Good Soil for Leonotis Leonurus (Member of Mint Family)?
westes Zone 9b California SF Bay
6 years ago
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Nil13 usda:10a sunset:21 LA,CA (Mount Wash.)
6 years agowestes Zone 9b California SF Bay thanked Nil13 usda:10a sunset:21 LA,CA (Mount Wash.)Related Discussions
Help an herb newbie. Will mint idea work?
Comments (21)Kanuk. Burying a pot of mint won't stop the mint from spreading. Even if you plug up the drainage holes in the pot, you can't stop it from sending out runners up above which will run along the surface of the soil and take root wherever it touches the ground. Waste of a good pot! I repotted some mint at Christmas-time - about 2 months ago. (Summer in my part of the world.) The pot sits on concrete pavers. Those roots have already come through the bottom of the pot, and those wretched runners have grown down the sides of the pot and have embedded themselves in neighbouring pots AND between the cracks of the pavers. I'm waiting for my gardening friend to come and move the pot for me before the mint really takes hold....See Moremint as orchard ground cover?
Comments (6)Dorothy, It does sound like Johnsongrass, which is the bane of my existence here.....second only to bermuda. I try to keep it mowed down short because that seems to more or less control it, but those large, finger-sized rhizomes (yours might be wrist-sized since you get so much more moisture, LOL) creep into the edges of the veggie garden and flower beds and drive me bonkers. To make it worse (just the name association) our land was once part of the Johnson family farm, we live next door to the Johnson son and his family, we bought our land from one of the Johnson daughters, and our road is known locally as Johnson Road. So, when I am digging out Johnson grass, I am always wryly amused and ask myself if the road was named for the Johnson Family or the Johnson Grass! (And I love every member of the human Johnson family I've ever met, including in-laws and nieces and nephews, but the grass is a different story!!!) I used to have a lovely bed of daylilies that I put in the first year we moved here, but the Johnson grass kept infiltrating that bed over and over during our hot, droughty summers and I finally gave up and abandoned it and the Johnson grass choked out almost all the daylilies. One day, I will have a daylily bed closer to the house, but only after I have removed ALL the grass and taken measures to keep it from ever invading again. That first year, I was naive in thinking that if I removed all the rhizomes and enriched the hard, clay soil, the Johnson Grass would be manageable. It might have worked closer to the house...but this bed was about 200' from the house, down by the driveway/roadway, and it doesn't get any supplemental irrigation, so the Johnson grass, being more drought-tolerant, "won". I have planted a lot of trees around the house because we built in the only open area (not wanting to bulldoze huge trees in the woods) so we had no shade. I didn't do as good of a job as I should have at keeping the grass away from the roots of the young trees back then, but I'm doing better now and I think it does make a tremendous difference in how quickly they grow and also it makes a difference in how well they tolerate drought. I planted mint in clay soil in several areas and it lived for several years but it eventually died out during drought in 2003, a year in which we only had 18" of rainfall here (our worst year here by far, and that was the year the grasshoppers ate everything in sight, including fruit on the trees, the cotton rag rug on the porch, and our fiberglass window screens). I would never plant mint in the "good soil" in my flower beds or veggie garden for fear it would outcompete everything else, but I am going to plant it near the chicken coop and guinea coop where the combination of the hens "digging and scratching" and the increasing amount of shade have left a lot of bare soil in an area that used to have bermuda grass. (Yeah! Some of the trees are finally getting large enough to shade out bermuda.) When our fruit trees were younger I planted nasturtiums and garlic underneath them (nasturtiums to attract beneficial insects and garlic to repel borers), but the chickens liked the nasturtiums a little too much and the garlic merely disappeared. Dawn...See MoreChattanooga area members?
