Stitz, you have mentioned orchids in conversations again. Do people say?"Don't mind him, he's from Baltimore". The great orchid growers all have one thing in common. They spend hours and hours every day talking to their orchids. I'm not a great orchid grower but i do spend hours talking to them every day. Switch that love to the sun or the moon or major planets and you have astronomers in ancient times watching and wondering. In another thread, there is a discussion about breeding dogs. You feed the dogs name into a computer or some such and it says that it will be an OK parent. My prediction in the brave new world is that boy will find girl and before love finds a way, they will have to have their genome checked by a computer. How Romantic!. Have to ask my son about Methane seeping from the sea floor and if this is a terrrible thing. I imagine Methane is seeping up all over the place from coal seams and oil fields? The word seeping doesn't apply to the Methane produced by cows and sheep and i believe the figure for Australia is that 11% of the carbon emissions comes from agriculture. Must ask about what happen to Methane once it is in the atmosphere. Does it just stay there or does something break it down. There is a problem with a lot of those "Science" shows on TV. Many of them are light on Science and heavy with padding. Watched the Doomsday thing and wonder about people who get religion in a strong way. They are so certain about everything. Perhaps that is better than being a fuzzy thinker like me.

well, we did have a very mild winter then right out of the blue, a completely brutal 2 week freeze - you know, one of those coldest in 100 years record breakers (-18C. and probably laughable up there in the far north but for the UK....) Many plants have been acting oddly for me this year so I will give DdG a stay of execution for another year but any more of this horrible behaviour and it is compost. I am not a getting rid sort of gardener (too mean, too cheap) and a plant has to be seriously diseased or utterly grim before it gets the chop but definately, this is a contender for the post hole shovel.

I did a massive weeding session this past Sunday and hated it. Mulch does help but sometimes it doesn't. If the weeds really want the area it doesn't matter how thickly you mulch, they will find a way. I also don't buy that line of "weeds only like poor soil"...that's BS too...some of the best soil I have (teeming and teeming with earthworms) is FULL of weeds. The only weed I have truly declared war on is the dreaded Dollar Weed. I picked it up from an aunt that lived in Myrtle Beach (where it is rampant) when she moved to Lake Wateree and then gave me some of her transplanted plants. I have JUST about got it eradicated (through a "scorched earth" method) but I still see little shoots pop up here and there. I have to remain vigilant because this stuff is really really bad stuff. Funny, because on my lunchtime jog today I passed a house that had dollar weed planted in clay pots out by the road as some kind of weird annual.

Do you like weeding, or is it nothing but a chore for you? I really love weeding. It feels very contemplative to me. When life is spinning out of my control, I weed a patch of garden and it makes me feel better. It is my meditation. What is the most aggravating weed growing in your garden? We have so many! We live next to an open field and have a year-round mild climate so it is an unending battle. Bindweed and oxalis are the most prolific. How often do you do it? I weed in spurts all year long. I use a mulch so that helps keep weeds reduced in the beds, and I weed them anytime I notice unwanted plants. It is the unwatered areas between the beds that need the most attention. We live in an area that does not rain in the summer. Does it depend on what time of the growing season it is? Whenever the weeds are prolific, I weed them, though I do find that I tend to take garden "vacations" from time to time when I do very little at all, exhaustion no doubt. We lack a winter break, something I actually miss. At those times I turn my attention to other activities, reading or sewing or knitting. Do you take your time and do it section by section? Usually, though if I am in a hurry I just pick a few big juicy ones that stand out from the crowd. But most of the time I am enticed into sitting down and clearing out a patch. Where do the weeds get tossed as you are weeding? If they are small and have not gone to seed, sometimes I just leave them where they fall to return their nutrients to the mulch or the soil. If there are a lot and I am concerned that they will be overwhelming, I put them in our home compost bin. However if they have seeded or are close to it, or if they are weeds that will sprout from root fragments, I put them into the community yard waste recycling bin each household has here in my town. The hot composting they do destroys weed seeds, which my home cold compost will not. What are the weediest parts of your garden? The semi-grassy, unwatered, gopher-infested areas between planted beds. What is your favorite weeding tool(s)? My bare hands. If thorny, my gloved hands. If the weeds have a deep taproot, I sometimes use one of those Japanese garden knives, the name of which escapes me at the moment. Funny question, but do you sit on something while you weed? Or is everything so crowded that you kind of have to do the "tiptoe and squat" dance around the beds? I start out standing and bent over, but soon my back protests and I plop right down on the ground. Do you use anything to reduce the amount of weeds you have? One intensely weedy area where I never could make any headway got the newspaper and mulch treatment, as did the areas under the fruit trees and some of my rose beds. It is very effective. In regular beds that are more heavily planted I just use mulch. My mulch is coarse wood chips I get free from local tree trimming services. Full disclosure: I spray Roundup on poison oak. I also spray the invasive weeds out on the steep hillside field. We are required by law to clear vegetation to reduce the fire load caused by dry, unwatered vegetation. It is far too steep to mow and discing (which we used to do) actually makes the weeds worse. I have been planting trees out there that will eventually solve this problem as they grow and produce shade, but it will be years before this happens. Lastly, what do you do with all the dug up weeds? See above -- composted in situ or go to community composting. And we can get the finished compost back free, which is a lovely thing. Rosefolly This post was edited by rosefolly on Mon, Sep 2, 13 at 13:43