Weekly Gardening Thread --- Happy Mother's Day

Garden Girl's Monthly Gardening Column | May 2007 | Garden Girl

[trisham]

This morning Mr. Trisham and I saw film of the flooding down your way. We drove through the DelMarVa peninsula on our last trip to Florida. Lovely place.

Sorry to hear of the bad weather!

[Gabz]

While not dollarweed specific (I’ve never even heard of it) all the weed killing tonics Jerry Baker has in his book include vinegar, but with each recipe and directions he warns not to get any on any plants you don’t wish to kill.

[Gabz]

We know it’s really bad when even FNC is talking about the little coastal towns we know so well in Delaware.

I know we need rain, but as I was discussing with a farmer buddy yesterday, we do not need ALL of the rain for the ENTIRE growing season in one week!!!

[Red Badger]

They don't have dollarweed in Virginny? Perhaps it goes by a different "denomination"........

[Red Badger]

What about rattlesnake weed? It’s just as bad, maybe even worse than dollarweed.......

[Tijeras_Slim]

Put out the first plants in “Fort Gopher” yesterday. They seem to like being out of the wind. Not past the average “last frost” date, but what the heck.

Fort Gopher is our definitive answer to the vermin and weather problems of trying to garden at 7500’ in New Mexico. A 16x16 5 foot picket enclosure, floored with 1/4” wire mesh and weed barrier cloth, and poly stocktanks for containers.

[trisham]

Unfortunately, the system that's giving you too much rain, is probably going south of us. We could use some rain here. I was planning to water today, but it's so windy I'm afraid of being hit by falling branches.

We've already had wildfires here, which is very unusual for this time of year.

[Gabz]

I didn’t know it had a name!!! We’ve got it!

[Gabz]

Any gopher that gets into that fort deserves a medal for perseverence!!!!!

[Gabz]

Yikes, wildfires?

We’ve had some pretty wicked winds here as well. They haven’t labelled it as such, but this has really been behaving like a stalled nor’easter.

[CJ Wolf]

looks like my slip at port tobacco this weekend.

[trisham]

We have very tall trees on our property. When the wind gusts, they can whip back and forth and “throw” branches, which end up slamming into the ground by their tips. I can only imagine being speared by one of them. I often find what appears to be a small tree, and is actually a branch that came down in the last storm.

[Red Badger]

It’s called “dollarweed” because of the round leaves bing about the size of a silver dollar, but here in the deep south it can be as big as a saucer.........

[Red_Devil 232]

When the FNC weather person was showing the risk areas for bad thunder storms and tornadoes for this past weekend and it included central Mississippi I knew I was going to lose sleep. Having been through one F2 tornado, I dread any kind of bad weather.

I was hoping for a little heavy rain and even covered a few very small cayenne pepper plants, I had just transplanted, with clay pots so they would not get damaged and held off watering the garden. The storms stayed north of us and not a drop of rain here!

[tubebender]

I heard on a gardening radio show that vinegar is a good weed killer. They said to use 10% but I don’t know if that is with water or what they were talking about. I am going to try it on wild onion which Roundup does not touch. I plan to use it straight from the bottle...

[gardengirl]

I hear you! Or maybe I could if it would stop raining/blowing long enough! Yest eve we had hail, high winds, scattered tornadoes.....

The nor’easter that swept in Sat is blowing a gale. No wonder the water is so high your way! Stay dry!

[gardengirl]

I hear you! Or maybe I could if it would stop raining/blowing long enough! Yest eve we had hail, high winds, scattered tornadoes.....

The nor’easter that swept in Sat is blowing a gale. No wonder the water is so high your way! Stay dry!

[Red Badger]

Vinegar from the grocery store is %5 acid concentration. I used two gallon of it on my weeds this weekend. I dunno where to get 10% concentration. It’s also called “acetic acid”..........

[Gabz]

They said to use 10% but I don’t know if that is with water or what they were talking about.

It has to do with the acidic content of the vinegar. Distilled white vinegar is 10%.

Here are 2 tonics from Jerry BAker -- both have the warning to not get them on plants you want to keep and this first one warns not to pour it on soil you plan to garden one.

Wonderful Weed Killer

1 gal vinegar
1 cup table salt
1 tbsp diswashing liquid

Mix ingredients in a bucket until salt desolves. Pour solution along cracks to kill weeks between bricks or stones in walkways.

All Purpose Weed Killer

5tbsp of vinegar
2 tbsp of table salt
1 qt water

Bring water to a boil then add vinegar and salt. Wile mixture is still hot, pour it directly on the weeds, then wave good-bye.

Here's one for the really stubborn weeds.

Wild Weed Wipeout Tonic

1 tbsp gin
1 tbsp white vinegar
1 tbsp baby shampoo
1 qt of warm water

Mix these ingredients in a bucket, then pour tonic into a hand held sprayer. Drench each week to the point of run-offm taking care not to get any spray on the surrounding plants. For stubborn weeds, use apple cider vinegar instead of white vinegar.

[Gabz]

I’m so tired of the wind and rain, really! My parsley was gorgeous and i was going to harvest it tomorrow, but now it is so beaten and blown down I don’t know what I ‘m going to do.