Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Sunday, April 8. 2018

Garden Cancers to avoid

Mints will invade everything. My Mom would just let it loose in a meadow. When the meadow was mowed, wow. Great smell. When you needed some for lemonade, it was out there.


Same goes for beautiful flowering vines like Trumpet Vine and Wisteria. Their desires to spread and metastasize via underground roots are relentless and close to impossible to prevent. My advice is not to plant them anywhere they cannot be mowed around.


Bamboo. Unless you have a good local Panda population, you will be sorry you even planted it. Agent Orange is one approach.


What sorts of garden plants have you had difficulty controlling?


Posted by Bird Dog in Gardens, Plants, etc. at 15:23 | Comments (32) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Morning glory.
#1 fjord on 2015-08-12 15:52 (Reply)
Not true at all about bamboo. All you need to do is plant a clumping variety instead of a runner and its easy to keep in check. It's too beautiful to not have in your yard.
#2 FRP on 2015-08-12 16:07 (Reply)
Agreed. Our neighbors have several clumps more than 10 years old, still clumping and confined. Very nice stuff. But do watch out for the spreading kind, which will eat the world.
#2.1 Texan99 on 2015-08-14 15:20 (Reply)
All chump change compared to kudzu, which I live close enough to to feel threatened.
#3 BillH on 2015-08-12 16:27 (Reply)
We have maybe a quarter acre patch of chocolate mint . Mama cuts and brides it into long, thick ropes . There's actually a market for it if you work the harvest .
#4 La on 2015-08-12 17:10 (Reply)
WE have bamboo in pots with root block at bottom of pots.
possible to put them in ground, provided use root block designed for bamboo (not permeable)
#5 ns on 2015-08-12 18:32 (Reply)
Blackberry is nasty stuff--best trimmed with a flamethrower.
#6 Sam L. on 2015-08-12 19:10 (Reply)
I agree!
I have some growing in my pickup truck bed!
#6.1 fjord on 2015-08-12 19:38 (Reply)
When we lived in England it seemed to us that if there was one house called "Wisteria Lodge", there must have been a thousand of them!

The first thing people would almost always say when we admired their wisteria boughs was: you have to be ruthless or they'll own the place.
#7 JJM on 2015-08-12 20:12 (Reply)
I deliberately planted a trumpet vine to attract hummngbirds. But I planted in a place that makes it very hard to spread, and I don't have to mow around it. It also provides a canopy for a pergola. Ten years in it's looking pretty good.
#8 JorgXMcKie on 2015-08-12 22:18 (Reply)
I made the mistake of planting a trumpet vine next to our deck and it is too low to get under to deal with weeds and such. Although I took out the trumpet vine, I have had to keep the deck covered with tarps now for 3-4 years due to the runners from the trumpet vine. Impossible to kill. They are beautiful for sure can be a real problem in the wrong place.
#9 DCS on 2015-08-13 12:57 (Reply)
The back of my yard is a woody meadow and infested with ticks. I planted mint as a tick repellent. I also use cedar mulch. It is behind the lawn area and I rather have mint than ticks.
#10 Daph'sMoe on 2015-08-13 17:29 (Reply)
If your situation allows it, get some game fowl they will get rid of the ticks.
#10.1 RL on 2018-04-08 16:30 (Reply)
Who knew Lupines were invasive? They're pretty though.
#10.2 LP on 2018-04-08 17:01 (Reply)
A lot of things will spread here in South Texas if they get a water supply (such as passion flower, coral vine, Tahitian squash (amazing production and spread, kind of like a butternut)). Not too many get out of hand once they're beyond the reach of a hose, one exception being dodder vine.
#11 Texan99 on 2015-08-14 15:23 (Reply)
A little bamboo forest would be cool! Can pandas live in Northern Michigan?
#12 SteveS on 2015-08-14 18:49 (Reply)
Second the morning glory complaint. Not really going wild or anything, but I planted catnip in the garden, now it is coming up all over the place downwind from the original planting. Never knew it is a perennial. Neighborhood cats like me.
#13 Oldblood on 2018-04-08 15:34 (Reply)
Plume Poppy.
#14 Dale on 2018-04-08 15:40 (Reply)
Lesser Celandine. Given to me as Marsh Marigold by a trained gardener who had no clue. Horrible, horrible stuff. Blooming like mad right now and all over the place.
#15 Missy on 2018-04-08 15:54 (Reply)
Looked it up. Never knew it's name butthought it looked so pretty down in the creek beds when would drive by, then it started down by my creek, now it has about a third of my back yard. Trimec time.
#15.1 Oldblood on 2018-04-08 16:45 (Reply)
This bugger has many names - Houttuynia cordata, also known as fish mint, fish leaf, lizard tail, chameleon plant, heart leaf, Ja mardoh, fish wort, or bishop's weed. Multiple applications of double strength Round Up Par III, etc - 3 weeks later it's back.
#16 Ted Bopp on 2018-04-08 17:25 (Reply)
Jerusalem Artichoke. Planted it once, regretted it immediately. It was growing out of the wall. Took a few seasons of finding every tuber to eradicate.
#17 Cathy J on 2018-04-08 19:04 (Reply)
Bishop’s weed.
Japanese bamboo.
#18 Capecodder on 2018-04-08 20:24 (Reply)
Siberian elm. Hideously invasive across New Mexico. And it's a BIG fast-growing tree.
#19 Barbara on 2018-04-08 23:00 (Reply)
Obviously conditions are different here in the UK, but I'll second Cathy J's comment on Jerusalem Artichoke. We planted it in a vegetable garden and had to spend years eradicating it.

