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What type of plants are you interested in growing? This poll is closed. |
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| Perennials! |
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142 | 20.91% |
| Annuals! |
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30 | 4.42% |
| Woody plants! |
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62 | 9.13% |
| Succulent plants! |
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171 | 25.18% |
| Tropical plants! |
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60 | 8.84% |
| Non-vascular plants are the best! |
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31 | 4.57% |
| Screw you, I'd rather eat them! |
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183 | 26.95% |
| Total: | 679 votes | ||
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learnincurve posted:As a general rule they are deep rooted hungry plants that eat all the nutrients in the soil - roses for example need a phenomenal amount of feeding, although they have nothing on trees like conifers which tend to have roots as spread out as wide as the plant is tall, and willow that seems to be able to smell water and sends its roots in looking for it. (If you have bog you can plant willow and the tree will make the soil usable for you) Dandelions are so good at thier general plantiness because they evolved to compensate for thier soil destruction by spreading far and wide via the wind - that way the babylions have a good shot of getting to some nice fresh soil, unlike Buddleja which are a bit thick and tend to spread outwards from the parent plant. That and your cardboard tip earlier are prettayy prettayy cool. I'm digging them Oops sniped um.. dandelions are cool... in other peoples yards!
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Apr 24, 2018 16:21
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| # ? May 15, 2024 16:37 |
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I'm back in the DC area for now, at my usual garden.  This yard is full of clay but we have done a good job of creating some raised beds, and the previous owners were big gardeners so there's a lot of enrichment/digging out that's already happened.I could use recommendations for a hanging plant for partial sun, and a vine plant that would do okay in the clay soil, please. I can't tell what the previous owners used to have on this trellis, but there's a trellis set up...
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Apr 24, 2018 22:45
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Can I get a 102 course on amending/creating potting mix? So my new place has soil on the clay side; it seems decent, crumbly enough outside, but quickly turns into a brick when it dries out in pots. So far I've just thrown ~30% perlite into it when using it for something that likes "well drained" soil. I can probably do better, though So, what's more ideal? Something like 25% peat, 25% perlite, 50% natural? Sand? Compost?
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Apr 24, 2018 23:11
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Weed chat: I pulled weeds the other day. I hate non-winter months.
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Apr 24, 2018 23:11
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Nosre posted:Can I get a 102 course on amending/creating potting mix? If you want to use garden soil too make cheap potting mix, the ratio is usually 1 Part Peat Moss / Coco Coir 1 Part Coarse Sand / Perlite / Vermiculite 1 Part Loamy Soil If you've got clay, that's not going to cut it -- maybe mix it 50/50 with some compost first.
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Apr 25, 2018 04:12
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I have a parlor palm, bought it at ikea and repotted it 6 months ago in standard potting mix, it gets about 2 hours of sun in the morning right below a window. I water it about average, kept (10) indoor plants for 3 years no problems. From what I understand these things are remarkably difficult to kill. In the last month it looks like the chlorophyll has been draining out of the leaves, and one or two of the tips (it started life as a 6" potted plant, is probably 8") As recently as three weeks ago it put up a new giant frond, since then it took a strong downhill turn. Ideas?
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Apr 25, 2018 06:59
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Fertilize it a bit. I just use miracle grow plant spikes and those seem to work ok.
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Apr 25, 2018 07:11
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Nosre posted:Can I get a 102 course on amending/creating potting mix? You need to stop it drying out first and foremost thin layer of gravel or small bark chipping on top will help hold the moisture in.
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Apr 25, 2018 07:28
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Hubis posted:If you want to use garden soil too make cheap potting mix, the ratio is usually Clay in general is a pain to amend. It's too drat sticky to itself. Its hard to bust it up small enough to get it to mix finely.
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Apr 26, 2018 00:55
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it's hard to tell exactly what I need because this yard has had a lot of work before. There been some nice surprises coming up (we moved in last October, so now's the first spring), plus the wonderful big rose bush and other obvious shrubs. So, anyway, I can plant in one spot and it's pretty good but I also found a big chunk of serious clay pretty close to the surface in another area I'll see about some pictures tomorrow if it doesn't rain
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Apr 26, 2018 01:35
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Shout out to listrada for shipping me some voodoo lily bulbs! I can't wait to get them in some dirt. 
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Apr 26, 2018 01:45
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Tremors posted:Shout out to listrada for shipping me some voodoo lily bulbs! I can't wait to get them in some dirt.  Thanks again!
