Colchicums 2017
KarenPA_6b
6 years ago
Featured Answer
Sort by:Oldest
Comments (46)
KarenPA_6b
6 years agoRelated Discussions
2017 Springbank Swaps - London ON (Part 1)
Comments (295)Hello everyone, Such a beautiful Sunday and I am indoors doing housework etc., watching my leaves fallll! I have a question and I am looking for your comments about composting yellow Norway maple leaves. I will rake up about 20-30 bags this year, no mulching with mower because I don't have one yet to replace my old one. Plan is to trial composting the leaves behind my garage, mostly morning sun. Everything I read says the compost from these leaves is healthy/valuable in gardening. Does this type of compost actually contribute valuable nutrients to my perennial plants?... apparently this type of compost can be used in vegetable gardening?... I suspect I will have to manually turn the leaves to reduce clumping...all comments welcome....See MoreMy flowers are so confused
Comments (12)Well I'm not sure if this very recent news article is good news or bad. Certainly for the environment it is bad news, but for mosquito haters, perhaps it offers a ray of light in the short term (before the drop-off in insect populations leads to a total collapse of the environment). http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insects-gone Flowers are not the only ones who are confused. My poor bees would have been killed by cold in a normal year, but now they have been clinging to life and feeding from flowers that should have also died. One bumblebee I think was spending nights in a pot of marigolds on a wall, and during the day could be seen climbing about from flower to flower. Honeybees have been hovering about by the side of the house, looking for an opening. I'm guessing that the white siding resembles the bee hive where they once lived. The last frost we had has killed most of my annual flowers. Sunflowers, cosmos, morning glories, most of the marigolds and nasturtiums are history now. A single pot of petunias, a pot of marigolds, and another of nasturtiums still are blooming on the front porch. I'm really hoping for a killing freeze so that I can clean up the gardens. I still see wasps and hornets, moving slowly, but alive. I really, really need them to be safely gone before I can move about without fear. I'm surprised that they seem to be thriving, given the decline of the insects they feed on. An interesting thing is that many flowers seem to have a built-in expiration date, not dependent on frost. The jewelweed, for instance, shriveled and died before that first frost, flowers and foliage alike....See MoreCompare this April to others
Comments (25)I miss our chickens and guinea hens. We stayed with friends in the Worcester area of Boston, and I have never seen so many ticks on people after just a short time outside. It was extraordinary. They were considering chickens and I heartily supported their idea with tales of our NH chickens and their eating prowess. We visited them the next year at the end of summer when the chickens were leaving juvenile status, and the decrease in ticks was phenomenal. They live in a fairly dense neighborhood, but next to them is a horse field, the only farmland remaining from the original homestead. The ticks from that field were terrible, and the chickens must have been surviving on a high tick diet. It's amazing the difference those creatures make....See MoreI bleepin' hate grape hyacinths
Comments (26)The muscari are only slightly less offensive than the scillas (and no, they do not stay evergreen and neat for me, just become progressively more tattered and ugly, good only for harbouring slugs and snails) but yeah, huge clumps of collapsing leafage does not thrill me in any way ...although this is not an issue just confined to muscari but ALL the spring bulbs. I now only plant them in grass or in dedicated areas which can be largely ignored when they go over . Erythroniums and wood anemones are some of the only exceptions as they simply vanish, in a very short space of time. One of the worst mistakes I ever made was to plant 100 or so Geranium narcissus in my woodland beds. The horrible disgusting leafage hangs around until ALL the spring hardy geraniums, little anemones, epimediums, creeping phlox, and heucherellas/tiarellas have done their stuff, overshadowed by squalid narcissus foliage (as they are late into flower, I have to look at the hideousness until the middle of July). For the same reasons, I will only consider colchicums as naturalisers in grass. Live and learn. I always consider bulbs to be a gardener's friend but there are limits to their use and within summer flowering perennial beds is one of them (unless, I suppose, they were hidden by huge statuesque perennials)...but the little creeping woodlanders do not deserve to be buried beneath slimy leafage. Removing narcissus from an established bed is no joke. They have 'dropper' root which pull the bulbs deep into the soil...and double in size every season....See MoreKarenPA_6b
6 years agoKarenPA_6b
6 years agosocalgal_gw Zone USDA 10b Sunset 24
6 years agoKarenPA_6b
6 years agoKarenPA_6b
6 years agoKarenPA_6b
6 years agoKarenPA_6b
6 years agoKarenPA_6b
6 years agoninecrow
6 years agosocalgal_gw Zone USDA 10b Sunset 24
6 years agoKarenPA_6b thanked socalgal_gw Zone USDA 10b Sunset 24KarenPA_6b
6 years agodbarron
6 years agokatob Z6ish, NE Pa
6 years agoposierosie_zone7a
6 years agosocalgal_gw Zone USDA 10b Sunset 24
6 years agoKarenPA_6b
6 years agoKarenPA_6b
6 years agosocalgal_gw Zone USDA 10b Sunset 24
6 years agoKarenPA_6b thanked socalgal_gw Zone USDA 10b Sunset 24posierosie_zone7a
6 years agoKarenPA_6b
6 years agoposierosie_zone7a
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agodbarron
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoKarenPA_6b
6 years agoKarenPA_6b
6 years agodbarron
6 years agoKarenPA_6b
6 years ago
posierosie_zone7a