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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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there wolf posted:I put landscape fabric under rocks in a storm runoff gully, and it worked great for keeping them from sinking into the mud. Actually with that in mind, what's a plant that loooves water that isn't literally a water plant? I was thinking hydrangeas, but I don't know how well they do under flash flood conditions. Papyrus fits here.
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Jul 24, 2019 14:42
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| # ? May 13, 2024 22:51 |
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Cannas are also good depending on what zone you are- they usually overwinter for us here in zone 7 and they are frequently used as edgers for garden ponds because they'll grow both in water and out.
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Jul 24, 2019 16:18
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Hubis posted:You can let them lay where they die. If they were seeding I *might* go through and pull them out, but it's not critical. Anything that doesn't decompose by the time the soil is cultivated before sodding certainly will afterwards. So, it turns out that 1litre of that Total stuff manages to cover about a 1Mx13M area and i've got 13 more to go :/ I've only got 6 litres of the stuff between those 2 bottles, so i need to get more anyway, but how the gently caress do you open bottles like the one in the picture? They seem to be designed for their own spray handle and won't open the gently caress up it also trickles out really loving slowly. Short of drilling a hole in the side of the bottles i'm not quite sure what to do. Also, does that sound about right for weed killer volume vs area coverage? I poured it into a hand pressurized sprayer and tried to cover as much of the surface area of the weeds as possible but dunno if the weeds need to be fully coated or whether a little bit will cause some kind of chain reaction. Either way, this is going to take a bit of effort to cover 169sq.m. Edit: there's refill bottles i can get on amazon that'll probably do the job https://www.amazon.co.uk/Roundup-Action-Total-Weedkiller-Refill/dp/B01CNEM3EG But I've got those 5 litres sitting there and would rather make use of it. though i suppose weeds are always inevitable and it's not like it's got a really short shelf life has it? Edit: then again, this page says that 1 litre of their concentrate stuff should cover 1000sq/m. Have i just sprayed too much on the weeds? https://www.gardendirect.co.uk/garden-care/pest-weed-control/weed-killers/roundup-concentrate Kin fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Jul 24, 2019 |
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Jul 24, 2019 18:10
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there wolf posted:I put landscape fabric under rocks in a storm runoff gully, and it worked great for keeping them from sinking into the mud. Actually with that in mind, what's a plant that loooves water that isn't literally a water plant? I was thinking hydrangeas, but I don't know how well they do under flash flood conditions. Red-twig dogwood shrubs do well in waterlogged soil and survive flood conditions. Some types of sedge do, too (e.g., slough sedge). Swamp rose is tolerant of brief floods but isn't quite as water-loving as red-twig dogwood in my experience. Swamp milkweed, some columbines, and some asters can thrive near standing water (just not in it) and will tolerate some flooding. For something more unusual, temperate pitcher plants (Sarracenia) can do well outside in sunny storm runoff areas and actually love seasonal floods, but they will rot if they sit too deep in water for too long. If you absolutely want the thirstiest plant you can get, try willows. Just don't plant one anywhere near a house or water/sewer line, because the roots will find it eventually.
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Jul 24, 2019 19:40
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Yeah, no trees at all. It's basically a dry creek bed that runs to the city storm drain, so anything with long roots is out. I want to plant something around the drain itself to prevent people from stepping through it. A little water will pool around the drain itself in really bad storms, but maybe for a few hours at most. I'm more worried about having something with shallow roots that can still hold up to the force of the water coming at it. The red-twig dogwood seems good, but I'm in zone 8 which appears to be the limit of it's range and it has problems in hot, humid air.
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Jul 24, 2019 20:03
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there wolf posted:Yeah, no trees at all. It's basically a dry creek bed that runs to the city storm drain, so anything with long roots is out. I want to plant something around the drain itself to prevent people from stepping through it. A little water will pool around the drain itself in really bad storms, but maybe for a few hours at most. I'm more worried about having something with shallow roots that can still hold up to the force of the water coming at it. Daylilies are also hugely adaptable, and from your description it sounds like they could do fine there. There's a huge variety of them and many types can stand being flooded for days.
