural world that would otherwise be denied to them; an opportunity to get dirty and tend to something fragile and precious on their own schedule. Imo this is a big part of the houseplant craze and small scale gardening I’ve got more thoughts on it, but the last factor I’ll mention is overall an increased interest in plant diversity and a personal responsibility for the environment. Almost all of us grew up looking at the same poo poo, like 30 species tops thanks to unimaginative landscaping and the homogeneity of “success.” Thus, plants kinda sucked rear end and were deeply uninteresting. People have since grown more cognizant of how much biodiversity is out there, especially as it pertains to native plants, which gets them much more excited to learn about a new subject and participate in a hobby that tickles both the pleasure of collecting and trying to improve the world around you
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Apr 28, 2021 13:07
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Now I want McMansion Hell, but for landscapes. Kate does roast people for their landscape sins, but it’s not the focus.
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Apr 28, 2021 13:28
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Oil of Paris posted:I think a big part of what’s helping foster a gardening renaissance is the relatively low cost of entry into the hobby for a high reward. Plants are dirt cheap, unless you’re on one of those insane websites. Even when you buy from places I consider reasonably expensive like Delights, you’re usually looking at 20-30 bucks per super strange plant. That’s like a bar tab for a product that likely took years to make and will hopefully continue to give you pleasure for who knows how long. That makes plants seem like a solid investment for people, even on a limited budget this is a good post and also mostly where my interest in horticulture springs from plus a bit of just wanting to learn some practical botany
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Apr 28, 2021 13:30
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Platystemon posted:Now I want McMansion Hell, but for landscapes. The other day I watched a bunch of youtube videos about topping crape myrtles, and it was basically the same experience
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Apr 28, 2021 16:15
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Also to contribute to the legit/goon-tested plant supplier list, these guys are local to me and are some of the most respected camellia breeders in the biz. They ship well and responsibly bc I think a lot of their clients are wholesale. In addition to the camellias, they’ve got a huge variety of really unusual Asian species that I haven’t seen offered in many other places: https://camforest.com
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Apr 28, 2021 23:24
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Oil of Paris posted:Also to contribute to the legit/goon-tested plant supplier list, these guys are local to me and are some of the most respected camellia breeders in the biz. They ship well and responsibly bc I think a lot of their clients are wholesale. In addition to the camellias, they’ve got a huge variety of really unusual Asian species that I haven’t seen offered in many other places: https://camforest.com  (I added this stuff to post 3. Will edit in anything else I manage to bully out of thread regulars.)Have a (not particularly good) photo of these cute little Arisaema I found poking up in the woods across the street from my house:  Also bonus photo of the other overpriced Narcissus cultivar I put in last fall: 
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Apr 29, 2021 00:10
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I've had good experiences with this place for bulbs and they have alot of varieties that are good for the south. I think I got all my ginger lilies from them too, and I got a ton of daylilies. http://www.marysgardenpatch.com/ And the Antique Rose Emporium's catalog is the bible of old roses: https://antiqueroseemporium.com/ David Austen Roses are also great, and their catalog is rose pornography: https://www.davidaustinroses.com/
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Apr 29, 2021 00:24
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Oh here’s a dope bulb supplier: https://brentandbeckysbulbs.com/?v=7516fd43adaa insanely big selection
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Apr 29, 2021 00:57
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:I think I got all my ginger lilies from them too, and I got a ton of daylilies. How do you keep them from devouring everything and leaving only daylily in their wake? When I got this property the only thing planted other than buxus and those awful dwarf ornamental conifers they put in mall parking lots were daylilies but after spending a couple of days pulling them in mass from a garden bed that was literally three spindly lilacs in a sea of identical daylilies I'm a bit leery of letting them back in the garden.
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Apr 29, 2021 13:30
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Wallet posted:How do you keep them from devouring everything and leaving only daylily in their wake? When I got this property the only thing planted other than buxus and those awful dwarf ornamental conifers they put in mall parking lots were daylilies but after spending a couple of days pulling them in mass from a garden bed that was literally three spindly lilacs in a sea of identical daylilies I'm a bit leery of letting them back in the garden. The orange tawny daylilies can be super aggressive and have choked out most everything else in their little area, but most of my other varieties seem to slowly clump and not make a big mess. They might be much happier in your climate or something. I keep meaning to get rid of the orange ones, but every year I say 'well, let's at least let them bloom; and then it's summer and hot and I forget about them until next spring when I say 'well, let's just let them bloom.'
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Apr 29, 2021 14:19
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My garden problem is my little patch of front garden gets very little direct sunlight, and it seems like all the native plants from my region need full sun because Australia I like natives and want to help out the local birds and also don't want to have to set up a sprinkler system but it's so hard to find something that will flourish in the shade.