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Apr 26, 2018 03:23
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Yay! Glad they arrived safe and sound! I didn't get as many baby bulbs this past year as before, but the main plants' bulbs are huge so I'm half
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Apr 26, 2018 04:52
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listrada posted:Yay! Glad they arrived safe and sound! I didn't get as many baby bulbs this past year as before, but the main plants' bulbs are huge so I'm half Do you suggest people plant them down hill if possible?
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Apr 26, 2018 04:54
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kid sinister posted:Clay in general is a pain to amend. It's too drat sticky to itself. Its hard to bust it up small enough to get it to mix finely. I tried sieving some of our soil when the moisture content was appropriate, I gave up after about 2cuft, as soon as you touched the resulting clay granules they glommed back together into protopottery. I'll just plant potatoes and manure.
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Apr 26, 2018 12:43
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Speaking of clay, I'm thinking about planting a handful of vines in my backyard to do some home winemaking because I apparently have way too much free time on my hands. Can anyone recommend some good reading on optimal soil conditions for different varietals, and/or viniculture in general? I have a whoooole lot of clay and can of course amend it, but I'd rather plant vines that are already clay-friendly rather than trying to completely change the composition of my soil to accommodate a grape that really shouldn't grow here in the first place.
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Apr 26, 2018 15:28
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I'd been so pleased with how well my thyme seeds were sprouting, but now they've started putting off more leaves and wait, thyme isn't supposed to have long serrated leaves... they're volunteer marigolds! The previous owners had marigolds in these beds when we bought the place. They sent up volunteers last year and it looks like they're sending up volunteers this year too! I like marigolds, though, so I'll probably let them stay as long as they don't interfere with the herbs that do sprout.
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Apr 26, 2018 16:51
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Oh! You just reminded me that I need to plant Spanish marigolds again. They were reliably self-seeding in my beds for about three years, but last year none returned. 
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Apr 26, 2018 19:00
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Well I think I've finally managed to kill my first plant. In the sense of my first plant dying, and also my actual first plant  . Came home one day last week and saw some of the big leaves on my calathea (roseopicta) fallen over, and some of the other leaves were curled. In the past when this happened it was cause of too much sun so I moved them into my kitchen where it's a bit darker and today basically all the leaves have fallen over, all of them are curled, and when I look down at the soil the entire thing is just filled with moving insects running around the soil, the stalks, and some flying around. I think they look like fungus gnats from what I can tell. I think it's too late to save this one, and the weird thing is that this only happened after I watered it with neem oil.I've read in various places that hydrogen peroxide should kill all the larva hiding in the soil on contact, so just to be safe I wanna go ahead and drain all my plants with it unless this is a bad idea.
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Apr 30, 2018 14:21
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My trumpet vine and hibiscus haven't grown at all with no buds or new growth this season despite being in full sun and I've finally decided to replace them. I'm going to swap the trumpet vine for a bougainvillea, still not sure about the hibiscus though. Any ideas for a balcony garden in 7b? Mainly looking for a bushy flowering plant.
Ashex fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Apr 30, 2018 |
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Apr 30, 2018 17:39
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Ashex posted:I'm going to swap the trumpet vine for a bougainvillea Edit: never mind, presumably you were able to keep this thing caged on a balcony. On paper I love trumpet vine but its tenacity makes me wary of establishing new plantings. Then again I'm succeeding in keeping lemon mint and peppermint in check in my flowerbeds, so maybe I'm giving it a worse rep than it deserves. I'm partial to nasturtium as a blooming climber, but that's only because it's edible and I love the taste/look. Bushy varieties are available. Big Nubbins fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Apr 30, 2018 |
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Apr 30, 2018 18:45
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Shame Boner posted:Edit: never mind, presumably you were able to keep this thing caged on a balcony. On paper I love trumpet vine but its tenacity makes me wary of establishing new plantings. Then again I'm succeeding in keeping lemon mint and peppermint in check in my flowerbeds, so maybe I'm giving it a worse rep than it deserves. I was training it to grow on a wire, the plan was to have it arch over the balcony to join the honeysuckle from the other side. Unfortunately the honeysuckle was hit with an aphid infestation that crippled the growth so it didn't get far (it's doing a lot better this year though). The bougainvillea is a dwarf variety that's mostly just going to fill in that side of the balcony until I can grow/establish something perennial. I'm obsessed with blooming climbers but findings ones that are perennial and able to survive the bavarian winter isn't that easy :/
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Apr 30, 2018 19:28
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I'm looking for ideas on how to cover up this unsightly, un-used side of the house. The windows are blacked out from the inside, and frosted on the outside. There is no central A.C., so a window unit was installed carelessly.  The window unit works fine, and the owner used some insulation spray to fill in the cracks between the window and the framing around the A.C. It looks like poo poo.  This side of the house is not visible from the road, or the front of the house. It's un-used other than myself and the neighbors doing our landscaping on the sides of our relative's houses. So I'm trying to sort out what sort of plants/trees/bushes/shrubs/whatever I could "cover up" this side of the house with. My thoughts were landscaping some no-visibility bushes around the front of the (Broken) central A.C. unit, maybe looking at some hanging vines, and I'm not sure what else...? Is there a specific type of plant I could look for? Any help would be appreciated. This is a relative's house, and she just badly want's all this mess covered up. *edit* Forgot to mention the budget is around $800-$1200. Dennis McClaren fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Apr 30, 2018 |
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Apr 30, 2018 21:49
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If she wants something spectacular then I would have a google for cordon vines and cordon fruit trees. Basically you can train trees to go sideways round the outside and have some sort of seating area in the middle.