Much of the UK is covered with invasive rhododendrons-very beautiful but they do squeeze out native species badly.

Japanese knotwood (Fallopia japonica, brought in as an ornamental) is a nightmare-it spreads everywhere and grows through 3ft of concrete. It won't be killed by just about anything. Glyphosate (Roundup) won't do it and neither will a flamethrower. For several years you couldn't get a mortgage on a property if Japanese Knotweed was present!
#20 Clovis Sangrail on 2018-04-09 04:07 (Reply)
Anemone. Aka Windflower in New England. Should be called Willflower. Has a will of its own.
#21 Annie on 2018-04-09 07:29 (Reply)
I can't help myself. I had an heirloom variety of wisteria (that took over the backyard of an old former home) which I transplanted to my new home (where it has now taken over my front post light). The beauty and fragrance is worth the occasional trim. It blooms throughout the spring and summer.
#22 Aggie on 2018-04-09 09:07 (Reply)
Here in the high desert with 14" of annual rainfall, mint and trumpet vine are valuable and easily controlled hardy perennials. It's the myrtle spurge and tree of heaven that we have to worry about.
#23 CapitalistRoader on 2018-04-09 10:24 (Reply)
Hops. The only plant I've encountered that can compare with kudzu. They send out underground runners that go long distances, grow at a rate you can almost watch and come back stronger every year. The previous owners of our current home planted them along both fence lines. They must have really hated the neighbors.
#24 Outdoorspro (former) on 2018-04-09 11:28 (Reply)
Nandina ....someone planted it around this house and it never dies..
#25 Johnboy on 2018-04-09 13:23 (Reply)
Lily of the Valley. It has taken over a three by ten foot area and keeps popping up wherever it can.
#26 Baillie (Link) on 2018-04-09 17:00 (Reply)
Yucca gets my vote. I moved into a house several years ago that had a stand of it by the front sidewalk. I sheared it, covered it, burned it, gasolined it, salted it, and drowned it in Round Up. It took three years but I thought I'd beaten it. Four years went by and I was gloriously yucca free. It came back last year.
#27 Janet S. on 2018-04-11 12:58 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.