Comments (99)Hi Neophyte. I'm the one who started this string. If you read down through you'll see there was some interest in a swap but not enough to really generate the enthusiasm to get one going. I think, as suggested above, for anyone who doesn't mind the drive, going to the Knoxville or Nashville swaps would work out best, at least at this point. Just my opinion. If there was one near me I would possibly attend. As Brandon7 suggested, those of us who don't want to make the drive, could do individual swaps on the exchanges page. I am going to dig up some Immortality Bearded Iris (large almost-white repeat bloomer) as soon as I get to it and I am more than willing to part with some. I don't get on the forum much but I will try to get that on the exchanges page or anybody can email me directly. Cheryl, never heard of a tradescantia called warthog. Do you have a pic? You might have gotten tradescantia from me. I have quite a lot of it. Do you have a pic or has it flowered? Tradescantia is very vigorous but I wouldn't call any I've had invasive. I would leave it for a while and see what it turns into. You could start a new string with - "warthog" tradescantia - as the title and see if anybody knows who would not necessarily have clicked on this string. Chris...See MoreSterilize infested soil?
Comments (14)Bugs happen - it's a fact of life :-) If one needed to sterilize the soil or remove and replace soil every time there was an outbreak of aphids or other crop damaging insects, there would be very few productive gardens in this country! Aphids are easily controlled by hosing down with water, insecticidal soap, applications of Neem or other horticultural oils and with homemade sprays using plant extracts like garlic or citrus oil. Their eggs can overwinter in the soil but generally just disturbing the soil adequately before planting - a pretty common process with any spring garden prep - and then mulching well after planting will discourage their development. But even removing every single egg present in your garden now will not necessarily ban any aphids from returning when food sources appear. As I said to begin with........bugs happen. Leaf footed bugs are harder to control but they overwinter as adults in weedy, brushy areas so cleaning up/mowing/cutting back any areas like this in proximity to your raised beds will help to control their populations as well. Again, removing any soil from the beds will have NO impact on these critters. Powdery mildew does not over winter on soil. It needs plant tissue or debris to survive so if you clean up the beds properly before spring planting, you have removed the potential for any existing spores to develop. PM is much more of a climate/cultural related pathogen - it develops when air circulation is limited, in shade and when soils, air temperatures and moisture create a "perfect storm", often late season when soils are dry, temps high and with a high dew point or humidity, especially overnight. Providing sufficient sunlight, improving air circulation and making sure soils remain evenly moist during the critical periods will help enormously. Again, Neem or hort oils, baking soda mixtures and even spraying with diluted milk will help to control but these remedies need to be applied before you see signs of PM to be most effective. Blights are indeed soil borne pathogens and soil sterilization would help to control these problems but is often so impractical that most just deal with the issues via crop rotation. And just to clarify what was mentioned above, tomatoes are members of the Solanaceae or the nightshade family, as are peppers. eggplants, and potatoes. All of these can be subject to similar blights so you want to avoid planting these in the same location season after season. In fact, it is recommended to use at least three year cycle of rotating locations for best control. You can also seek out resistant varieties as well. Sunlight is never an enemy of a productive vegetable garden :-) It may just mean you have to water more often. Skip the A-frame pallets - they are not helping. And wind is usually not a concern either unless you get gale force ones - I live at the beach and get very strong winds off the water and they have never damaged my veggies. In fact, some veg are wind pollinated so allowing/encouraging breezes are beneficial. Winds/breezes also help to allow proper air circulation so beneficial for your PM issues. Other than adding some fresh OM to your beds - compost, composted manure, shredded leaves, etc. - there is really nothing else you need to do before spring planting. Don't remove any soil - just work what you have together with fresh OM and you are ready to go. But expect to devote some time and attention to your garden on pretty much a daily basis during the growing season. The more time you spend working and inspecting your garden, the more proactive you can be in thwarting off problems....See Morewestes Zone 9b California SF Bay
6 years agowestes Zone 9b California SF Bay
6 years agowestes Zone 9b California SF Bay
6 years agowestes Zone 9b California SF Bay
6 years agowestes Zone 9b California SF Bay
6 years agoNil13 usda:10a sunset:21 LA,CA (Mount Wash.)
6 years agowestes Zone 9b California SF Bay thanked Nil13 usda:10a sunset:21 LA,CA (Mount Wash.)westes Zone 9b California SF Bay
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agowestes Zone 9b California SF Bay
6 years agowestes Zone 9b California SF Bay
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agowestes Zone 9b California SF Bay
6 years agowestes Zone 9b California SF Bay
6 years agowestes Zone 9b California SF Bay
6 years agowestes Zone 9b California SF Bay
6 years agowestes Zone 9b California SF Bay
6 years agolast modified: 6 years ago
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