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Jul 24, 2019 20:48
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Quick yard question...what the hell is this stuff? My yard has been pretty much void of weeds until the last 3 weeks or so when this stuff started popping up in random places. You can see the leaves in the pic and the stalk is very tough for as small as the plants are. Hoping to find out so I can get an herbicide or whatever geared toward it and get rid of it. 
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Jul 24, 2019 20:48
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there wolf posted:Weed barrier kind of sucks for actually keeping weeds down. They'll grow where ever there's a gap and then the barrier just makes it harder to pull them up. Just put down a heavy layer of mulch or pine straw; it'll deter just as much and when/if weeds do come through, or you want to plant something else, or you need to dig up the bed, it's easy to push out of the way. (If you're feeling ambitious, you can also plant a ground cover that will crowd out weeds but that takes longer.) I was looking at Dymondia as my yard is entirely California native drought resistant plants. My gardener seems to think the weed barrier is the way to go.
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Jul 24, 2019 20:49
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there wolf posted:Yeah, no trees at all. It's basically a dry creek bed that runs to the city storm drain, so anything with long roots is out. I want to plant something around the drain itself to prevent people from stepping through it. A little water will pool around the drain itself in really bad storms, but maybe for a few hours at most. I'm more worried about having something with shallow roots that can still hold up to the force of the water coming at it. You could always do perennial hibiscus if frosts are late/rare... how much sun we talking here?
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Jul 24, 2019 22:23
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Butterfly bush (get one of the sterile, dwarf cultivars) can also deal with lots of water
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Jul 24, 2019 22:34
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Jaxyon posted:I was looking at Dymondia as my yard is entirely California native drought resistant plants. My gardener seems to think the weed barrier is the way to go. The cynic in me has to point out that your gardener gets paid to put it down and possible paid to yank it up later. If you trust them, ask them directly why they prefer the weed barrier over mulch and make a choice based on that answer. There might be something about it that an experienced gardener in your area knows that we don't, or maybe they just are really taken with the stuff on the installation side. As for my gully, it's lightly shaded with good sun in the mornings. Butterfly bush is a good idea, they do pretty well in this area. I'm looking at bushes because I want a physical barrier around the drain; maybe people wont run through a bunch of day lilies, but a dog would.
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Jul 25, 2019 04:02
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Assembled this last night, it feels a bit rickety to be honest. Considering doing something to beef up the construction. They really should have made it so you could screw it together or something. Anyway what is it you ask? It's a composter, basically an insulated composter with a system to aerate the compost more effectively. We want to use this because our garbage collection system doesn't separate food waste from the burnable stuff and we hope that we can reduce the amount of garbage we produce so we can reduce the garbage trucks pickup intervall from 2 to 4 weeks, that will save us money in the long run we hope by halving our garbage handling costs. And we'll get free compost for the garden.  (the shoddy looking white paint in the background is because it's being scraped off and redone. Protip, gently caress modern paints, linseed oil paint for planed surfaces)
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Jul 25, 2019 06:44
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His Divine Shadow posted:Assembled this last night, it feels a bit rickety to be honest. Considering doing something to beef up the construction. They really should have made it so you could screw it together or something. I recently started keeping compost its great. It's great to supplement a worm farm when they need time to digest and it's good fun to turn it every couple days and have something to do that isn't being on tv or dumb internet bs
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Jul 25, 2019 08:56
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This thing has a kind of aerator in the middle which means you don't need to turn it, just scoop out the finished compost from the bottom and keep feeding from above.
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Jul 25, 2019 10:41
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Where can I buy one? We're in the same boat where we can't give everything to the worms (and there's done stuff they shouldn't have that would still make good compost). I like the idea of a built-in aerator so it's a little more hands-off.
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Jul 25, 2019 12:49
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I don't really know where it's sold outside Finland. I bought it from a finnish webshop. And it's a budget model so we'll have to see how well it works. If we've had the money to burn we'd have bought the Biolan brand instead.
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Jul 25, 2019 13:18
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Mine is just a 50L plastic tub with holes, with some Coco Coir and scrub turkey mound inside as a starter I litterally chuck everything in it but chopped up nice and fine. Mower clippings, old toast, onions, meat scraps I don't think I'm getting the heat as high as I would like, but I think it's making compost. The volume keeps going down even though I'm adding stuff So learning experience And if it works out I wanna get a blue water barrel so turning is as easy as rolling it round the lawn a bit.
