My neighbor had some succulent and it was growing in large blankets across her property. In fact little shoots of it would sometimes come up on my property. She encouraged me to take some and grow it. No warning was given to me. So I put a small bit in a part of my property and it grew over the summer to 18" square by 12" high. It was crowding the coral bells next to it so yesterday I went and cut it back. I may have gotten some of the milky white sap that came out of it on my hands. I knew that milky white latex sap is prolly not something I want on my skin so I tried to keep it off my skin. After I was done with my pruning I came inside, took the gloves off and washed my hands. Then I went and ate my subway sandwich. Two hours later at 10pm I got some slight burning around my mouth. It got worse 4/10 then worse 5-6/10. By 11:30 the pain was now at 8/10 and my entire face, cheeks, mouth area were on fire. I racked my brain of what it was thinking there was something on my sandwich or I had some sort of anaphalaxis to something I ate. Finally I retraced the night and googled "white sap" and found out that I had been exposed to Myrtle Spurge or Donkey Tail spurge.. "Euphorbia Myrsinitis." I drove to the ER and they didn't know much about it. They gave me Oxycodone and had no idea what to apply topically to help it. I went home and the burning was still persistent. I took one oxy and that helped bring the pain down so I could sleep. The second day(today) as I write this the burning pain as finally subsided to just a very fried/burnt feeling on my face. Spurge is highly toxic and should be avoided in all gardens If you have this plant on your property remove it by digging underneath it and lifting it into a lined trash can. Do not break the plant up because the milky sap is a natural latex resin that carries a cytotoxin. Cytotoxins are in venomous spiders and snakes. The sap burns the skin far worse than OC/Mace/Pepper spray and takes days to go away. I got Tecnu poison ivy extreme care and oxies from the doctor for the pain. This plant is no joke. It's killed dogs, cats and children. It should not be on your property! And oddly enough it's common around central oregon where I live. It's considered a noxious weed as it grows quickly and is difficult to remove. EXTREME WARNING:!!!!! The neurotoxin of these plants is a Resiniferatoxin or RTX, and is very, very, dangerous. It is an extremely irritant agent and is the most pungent/spicy substance in the world, much more than ANY chili pepper where the spicy agent is the Capsaicin of 16 million Heat Units. Indeed this oleoresin is so powerful that it destroys the nervous pain receptors for ever! It has more than 15 Billion Scoville Heat Units and is 1000 times hotter than Capsaicin. TREATMENT: If you get this on your skin use a dish soap to wash the affected area continuously for a minmum of 30 minutes. Try not to rub the area much, rather splash the dish soapy water on affected area. The idea here is to let the dish soap break down the oleoresin which is a medium for the cytotoxin. The oleoresin is most irritating to mucus membranes and the sensitive skin around the genitals, mouth, lips, ears, nose and of course eyes. If you get this in your eyes flush your eyes with tap water immediately several times then get to the ER as fast as possible. If treated quickly one can avoid permanent damage to the eye. On skin the pain usually goes away in 48-72 hours. The pain can be minor to excruciating depending on how much got on you and where the area was affected. Dispose of all clothing, gloves, that have the resin on it. Wash all tools, garden clippers, shovels, etc that may have come in contact with the resin in alcohol. This chemical is no joke! It is one of the most poisonous resins on the planet. Most people are highly allergic to it and can even get severe welts/blisters from contact with it. If exposed to your skin in any significant way seek emergency medical help. There is not much in the way of neutralizing the after effects of the pain. Once the resin is gone from the skin by using the sudsy dish soap method and you have cleansed the area many times, relief can only come from narcotics like vicodin or hydrocodone and then you just wait till the inflammation subsides. Some suggest that aloe vera, calamine, and benadryl help relieve the burning to a minor extent. PRECAUTIONS: If you insist on growing myrtle spurge, donkey tail spurge, Euphorbia Myrsinitis then never use a weedwhacker anywhere near it. Wear disposable latex gloves, eye protection and protective clothing when handling or trimming it. You should not have this plant anywhere remotely around pets or children or adults who are unaware of it's extreme toxicity. Some report that just brushing the plant with bare skin is enough to create a painful reaction while others will not react unless the abundant sap touches bare skin. Extreme caution needs to be maintaned so that you do not have secondary or even tertiary contact with the resin in it's milky state or dried state as you can even get burns from the sap if it's on clothing or on tools and then is transfered to the face, genitals or mucus membranes. It is highly advised to keep this plant out of the yard altogether!! Simply exposing the resin to the air in confined spaces like greenhouses can expel enough toxicity into the air so that it burns the mucus membranes and the lungs. These plants should never be cut or trimmed in a confined area. DEADLY CAUTION! Never ever burn poisony Ivy, Poison Oak, Stinging Nettles, Euphorbia or spurge. You can release the toxins into the air and destroy your lungs. People have died from trying to eradicate these plants by burning them!! Eradicate these plants by wearing protective gear and putting them into lined trash cans and carefully disposing of these plants so that others are not affected.

