Anyone into gardening here?

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hdsomeday said:
Thanks. It actually looks like page 13, Annual Bluegrass. It is not annual however since it started in a few spots a couple of years ago and has spread to numerous circles so far. Do I have to dig it out or can I carefully use Roundup?
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Annual Bluegrass is pretty easy to identify compared to the others. It has pretty narrow blades and produces a fair bit of seed at low heights. The leaf tips have a slight boat shape to them like the tip of a canoe.

The cool thing about how some of these plants adapt to mowing is that they will not only change their growth habit to grow low and wide, but they will also produce seed at those lower heights, kinda like dandelions.

I'm generally biased against things like Roundup for homeowner use unless it's a full blown infestation and then in those situations I just remove the top layer and re-sod. I prefer physical labour to remove smaller infestations of weeds like that and then focusing my attention on getting the soil right and making sure I'm overseeding with the right species of grass for the site conditions (light, water, soil fertility, etc.). I guess it just depends on your available time, personal preferences and so on. When I first got into the industry I used Round-up a fair bit for weed control and then as I learned more I realized that I could approach weed control from a different way - but it takes more time, effort and knowledge.
 
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Great success….tree got here…hole dug….will decide on final position in the morning.

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Time for rest.
 
GreyGhost said:
Good job getting it dug out and a home for it in the same day. How big is hole compared to root ball? Hole seems small.
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The hole is small as tree is not in it yet.

Root ball is small, maybe 2-3ft at its widest.

Tree is by the house as dad is coming tomorrow and I don’t want him working solo so I’m Work From Cottage tomorrow.
 
Plan on planting ~10 pines at the front of our property. Luckily I'm surrounded by a pine forest so I'll pull some that are ~3-5ft tall and move them to the front. Hopefully I can skillfully dig them up without killing them.
 
GreyGhost said:
I expect it will be far more upset by the transplantation than the time out of the ground. Try to take the biggest ball you can move. If you are transporting it in the wind, try to cover the canopy so it doesn't get battered.

Digging trees up sucks. Good luck. I dug up one cedar that came with my house. They planted it too close to a walkway and it blocked it so I cut it down and then dug up the root ball. Wtf. The root ball was surrounded by a cage of chainlink fence. Presumably that was from the nursery to allow the installer to move it easily via machine. Giant prick when in the ground though. Really puts a hurting on saws. I ended up using an axe for most of the roots. Took me almost a day to make that tree go away.
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The nursery left the wire basket on our new maple. They said it was to make it easier if they had to replace the tree.
 
nobbie48 said:
The nursery left the wire basket on our new maple. They said it was to make it easier if they had to replace the tree.
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I believe that is the primary reason for these baskets, and it makes it easier to transport the trees.

They are suppose to rot away or decompose over time.
 
oioioi said:
I believe that is the primary reason for these baskets, and it makes it easier to transport the trees.

They are suppose to rot away or decompose over time.
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Burlap decomposes yes, but wire baskets no.

I was always taught to remove the wire baskets. One company I worked for would fold down the sides of the wire so that the upper half of the basket was exposed.

The thought was that since the majority of the roots are in the upper 18” of soil, this should be fine.

If I’m planting a tree, I’m removing that wire basket unless the root ball is so fragile and disturbed that it will completely break apart. Then I’ll just fold the wire back.

I’d never leave the basket fully wrapped.
 
Hostas. I have a lot 50 hostas around my place in Timmins, had them for a decade and they pop by may 1st reliably. This year nothing. All the other perennials are up and going… not a shoot from a single hosts.

Any thoughts?
 
Mad Mike said:
Hostas. I have a lot 50 hostas around my place in Timmins, had them for a decade and they pop by may 1st reliably. This year nothing. All the other perennials are up and going… not a shoot from a single hosts.

Any thoughts?
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Ours were very late this year. I think the ground was colder as spring temps were cooler. I’d give it another week. Unusual that all would die out at the same time. These grow like weeds.
 
I just learned that apparently you can eat hosta shoots-check first obviously but I saw something about sautéed hosta shoots on a gardening forum.

I have a flower bed that’s over run with goat weed (gout weed?). I pull it out, try to get as many roots as I can, but it just comes back. Are there any secret methods to getting rid of this? I don’t want to have to dig up the entire flower bed.
 
JC99 said:
I just learned that apparently you can eat hosta shoots-check first obviously but I saw something about sautéed hosta shoots on a gardening forum.

I have a flower bed that’s over run with goat weed (gout weed?). I pull it out, try to get as many roots as I can, but it just comes back. Are there any secret methods to getting rid of this? I don’t want to have to dig up the entire flower bed.
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It's gout weed and highly invasive. It prefers partially shady areas and spreads very aggressively from it's underground system (rhizomes). If you have it in a garden with other plants, it will always be there, despite your pulling of the roots, since you won't be able to get them all from the portions embedded in the neighbouring plant root systems.. If it's the only plant in a garden bed, then I would take the time and pull it all out, getting as much of the root system as you can. It's not a plant you can just pull the tops off, because when you do that a signal is sent to the rhizomes that they should produce more shoots (related to apical dominance). So sometimes if you pull one top portion, two new shoots will come from underground.

I've had it in a garden bed and was able to keep it under control, but only by staying on top of it for a couple seasons and then the root system was starved enough that it never came back. But initially it required a slow and methodical weeding, including pulling all the roots I could find.
 
shanekingsley said:
It's gout weed and highly invasive. It prefers partially shady areas and spreads very aggressively from it's underground system (rhizomes). If you have it in a garden with other plants, it will always be there, despite your pulling of the roots, since you won't be able to get them all from the portions embedded in the neighbouring plant root systems.. If it's the only plant in a garden bed, then I would take the time and pull it all out, getting as much of the root system as you can. It's not a plant you can just pull the tops off, because when you do that a signal is sent to the rhizomes that they should produce more shoots (related to apical dominance). So sometimes if you pull one top portion, two new shoots will come from underground.

I've had it in a garden bed and was able to keep it under control, but only by staying on top of it for a couple seasons and then the root system was starved enough that it never came back. But initially it required a slow and methodical weeding, including pulling all the roots I could find.
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Thanks for that. It looks like I have a mission this summer to kill the thing. I’m trying to spend about 20 minutes every day doing weeding in the flower beds and between that and heavy mulching most issues are under control except this one.
 
I've had this weed for the last couple of years and so hard to get the complete root out. Tough stuff, I think it is common blue violet.

Hideous plant and grows even in bare clay.
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