GardenArtist Posted September 2015
Gardening as therapy.
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Stacey, does your rhubarb plant not die back in the winter there?? Old shoots will get kind of tough, look for the new growth. My rhubarb is just peaking up from the ground a few inches... I think the eastern exposure has set it back a little.
Mmmmm, rhubarb sauce, even better rhubarb pie!!
Stacey, I'm wondering if your rhubarb is edible or ornamental. It seems to be pretty big for an edible rhubarb, unless you're in the deep south and it never died back overwinter. In SE Michigan, it always dies back completely over winter.
An episode of Victory Garden featured some of the ornamental rhubarbs; it was the first I knew that there were ornamental varieties.
If you google ornamental rhubarb, then google Victoria rhubarb, you'll see some of the differences between the ornamental and the edible (we've always grown the Victoria edible variety).
And totally off topic, but large leaves and ornamentals just brought to mind those beautiful and massive Victorian water lilies, some about 6' in diameter. I find it hard to believe they're strong enough to support people, but photos show children sitting and standing on them.
CWillie, I like the idea of intermingling veggies with flowers and have done it for years. I haven't mastered the timing yet, but ideally the plants would produce fruit and mature as the flowers are also starting to bloom, and would have died back when the flowers begin to become very full. That's "ideally."
If I was my neighbor, I might get jealous of the yard next door, where the husband has hand-trimmed the edging of dripping with blooms ice plant, the bougainvillea has started to grow; the other plants discarded from neighbors have been renewed and have tall desert blooms in a beautiful magenta color; down the driveway is one rose bush blooming several pink roses; across the front a rosemary bush with little blue flowers transitions from a country garden appearance with Vinca, as one passes by the ornamental apple tree to the opposite side garden full of yellow blooms of succulents and a few cactus in pots complimenting that neighbor's choice of cactus-only landscaping. This is gardening success-yard of the month award goes to, ME. lol.
It was spring weeds.
and theyre so beautiful canned up .
the more i provide for myself the less im at the mercy of butt-hole customers . they count on you being desperate . in 18 yrs , i could write a book about human phsycology probably . itd be a pretty crappy book tho . no capitalization lots of misspelling and profanity .
i doubt if ID even buy a copy .
A neighbor makes huge round paver stones by hand, and those appear throughout his yard. I like the beach motifs, the little sailboats or seashells.
Occasionally, a paver is presented as a gift and ends up in someone else's yard
We are going to have to find a safe landscaping solution so seniors won't fall in our driveway, especially me. Maybe crushed rock, surrounding a paver.
he sez a lot if s*it that aint so but this tidbit makes sense and i plan to try it .
A neighbor gave the plant to me when they moved. Six blooms!
My garden is blessed!
Keep good air circulation around your plans. Thin your plants like lettuces so that they are not a dense patch but rather individual plants. Avoid anything that gives them a place to hide, any kind of mulch will just make them happy.
While they wouldn't like the stones I think they would be able to hide under the fabric.
They will be most active early in the morning and on drizzly days, so if you want to go organic you can pick them off and drop them into a bucket of soapy salty water.
People put out beer traps for them to drown in, but I would rather drink the beer. I have heard of surrounding plants with sharp sand will discourage them.
I have found the only thing that really works is commercial slug bait, it is safe for pets and wildlife so no worried there.
Snails have soft underbellies so anything that scratches or causes them discomfort can be a deterrent. But I've used landscape stone, which is easier to work with than gravel, and it gets mixed in with the soil if you turn it to plant, or you have to pull all the gravel/stone away to turn the soil. And weeds definitely grow through it.
After gardening for about 60 years, I don't use anything but biodegradable substances - leaves, dead plants, etc. Nothing artificial except the bricks and patio stones goes into my garden.
At any rate, I think the mulch might work if the chunks are sharp enough. If they're weathered, they might have lost that sharpness though.
You might also be aware that gardeners don't agree on whether or not mulch depletes soil of nitrogen. One year I had some trees cut down around spring (I think) and gradually spread the mulch over the garden, until I was forced to spread it all quickly because code enforcement decided it was "blight."
Leaves of daylilies, irises, other perennials and I believe (if I recall correctly) even some weeds, turned yellow, a sign of nitrogen depletion. So I began raking all the mulch off again. I don't even recall what I did with it - maybe piled it on top of some weeds.
You could try some of the mulch on top of the massive piles (wow, I'm envious of all your space!) as it would have been exposed and be less likely to deplete nitrogen, but I'd watch the surrounding plants carefully.
The gardeners I know generally use beer to get rid of slugs, but as I recall I think there were some other methods that involved use of sharp objects as well. Let me search my gardening forum and see what I can find.
1 slug utopia, lots of nooks and crannies to hide in,you would think holding in moisture would be a good thing but not if you have lots of slugs.
2 fresh wood chips are not going to be good for your plants, trust me I know
3 know your soil PH before you add in a lot of acidic pine needles and bark
How fine is the mesh in your fence? If there is food to be found the toads will find a way in on their own I think, but adding a couple and providing a shelter for them couldn't hurt, but if they don't like it there they won't hang around.
i decided the 32 gallon plastic wine barrel is as much of a kitchen / dining room / food preparation item as any other in the house so i washed it , inverted it and left it in the nook where it operates . it dont take a genius to figure out what its purpose is .
I ordered more irises today from Brecks. Spring hills Nursery was already sold out...can you believe that and it is only April. I guess if I want to get the purple color I want, I will have to order a year or more in advance. Who knew so many want purple irises.
Hope things are better for you now.