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Jul 25, 2019 22:38
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So, I browsed through the first page of this thread but not the others, so pardon my ignorance if this has already been linked somewhere. I recently found a good cheap plant merchant and bought a couple of exotic plants a couple of months ago. I was waiting for them for ages and they were finally delivered to my house the other day. They are all quite small so I believe that they must have planted them from seeds and had them growing in a nursery somewhere before shipping. Two of them are trees, one is an Indonesian lime tree, and the other is Bodhi tree (ficus religiosa, native to India and Nepal). I would like to make bonsai out of one of them eventually, but this will obviously take years. For now I'm worried about the bodhi tree, it seems to have lost a leaf or two during shipping, and only has a few left. I think plants don't like being moved so I'm hoping that it will bounce back. My question is, where can I find some info about these plants and how to grow them? I want to give them the right type of soil, know how sunny they like it, etc. I checked Wikipedia and now I'm out of ideas. Any tips?
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Jul 28, 2019 14:17
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I want to buy some milkweed plants in containers to cover my cement-covered patio with them. I am mainly trying to attract butterflies. The plants would stay in containers forever. How bad is it to keep these plants in containers forever? Should I buy any additional plants for symbiosis (to prevent a pest from killing off all the plants at once)? If it matters, I live in coastal SoCal, and the patio receives full sun.
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Jul 28, 2019 20:02
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Okay, so due to Reasons I'm housesitting potted miniature roses, and I have to have them indoors, and the only windows we got are west facing with very little direct sun. I know I know, everything already sounds like a disaster. I got a grow light that does every spectrum and I have it on twelve hours a day, I put about a half inch of fertilizer in the pots, and actually for about a week and a half everything was going great. Dark glossy leaves, beautiful blooms, bugs wanting in on that action.  But for the past two weeks more and more leaves have been growing yellow and brittle, with occasional spots, and lots of them are falling off. From what I could google, it seems like I've been overwatering, so other than spraying the leaves for moisture I haven't been watering since Wednesday.   It's hard to see in the natural light but with the flash the damage is super noticeable.      My question is...how much longer should I wait before starting to water again? The soil always feels kinda cool and damp to me so it's hard to judge that way. Does that actually seem like the right reason for this damage? Is there anything else I could be doing to help these poor needy mofos? I'm not so worried about the bigger two because they've been big and strong before now, but the littler one on the left (the one in the last pic) only has so many leaves to lose. 
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Jul 29, 2019 05:21
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BrianWilly posted:
That soil is still plenty wet. When the surface of the soil is all that lighter brown, that’s when I would be thinking about watering them.
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Jul 29, 2019 23:13
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theHUNGERian posted:I want to buy some milkweed plants in containers to cover my cement-covered patio with them. I am mainly trying to attract butterflies. The plants would stay in containers forever. Container culture has some challenges that in‐ground planting doesn’t, but almost anything can be grown in a container indefinitely. That’s especially true for “weeds”. The worse‐case scenario is something like a tree where you have to go in and prune the roots every few years or it’ll decline in health. A half barrel would be a great planter. I’d plant multiple species for variety, if nothing else. Use a good potting mix and stay on top of watering. Containers dry out faster than garden soil, but it’s all too easy to have the opposite problem of poor drainage and perpetual damp. In southern California, you might be watering every one to three days in the summer.
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Jul 29, 2019 23:59
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There are some varieties of milkweed which have a long taproot, they may do less well in a container. A lot of them propagate by rhizomes so you may need to cut back the rhizome to prevent it from going too crazy. You may already know this, but the big benefit of milkweed to Monarchs is that they are the exclusive host plant for the larva. The adult Monarchs will lay eggs on the leaves and then the caterpillars eat the leaves until they become big enough to undergo metamorphosis. It's best to plant a native milkweed in your area so the butterfly population can eat the right stuff. This website talks a little bit about it, and links to these maps which show the native range of different milkweed species. The Xerces site also has a list of seed vendors so you can try and track down native species. If you're just interested in giving different butterflies and bees some nectar plants, then you can grow pretty much anything you want (preferably native), there's nothing particularly special about milkweed as a nectar source as far as I can tell.