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Apr 29, 2021 16:34
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Organza Quiz posted:My garden problem is my little patch of front garden gets very little direct sunlight, and it seems like all the native plants from my region need full sun because Australia Australia has some of the world's best ferns though!
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Apr 29, 2021 16:59
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:The orange tawny daylilies can be super aggressive and have choked out most everything else in their little area, but most of my other varieties seem to slowly clump and not make a big mess. They might be much happier in your climate or something. I keep meaning to get rid of the orange ones, but every year I say 'well, let's at least let them bloom; and then it's summer and hot and I forget about them until next spring when I say 'well, let's just let them bloom.' Yeah, it's the orange ones that ran riot. I guess they just really like the Northeast because they will grow here literally anywhere, sun or shade, in open garden or in tiny little crevices between rocks. I pulled out enough from that bed to fill 10ish wheelbarrow loads piled with them. There were a bunch of lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis) using the daylilies as shade. At the beginning I was finding places (outside of the gardens) to replant them but by the end I was so sick of them that I just dumped the last load in a drainage ditch next to the road that washes out every year without covering their roots or doing anything else. This year there's a big rear end clump of them that apparently survived being marooned with their roots in the breeze. I still have a couple in the garden that I banished o a single corner in the very back of the yard (where there's less sun to hopefully maybe keep them in check a little) and they haven't spread too far yet but I am keeping an eye on them. I put some big old bushes between them and everything else to hopefully create a barrier. Edit: This entire field of daylilies is lurking between my back fence and the street, for some perspective on how much they apparently like it here:   Organza Quiz posted:My garden problem is my little patch of front garden gets very little direct sunlight, and it seems like all the native plants from my region need full sun because Australia Plant's water needs are generally proportional to the sun they get, so if you are planting somewhere that doesn't get a lot of light you also aren't going to need to give them a ton of water (barring plants that really like to be somewhere boggy). You could also set up a drip system instead of a whole sprinkler system which is generally a lot easier/quicker (with a lot less digging). If you're looking for natives you could try visiting whatever wild or semi wild areas there are around you and seeing what grows in the shade. Even in places with super intense sun there's usually little shade loving plants that are hiding under the bigger ones that want to be roasted. If you don't want to actually go out and look, you could also poke around what people are observing in your area on a platform like iNaturalist. Wallet fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Apr 29, 2021 |
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Apr 29, 2021 18:09
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eSporks posted:I wish I could find it now, but I read a great article talking about the merits of porches, and how they exist as this wonderful intermediary space. Most of us enjoy our privacy and probably wouldn't invite neighbors into our homes, but inviting a neighbor to chat on the porch over some coffee is a nice alternative. Porches are cool. I know I've also read some good articles about porches and also porch culture but I don't remember where/when I read them... Anyhow yeah, having a front porch is really great. It was one of the hard requirements in houses we looked at. I'm currently in the market for some wrought iron plant stand things I can put in the corners and conceal the downspouts with some ferns and trailing petunias or whatever. Also they'd be a nice backdrop for when I take meetings from the porch this summer. Also I love the casual/neighborly social interaction aspect of the porch. First summer we were at the house, we spent weekends and afternoons on the porch and met most of our neighbors when they were walking their dogs or otherwise out and about. During the deepest depths of lockdown last spring, we could sit outside without leaving our property or feeling exposed and chat with neighbors who were doing the same (a cool thing about our street is that all houses have an identical setback so the porches are perfectly aligned and you can wave to your neighbor at the opposite end of the block). And then during last summer the porch enabled us to have friends over and socialize safely outside. Probably going to be starting that up again once the weather gets consistently warm (and especially once my husband and I are fully vaccinated). All in all, I really hope that porches make a comeback in future development. I'm thinking that they actually might, thanks to the pandemic. I read a NYT article about the return of the foyer because with a plague outside, people suddenly wanted the semblance of a barrier and between the front door and the living area and a "dropping off zone" that wasn't actually their living room. Architects of yore had poo poo figured out, actually, but we've forgotten their about solutions because of decades of HGTV's open concept Kool Aid and for exterior/gardening concerns, way too much emphasis on cars. Oil of Paris posted:I think a big part of what’s helping foster a gardening renaissance is the relatively low cost of entry into the hobby for a high reward. Plants are dirt cheap, unless you’re on one of those insane websites. Even when you buy from places I consider reasonably expensive like Delights, you’re usually looking at 20-30 bucks per super strange plant. That’s like a bar tab for a product that likely took years to make and will hopefully continue to give you pleasure for who knows how long. That makes plants seem like a solid investment for people, even on a limited budget I agree with all these things, especially countering alienation to nature. I personally have super easy access to nature in that I'm three blocks from a park consisting of a few hundred acres of primeval woods where if you get deep enough into it you can't hear the city anymore, but a lot of places don't have that and there's no easy escape. I recall reading about an analysis done on all the Caldecott/Newbery winning children's books over the years, and they found a huge shift away from nature as the predominant theme/topic/visual in the books. Makes me want to think about curating books for my eventual future children so there's an abundance of nature topics/depictions. On plant diversity, that's interesting because it's something I think I've kind of vaguely observed over the years. Even my mom is planting new and different things now that a lot of the stuff planted by my great grandma is dying off. Speaking of old plants dying off, when one of the azaleas started dying my mom took a cutting to the nursery. The guy asked how old the azalea was and when my mom told him about seventy he was flabbergasted. It was definitely just dying of old age. Now another azalea has died (at seventy or eighty), and this one was my favorite - it had very small pale pink flowers and lighter green leaves and I've never seen another one quite like it. Is there a good azalea info source for identifying varieties and obtaining them? Platystemon posted:Now I want McMansion Hell, but for landscapes. I love the landscaping commentary on McMansion Hell. It's always so bleak and contrived. Living in a hulking sun-beaten box in the middle of nowhere out in an exposed former cow field with nothing but some sickly little saplings, ugly bushes, lava/river rocks, and five acres of driveway really does seem like hell. The rich neighborhood I mentioned is in a different league - it's all prewar, built by old industrial wealth, full of gigantic oak trees, and garages are around the back accessible by alley, so no gaping three-car maws anywhere. The only criticism I have of the landscaping is that it's pretty homogenous and bland (but that doesn't mean it's not pretty and well done). Lots of shrubberies and white impatiens and the like. And I guess some dogwoods.
