Three gardening related PSAs

[tarheels]

Or "How I've Spent the Last 48 Hours"


1) If you didn't know, garden centers often sell plants that are considered invasive and/or a serious threat to the local floral and fauna.  A plant has to reach kudzu epidemic levels before anything's really done to stop the sale of it, so your job as a plant shopper is to always google before buying new plants you aren't familiar with.  You can innocently make major work for yourself or harm local species, simply bc a plant distributer counted on you being ignorant of a plant's true nature.

2) Mexican petunia is an invasive weed and a giant pain in the ass.  (Zone 7 and warmer)  There are apparently one or two varieties that won't take over your yard like kudzu, but let's just play it safe and not plant the thing at all, mkay?  Here's a very innocent looking picture of it so you can get a good look at it.  This plant is for sale right now here at Lowe's, HD, and WM - I saw it with my own eyes.



3) Should you plant an invasive plant, either informed or ignorant of its true nature, when it takes over four neighbors' yards and when you see your 91 year old neighbor out with an AXE hacking it off at the roots to kill the damn nuisance plant you introduced to the neighborhood, it's your job to get it the hell under control to avoid winning the lifetime award "The Suckiest Neighbor Of All Time."



Yes, ladies, I've spent the past 2 days, 7 hours a day, helping my 91 year old grandfather control his asshole neighbor's Mexican petunia.  It had formed chest-high banks 6 ft deep on OUR side of the line.  It's four feet deep on his side of the line.  Seriously, 10 ft of Mexican petunia up to your chest.  It's like battling bamboo.  And it makes me want to egg the neighbor's house.

If my nestie senses ever start tingling and I get the feeling that any of you have planted Mexican petunia, I'll drive to your home and give you one of these:



Thank you.  That is all.  You may now return to your appropriately informed gardening

[mrs.jacinthe]

Egads. We have that in the yard (but did NOT plant it). It's like the wild blackberries around here. PITA. I feel your pain.

[Deleted]

I am glad I live in area where everything basically freezes off and dies except for pine trees after September.
I am also grateful I know where to buy weed killer (and use it effectively!) that will stop anything dead in it's tracks. Not that pansy-a$$ watered down spray bottle Roundup they peddle at HD probably next to the Mexian Petunia.



We have wild marijuana here. Fun times. We had to have the county come out and inspect/take care of it/be sure we didn't plant it/sell it for profit.

Dudes, if I was selling that much weed out back of the barn do you think I'd still be milking the cows in the barn?

[mrs.jacinthe]

Jan 16, 2013 20:29:25 GMT -5 @justdairy said:

We have wild marijuana here. Fun times. We had to have the county come out and inspect/take care of it/be sure we didn't plant it/sell it for profit. 

Dudes, if I was selling that much weed out back of the barn do you think I'd still be milking the cows in the barn?

Out of curiosity ... would grazing cows eat marijuana plants?  If so ... are they affected by the THC?  I'm imagining what a "high" cow would look like and in my mind, it's pretty funny.

[Deleted]

Jan 16, 2013 20:39:28 GMT -5 mrs.jacinthe said:

Jan 16, 2013 20:29:25 GMT -5 @justdairy said:

We have wild marijuana here. Fun times. We had to have the county come out and inspect/take care of it/be sure we didn't plant it/sell it for profit. 

Dudes, if I was selling that much weed out back of the barn do you think I'd still be milking the cows in the barn?

Out of curiosity ... would grazing cows eat marijuana plants?  If so ... are they affected by the THC?  I'm imagining what a "high" cow would look like and in my mind, it's pretty funny.



There have actually been studies done on this and in fact trace amounts of marijuana have been found in pasture cows. How it affects them I don't know..but I can only imagine.

On our farm I don't know. It's right behind the barn behind a fence where they can't get to it and aren't pastured there. We don't have it in our pasture but we plant oats as a cover crop with a grass mix on our little bit of pasture to keep the invasive weeds done. There are some other invasive weeds that will make cows sick if not kill them so we try to avoid that if possible.

I do have a couple psycho cows that I can only guess as to what they're eating in the daily ration...lol.

[TBM]

The people behind us planted Morning Glory when they moved in. 17 years later, we (and other neighbors)are still battling it.

On the other hand, we seem to be the people who are attracted to plants that spread like wildfire, and thankfully, our neighbor next door is very tolerant. He actually likes the weird Australian vine with the blackish purple flowers as much as I did. We've managed to get it under control better than we have the morning glory.

[thatgirl2478]

OMG, I found this really pretty plant - a chameleon plant (variegated with white/pink/green/yellow shades) and put it in my yard... shortly there after (2wks tops) I discovered it was invasive and dug it out. I'm STILL finding new bits of it popping up.

[Deleted]

This thread is hilarious! Our problem is English Ivy. I hate the stuff. A previous owner of our house decided that the solution for maintenance free landscaping was to plant ivy everywhere. And of course it spread. It took us a year to get the worst of it pulled up out of the ground. The stuff would.not.die. We still have a coupe trees that have ivy on them. We either need to kill the ivy or get rid of the tree before it falls on somebody's house.

[FoxInFiji]

Good post TH&R. I blame the garden centers for even introducing such a plant to the area. As much I would hope people would be smart enough to do their own research that will never happen. So the garden centers shouldn't be carrying it in the first place. Around here it's not really the true garden centers is the big box seasonal "garden centers" like HD, Menard's, Shopko, and Costco who are selling the worst plants. Our true garden centers know better but they still carry all kinds of plants that aren't hardy for the area. People not doing their research again buy them and then think they are bad gardeners the following year when the perennial didn't survive the winter. It really discourages people from getting into gardening which is a shame.

[amblor]

Jan 17, 2013 9:51:54 GMT -5 downtonali said:

This thread is hilarious! Our problem is English Ivy. I hate the stuff. A previous owner of our house decided that the solution for maintenance free landscaping was to plant ivy everywhere. And of course it spread. It took us a year to get the worst of it pulled up out of the ground. The stuff would.not.die. We still have a coupe trees that have ivy on them. We either need to kill the ivy or get rid of the tree before it falls on somebody's house.

We have this too! It grows in a corner of our house and we rip it all out at least four times a summer and it keeps coming back.

[sjh722]

Jan 16, 2013 20:29:25 GMT -5 @justdairy said:

We have wild marijuana here. Fun times. We had to have the county come out and inspect/take care of it/be sure we didn't plant it/sell it for profit.

Dudes, if I was selling that much weed out back of the barn do you think I'd still be milking the cows in the barn?

Ha, same. It's legend in H's fam about how he was 10 or 11, excited to try the new riding mower and so mowed brush that hadn't been mowed in years, and verrrry carefully mowed around a "sapling" in the front yard...then the cops showed up and blocked his brother and dad into the driveway while they were trying to go to work and questioned them all about their drug operation. LOL!

And we're zone 5, so no need to go ninja on mexican petunias here, T&R!

[treedimensional]

I have issues with BigBox garden centers. They sell crap as a general practice. Like the 5 most common trees, which obviously, we do not need any more of. Our city is 33% maple- which is effing ridiculous and would never happen naturally.
Human create 100% of these bioecology problems. Maybe we should work on preventing the spread of humans.

[spankswife]

Our previous ownesr planted it. We pull it out, it grows back. sigh. Too bad I can;t get the plants I want to do that

[adhdfashion]

Sometimes living in Washington rocks.