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Jul 30, 2019 00:55
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Eeyo posted:You may already know this, but the big benefit of milkweed to Monarchs is that they are the exclusive host plant for the larva. The adult Monarchs will lay eggs on the leaves and then the caterpillars eat the leaves until they become big enough to undergo metamorphosis. It's best to plant a native milkweed in your area so the butterfly population can eat the right stuff. This website talks a little bit about it, and links to these maps which show the native range of different milkweed species. The Xerces site also has a list of seed vendors so you can try and track down native species. I put in some A. tuberosa and A. syriaca this year and so far only a few blooms but different butterflies have already been visiting. Was it you who explained cold stratification to me? It worked out great, I started four indoors and they're all thriving since being moved outside.
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Jul 30, 2019 02:26
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Thanks for the input. I'll give the containers a try. I have a good track record of keeping certain plants alive, but I absolutely suck at removing weeds, which is why my landlord has (understandably) taken away my gardening privileges and hence the limitation to containers for now. Well, poo poo! The two plants I bought at the local independent garden store turned out to be the non-native species (Asclepias curassavica). Alright, no big deal, I'll pay more attention to the others I'll buy. It is literally Day 2 of ownership of said plants and I already found one dead Monarch caterpillar near the plant that a bird was eating.
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Jul 30, 2019 04:21
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A. curassavica is non‐native, but monarch caterpillars will still eat it. There is some concern that it is disrupting migratory habits, however. Here’s a document about some of the Asclepias spp. native to California, with basic information about each. There are native‐specific nurseries that are more likely to have what you want. Platystemon fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Jul 30, 2019 |
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Jul 30, 2019 04:43
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Its ok to use Tropical/Mexican milkweed, but you need to remember that in many places, it wont die back in the winter. All milkweed should be sheared to the ground in winter to stop the spread of a really nasty parasite that is doing a lot of harm to monarch populations. CA native milkweeds will usually do that on their own, but Tropical species like A. curassavica need to be cut down. The other issue is that species like curassavica spread like CRAZY when they poo poo out all of those fluffy seed pods. Even if you cut down your milkweed, wild populations of Tropical milkweed are hurting the populations. From personal experience, I think the best way to get monarchs is to plant a lot of the same milkweed. Otherwise they may not be able to detect your plants - the more you put in one spot, the easier it will be for them to find the plants.
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Jul 30, 2019 05:36
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vonnegutt posted:I put in some A. tuberosa and A. syriaca this year and so far only a few blooms but different butterflies have already been visiting. Was it you who explained cold stratification to me? It worked out great, I started four indoors and they're all thriving since being moved outside. It probably wasn't me, I failed pretty miserably with cold stratifying some partridge peas I was going to grow on my balcony so I'm no expert!
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Jul 30, 2019 06:10
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I need to cold treat some Arbutus unedo seeds I obtained. The latest research says that they don’t break dormancy like many seeds. What happens is that they germinate at less‐than‐room temperature. Keeping them at 15 °C works, but they can also be tricked by keeping them at 5 °C for sixty days, then moving them to twenty or twenty‐five degrees.  It’s easier for me to do that than it is to set up a minifridge just for their special temperature.
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Jul 30, 2019 06:41
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Platystemon posted:I need to cold treat some Arbutus unedo seeds I obtained. That's useful information. I've been trying to lay hands on Tetradium danelli (Beebee tree) seedlings for the last several years. They're supposed to flower in July/August and bees love them so they'd make a good bridge between the spring-early summer maple/blackberry and early fall fireweed/wildflower nectar flows in this area. I've found a couple of local suppliers of weird plants who at least know what they are but neither have been successful germinating their seeds. One person estimated a germination rate of 0.1%. I might buy some seeds off Amazon this fall and join in the hunt. It's surprising how much honey flow in some regions comes from trees, not flowers. Two boxwoods produce as much nectar as an acre of clover.