This is a timely topic. My husband and I are hoping to transform a weedy patch at the back of our new yard into a veggie garden. The area is shot through with horsetail. I've never fought this particular foe, but here's our plan--we'd appreciate any thoughts you all have to share... This spring, we scavenged cardboard from anyplace we could get it and laid out a layer or two of cardboard over the whole area, about 15 feet by 25 feet. The weeds were basically just trampled underneath, though we did spray some Roundup on the stray weeds poking out around the edges. (The horsetail did seem pretty responsive to the RU--no clue how far along the root system that went, though.) We then marked out where the beds and the paths would be. Where the paths are, we laid out a few inches of bark chips on top of the cardboard. Where the beds will be, we laid out black weedcloth, basically to hide the unsightly cardboard! Our intent is to leave the garden-to-be in this state until at least fall, maybe next spring. When we're ready to plant we'll layer several inches of Cedar Grove topsoil on the cardboard and plant directly in the topsoil. Hopefully by then all the weeds will have been smothered, and the cardboard will be weak enough that roots of our desired plants will be able to penetrate through. Seem like a reasonable plan? Anyone have any better suggestions? Much obliged! Angie Kantola

If you want to look at the Upton Grey gardens as a sort of living museum, the "unnatural" and "time-warp" comments are irrelevant. Many aspects of life as lived a hundred years ago would seem that way today: fashion, social conventions, etc. GJ herself would have been an anomaly, an independent thinker, and unmarried, though she did have the support of her well-off family. As a private garden for even the most enthusiastic gardener of moderate means, it's totally impractical. Could you imagine doing the tennis lawn maintenance she describes annually? In that sense, the time warp comment is apt. GJ was designing gardens at a time when household servants and gardeners were still affordable. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) it was around WWI that social changes in Britain made it impossible to find household help cheaply. I'm struck by the author's commitment to see the project through and admire her courage. She made a lot of mistakes (some of them over and over, inexplicably, like the pond debacle and the repeated planting of cannas too early) but you've got to give her a lot of credit for putting herself out there and risking embarrassment before the stream of gardening bigwigs who came to see her efforts in the early years. I personally don't think I could live with the restrictions she puts on herself regarding plant materials. Her strict adherence to the original plan and plant selections are the only way to give garden visitors a look at an authentic GJ garden, but I'm sure the designer would be using modern improved varieties if she were alive today. Especially with the thugs and disease prone roses. Yuck. Jo

DABT, as I have an interest in wild edible plants I have learned a few things. One important thing you can assume is ALL MUSHROOMS ARE POISONOUS. They are difficult to tell apart from the edible ones without a microscope. The other thing is, poisonous plants usually (but not always) taste bad, really bad, so if a kid starts to chew on one, he will soon spit it out. So, in the interest of keeping things simple so you can keep your kids safe, let me make some generalizations which will put you on the safe side of caution: - All white berries are poisonous. - Plants which are poisonous taste bitter. - Plants with white/milky sap are generally poisonous (except cow parsnip above, which has a clear sap) - All fungi and mushrooms are poisonous and some can kill with just one small taste. - Hemlock is poisonous (see Socrates) and looks just like wild carrot/Queen Anne's Lace. You can get a book on Edible Wild Plants. Mine shows me what similar but poisonous plants look like. So it shows me wild carrot, and shows me hemlock also, and tells me the differences, which are very subtle indeed. Many field guides to plants or wild flowers also tell you which ones are poisonous. Post the phone number to your poison control center on your fridge. Make sure it is in a handy place where kids can't pull it down and lose it. One thing I learned as a parent is kids eat all kinds of things, like coins, legos, small beads, gum, and apple seeds (which contain cyanide compounds), yet they have no ill effects for the most part. And they don't make "chink chink" sounds when they walk around from all the coins, they don't pass a whole spaceship in the toilet from all the lego pieces they ate, and an apple tree doesn't grow in their stomach. Be vigilent but don't make yourself crazy.