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Apr 30, 2018 22:05
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This seems like a ridiculous question, but what are the most critter-friendly pesticides out there? I would prefer something organic. I think I've got mites in some of my sarracenia, but I don't want to use something like orthene on them because it's not worth it to me to also kill all the pollinators. I've used neem oil on nepenthes in the past, but it seriously burns them even if I keep them out of the light and rinse them off. I would also like to discourage squirrels from digging up everything, but I'm not really ready to resort to some sort of thunderdome structure.
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May 2, 2018 14:32
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    Done a couple nights with the flashlight (that's fun, anyway) and now it's gonna be clear for a week so I'm gonna try a beer bowl
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May 2, 2018 15:20
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I have a little pair of slug scissors and like to stumble around with a headlamp after dark chopping the fuckers up.
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May 2, 2018 15:32
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Dennis McClaren posted:I'm looking for ideas on how to cover up this unsightly, un-used side of the house. If the sun is suitable, raspberries or similar would be nice.
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May 2, 2018 15:45
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Wow, goddamn, that is a lot of slugs! I might see one tiny thing in a whole season, and rarely ravaging a plant.Mozi posted:If the sun is suitable, raspberries or similar would be nice. In other Midwestern spring news: our raspberries are coming back (we cut them way down early last winter), our rhubarb is beautiful, the peonies are sprouting nicely (even the Itoh peony in our shady front, though I'm pretty sure it'll once again fail to produce any blooms this year), and we have our first spear of purple asparagus. We'd planted leeks for the first time last summer, and to our surprise, the five or so plants we left in the ground over winter are still green and pert and waiting to be picked. The Yoshino cherries at the local outdoor mall should be in full bloom this afternoon, and our pear and crab trees will follow shortly.My biggest garden worry this year is our lawn. It's pretty shady up there, and one part in particular is always patchy. After several years of overseeding it to coax it into at least kind of matching the rest of the lawn, we gave up and resodded the whole front (it's not huge). It didn't work, and that area went patchy again. More reseeding (and telling the fertilizing service not to use preemergent weed spray on that part) got it to a reasonably good place last fall...but no, turns out it's still poo poo. I'm considering restructuring the planting we have up front to eat into most of the bad lawn section and planting it with pachysandra, which we've seen thrive in an almost identical situation a half-mile down the road.
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May 2, 2018 16:37
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Hirayuki posted:Wow, goddamn, that is a lot of slugs! I might see one tiny thing in a whole season, and rarely ravaging a plant. Yea, and there's even more snails--perfect conditions I guess. I haven't seen them on anything I can about yet, though, so they get to live for the moment.
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May 2, 2018 16:44
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Can anyone ID these shrubs and, if so, give me some tips to rejuvenate them? Otherwise I'll probably dig them up because they look terrible.   The last one seems to be doing the best but from the back it also has some bare spots like in the 2nd picture.
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May 2, 2018 17:39
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TheDK posted:Can anyone ID these shrubs and, if so, give me some tips to rejuvenate them? Otherwise I'll probably dig them up because they look terrible. Those are all boxwoods. They need annual pruning to look their best, with an emphasis on pruning into the plant to allow light into the center and force new growth. Prune them sometime in the spring or summer so they have a chance to put out new growth. There's a lot of shapes you can prune them into, but if you're not into that kind of maintenance, probably best to get something you don't need to prune, like a dwarf laurel. edited to fix pruning time, since I was apparently completely wrong about when it should be done.