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Apr 29, 2021 22:33
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Porch talk made me realize that McMansions don't have front porches. One more reason they suck.
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Apr 29, 2021 23:05
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I'm not sure I'd trade my back deck for a front porch, but I'd think about it. Maybe if my house was in a walk friendly area and it was east facing to catch the morning rays but be nice and cool in the evenings. You could border it with some hydrangeas or rhodos and make it real nice. I've seen too many good porches be wasted because of how hot they can get in an afternoon sun.
Bi-la kaifa fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Apr 30, 2021 |
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Apr 30, 2021 00:30
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Porches… they’re situational. It depends on the climate, the locale, the lot. Nowadays, we’re building more houses that should have porches that don’t than vice versa, but I’ve seen deadbeat porches, too.
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Apr 30, 2021 00:51
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just come ‘round the back deck, neighbor. I’ll always be there, grilling
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Apr 30, 2021 00:54
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Oil of Paris posted:Oh here’s a dope bulb supplier: https://brentandbeckysbulbs.com/?v=7516fd43adaa insanely big selection Seconding Brent and Becky’s Bulbs as a great bulb supplier. Lots of daffodils and tulips in particular, but I’ve gotten crocus, anemones, alliums and several others from them as well. I think they’ll ship anywhere, but they’re located in SE Virginia so would be best for the Mid-Atlantic region.
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Apr 30, 2021 17:16
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 Magnolia grandiflora y’all. If I had to pick one tree as my very favorite landscape tree, I think it would have to be a magnolia. Flowers that are pretty and smell nice all summer long! Very handsome dark green evergreen leaves! Cool seed cones in the fall! Very very ancient! ‘Gardener’s World’ had some huuuuuuuge deciduous magnolia from the Himalayas on and it had flowers as big as a person’s head, but I think it would be too hot here for it. My bigleaf magnolia will hopefully bloom for the first time this year. There are a few spots in the woods around here with 4 or 5 (or 6 if you count tulip poplars) species of magnolia growing wild within a hundred feet of each other and they’re all such handsome trees.
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May 1, 2021 22:04
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Well I finally worked up the nerve to give my unwieldly fiddle leaf fig a haircut. Now I can commence the constant state of worry until I see it put out some branches. 
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May 2, 2021 18:31
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:
Hell yeah bro. I’m a big fan of them all, just wonderful plants. I’ve got grandiflora, big leaf, ashe, and now it looks like my tiny tiny umbrella is going to make it. Star and Jane too. I’m just about addicted to them, I even picked up a super sick evergreen Asian hybrid: magnolia x “serendipity” to use a as a baller flowering screen planting
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May 2, 2021 18:34
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My partner saved this lil fellah from a dumpster:   They potted it and it's been doing great for a year, but we're not sure what it is exactly. They thought that it looked like it was cut off a larger tree when they picked it up. Any help on identifying it would be much appreciated, we're going to try to get it planted in the yard this fall but knowing what it is would help a lot in deciding where it would do best.
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May 3, 2021 00:19
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Araucaria heterophylla, the Norfolk Island pine.
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May 3, 2021 00:22
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Awesome, thank you so much for the help!
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May 3, 2021 00:27
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I peeked under the lids of our mushroom buckets (three 2-gallon buckets from Lowe's, two with grey oyster, one with golden oyster) and the mycelium is coming along nicely! Can't wait until they're ready to produce.
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May 3, 2021 00:38
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