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Jul 30, 2019 17:48
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twoday posted:
What do you have them planted in? Can you post pics? edit: I don’t know poo poo about what bonsai treatment requires but a cursory search for ficus religiosa leads me to believe it is extremely easy to simply keep alive, just keep it in nice indirect light for awhile and not overwater it. it should bounce back, they sound tough as hell http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?kempercode=d409 Oil of Paris fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Aug 1, 2019 |
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Aug 1, 2019 02:45
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Oil of Paris posted:What do you have them planted in? Can you post pics? I have a ficus ginseng and the whole ficus family is hardy as gently caress, water and gentle Sunlight and mild fertilizer will have them very happy
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Aug 1, 2019 04:30
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I need some help with my white elephant gift! I am not at all experienced with succulents and I got this guy at an office Christmas party. It's a burro's tail, right? It's been doing dandy up until today, when I noticed these two leaves near the base had shriveled:   I sent a picture of it to my sister on the 28th and definitely didn't notice anything then. The only recent change for it is that I gave it two capsules of EarthPods Premium Cactus & Succulent Plant Food. Other than that, nothing's changed. I repotted it mid-June with Bonsai Jack Succulent and Cactus Soil Gritty Mix and have been watering it twice a week. The soil seems to drain perfectly well, I've been rotating it in the window daily and it only gets a strong hit of morning sun. I've been trying to spoil it pretty hard for the last eight months and having this happen all the sudden is spooking me. I don't know what the hell I'm doing and I really don't want to kill this poor thing. What can I do here?
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Aug 2, 2019 04:43
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Well, I can tell you that your plant is definitely not a burro's tail. The leaves on a burro's tail are much closer together, the stems barely stand up and any one leaf will snap off if you think about giving them even the slightest stink eye, in a dream. It looks a little leggy and might need a bigger pot. Try this. Pour out the decorative rocks as best as you can onto a towel (to make it easier to pour them back in), then grasp the root ball as best you can and lift it. How dense are the roots on the outside? Post a picture of that if possible. Move it to a sunnier window too. Finally, I wouldn't worry too much about the very bottom leaves wilting. You have tons of healthy growth up top that's surviving and branching to replace it. No one leaf lasts forever. For healthy plants, new growth will always be there to replace it. kid sinister fucked around with this message at 06:00 on Aug 2, 2019 |
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Aug 2, 2019 05:56
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Also if it was a burro's tail - and this applies to many other succulents - watering twice a week is probably too much. And it's hard to say for sure but overwatering can cause symptoms like that
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Aug 2, 2019 09:18
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In doing some cursory research about trimming leggy pothos (I usually just cut off the leafy segment, root it, and jam it back into the soil), I discovered that they like to climb. Here I'd thought it was the opposite: they trail! Now I'm considering putting a moss "totem" in one of my pothos pots to see if it'll take to the skies. Has anyone had experience/success with training a pothos upward?
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Aug 2, 2019 15:06
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Attempt at becoming leafy green self sufficient coming along well, Garden bed nearly done, I took some early compost but I hope it will finish itself off in the bed if I just leave it for a bit.  And I've taken some sambung cuttings and I hope they will propagate  I've also reorganised my plants because of a change in address. But I think it's looking well 
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Aug 3, 2019 06:47
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Das Boo posted:I need some help with my white elephant gift! It is a Corpuscularia lehmanii, or something very similar. It is definitely a bit leggy - they will happily take full sun if you can provide it (although if moving it into more light, give it a gradual transition.) Otherwise, it looks fine and healthy.
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Aug 3, 2019 13:21
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elgarbo posted:It is a Corpuscularia lehmanii, or something very similar. It is definitely a bit leggy - they will happily take full sun if you can provide it (although if moving it into more light, give it a gradual transition.) Otherwise, it looks fine and healthy. You're not worried about the rot in the top pic? I would be very worried about that, it looks like it's going to take the plant soon if it isnt already.
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Aug 3, 2019 15:18
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My moonflower has been blooming about every other day, it's great! It's not really fragrant, but it at least looks nice. I think since it only gets morning to afternoon sun and full shade in the late afternoon/evening it's started flowering earlier than it otherwise would have. My Zinnias are also flowering. What's the best time to cut them for a vase? Should I wait until they're fully opened, or will they finish if they're part way? 
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Aug 3, 2019 18:37
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