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May 2, 2018 18:13
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vonnegutt posted:Those are all boxwoods. They need annual pruning to look their best, with an emphasis on pruning into the plant to allow light into the center and force new growth. Prune them sometime in the spring or summer so they have a chance to put out new growth. There's a lot of shapes you can prune them into, but if you're not into that kind of maintenance, probably best to get something you don't need to prune, like a dwarf laurel. Ah, thank you! Annual pruning is probably fine. I just wish they didn't look so pathetic right now. Maybe I'll try to save them.
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May 2, 2018 19:10
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Fitzy Fitz posted:This seems like a ridiculous question, but what are the most critter-friendly pesticides out there? I would prefer something organic. I think I've got mites in some of my sarracenia, but I don't want to use something like orthene on them because it's not worth it to me to also kill all the pollinators. I've used neem oil on nepenthes in the past, but it seriously burns them even if I keep them out of the light and rinse them off. Spinosad? Wikipedia posted:Toxicity: Hirayuki posted:My biggest garden worry this year is our lawn. It's pretty shady up there, and one part in particular is always patchy. After several years of overseeding it to coax it into at least kind of matching the rest of the lawn, we gave up and resodded the whole front (it's not huge). It didn't work, and that area went patchy again. More reseeding (and telling the fertilizing service not to use preemergent weed spray on that part) got it to a reasonably good place last fall...but no, turns out it's still poo poo. If you care (and are in a cool-season turf area) I can make a big effort-post, but yeah shade is hard. Nosre posted:
I've had disgustingly good results with the "beer in a cat-food can" approach. Fitzy Fitz posted:I have a little pair of slug scissors and like to stumble around with a headlamp after dark chopping the fuckers up. ... Slug Sissors? 
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May 2, 2018 20:50
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Hubis posted:... Slug Sissors? Yeah, you just snip the uh "head" off and they spill out like a water balloon full of pudding. I have no idea if this is less cruel than the alternatives, but it seems like it is. And it's easy. Thanks for the insecticide rec. I'll look into it.
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May 2, 2018 21:01
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Hubis posted:If you care (and are in a cool-season turf area) I can make a big effort-post, but yeah shade is hard. I'd be interested in what you have to say about this if you don't mind indulging us. I've also been unsuccessful getting perennial grass to colonize the shadiest part of my back yard (under a big Norway maple). Some years back, I manually de-thatched my back yard as best I could, then re-seeded with a sun/shade lawn mix. Of course it looked pretty decent the first year before the annual ryegrass dies. Some season after that I dug a patio base, giving me about 12 yards of topsoil to work with, so I screened all that poo poo and graded the shadiest half of the lawn, then seeded with a shade mix. Again, it looked pretty good for a year and the next year, just grass clumps. It's been a few years since I've done anything proactive to encourage the lawn, and obviously plants don't just fill in between grass clumps like magic. I don't need a grass lawn necessarily. I kinda wonder how the ajuga colonizing my side yard would do if I introduced it to the back.
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May 2, 2018 21:51
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Shame Boner posted:I'd be interested in what you have to say about this if you don't mind indulging us.
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May 3, 2018 00:51
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Fitzy Fitz posted:Yeah, you just snip the uh "head" off and they spill out like a water balloon full of pudding. I have no idea if this is less cruel than the alternatives, but it seems like it is. And it's easy. My gramma on the Oregon coast where they grow big slugs used to have a spray bottle with some kind of ammonia solution and would give them a spritz, seemed to work. She also did the scissor thing
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May 3, 2018 15:55
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anyone else have an irrational hatred of one particular plant? Mine is box. Not the well done topiary which is An Art but box balls, box bushes and box hedges. It’s just so nondescript and dull - in the UK it’s everywhere because it became seen as some sort of safe conformist don’t seem like an individual got to blend in with the neighbours “the posh people have it as mazes and low walls in stately homes let’s be like them” plant. It contributes nothing to the wild life and has actively contributed to the lack of hedgehogs, field mice, and birds because people are not planting enough beech or hawthorn hedging anymore. gently caress box.
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May 3, 2018 19:34
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| # ? May 15, 2024 16:37 |
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I have an irrational hatred for Hicks yew, which sounds like the Midwest's version of box: a mainstay in every goddamn yard around these parts (whether professionally landscaped or halfassedly thrown together by the subdivision planners) and boring af. We have three in our front--I think our designer worked around them (WHY)--and I've been threatening to get rid of them for a couple years now. I only recently realized they're arranged as two flanking the porch and a third off behind one of those, so we can put in a pair of nice plants and something else fun behind one of them. (In deep shade, which I know complicates things.) I also think hens-and-chicks are kind of creepy, but I don't hate them like I hate those loving yews.
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May 3, 2018 20:25
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