How do you protect your plants from the weedwackers?

3 years ago

Need some suggestions for protecting my garden plants from the indiscriminate weedwacking landscapers who terrorize me every time they come. Yesterday they wacked to the ground a hardy native fern that my mother salvaged from my childhood home that was recently sold and I transplanted it in my yard in July. It was just taking off and now, sadly, it's a just a leafless stump of what it could have been. I'm praying it grows back. Please HELP WITH ANY SUGGESTIONS!!!

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Comments (5)

Sherry8aNorthAL
3 years ago
Can you fire the landscapers? I don't have commercial weedwackers, but I have a husband who only knows grass. Everything else is a weed. I put green metal edging around my beds and he is not to do anything inside of the edging without me standing right there. For now put something around the fern pushed into the ground. A large plastic flower pot with the bottom cut out or something similar, like a big coffee can. Label with a plant marker. It should come back.
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ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
3 years ago
something like the 2nd and 4th pic.. is a good way to make sure your beds are delineated ...

ken

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=smsll+decorative+garden+fence&t=ffcm&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images
User thanked ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
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Looking at your new list of roses, I doubt you will need to worry much about wind damage. Perhaps when they are very young, but after established, they should be fine. If your experience to date is mainly HT's as you indicate, then you'll be in for a pleasant surprise. HT's are notorious for suffering cane damage in heavy winds when in full bloom. For instance, all but the most sturdy HT varieties are essentially long sticks with big blooms up at the top. This makes them very top heavy in heavy wind and when the blooms are filled with rain they tend to bend over or just break off at the base or down the cane. Some thoughts on your new roses: - Cinderella Fairy Tale- Almost tip hardy in Toronto. Almost bullet proof in terms of disease resistance, but can get some very mild late season mildew here. Just like everything else in our gardens... - Morden Blush- Beautiful and tip hardy in most winters in Toronto area. Will get some BS by mid-summer, but can usually shrug it off and keep blooming. Expect about 30% defoliation from lower leaves. Few roses bloom as heavily and repeat as well as this rose if it is deadheaded after each bloom cycle. - Crocus rose (Bit of a risk. I'm hoping I grow to love Austins) Not risky. Very hardy and decent disease resistance. Early season mildew more of an issue than BS here. Needs a few years to grow a frame and can be floppy in the first 2 years with the big blooms. Not much fragrance for an Austin, but a winner in cold zones. - Julia Child- Nice yellow Floribunda with a great fragrance and is a good bloomer. Fades from bright yellow to off-white yellow. Stays pretty small here and will likely get some BS by mid/late summer. A nice rose though and pretty good hardiness for a yellow Floribunda. - Betty Boop- Blooming machine and very eye-catching when in bloom. Decent winter hardiness, but will also likely get some BS here by mid-summer. A favorite of mine and a good rose. Good luck and enjoy.
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to agardenstateofmind. In my experience, there's no need to shred oak leaves (they curl) as they do NOT mat like maples or ginkos (I have over 2 dozen different perrenials/ephemeral species that have no problem coming up each and every spring) nor do they even remotely get slimey. I've used this approach for well over 30 years (with over a dozen mature oaks in the 60' class on the property and over 2 dozen saplings (to 15') which will replace some of those old girls when their time has come, and you know what? There's never enough oak leaves as come spring time - you look and say to yourself, where did it all go? And I selectively take oak leaves put at street side of my neighbors (as long as they don't have a lawn treatment program through the year). Mulching one's oak leaves is GREAT for the gardens (as you're not throwing away your leaves which is a good thing) and especially so if you grow rhodies, azaleas, montain laurels, viburnum, evergreens etc. This post was edited by birdsong72 on Fri, Dec 26, 14 at 6:41
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Welded Wire Fence from Home Depot. I like the 5' tall stuff, 50 feet cost about $45 recently. With your layout, you could probably just make a circle for each bed. I just bend some of the edge wires back inside the circle to hook into the other side of the loop. The fencing will last many years. I have found the green coated stuff to come apart much faster than the plain. Even around a fair sized garden, deer won't usually jump it if there's no clear place to land. After several years deer did jump a couple of my fences last year so I tied bamboo poles on to the fence at intervals and ran wire around at 8'. I have tried heavy T posts with wire run between them and bamboo poles at close intervals, that worked a couple of years then deer started getting through it. For deer repellents, which I consider not really worth bothering with compared to something permanent, I have blended egg and cayenne pepper in water and dribbled it on plants with a dish detergent bottle, and also deer don't like blood meal sprinkled on things... but would you want it on your lettuce.
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Karen B, I understand about the rain concern. Try to set up the frost cloth so that rain cannot collect in the cloth between branches. One year in CA, I constructed a PVC box around my largest plumie and covered it with a tarp. We had a good rain and the rain collected in the top of the tarp creating enough stress that the box collapsed and broke the plant into many pieces. The next year I made the box higher on one end so it had a sloped roof and the water ran off instead of collecting. With the frost cloth, you may want to put some poles under the cloth and between the branches to tent the cloth in such as way to encourage the rain to run off, rather than collect. Water is heavy enough to break branches if it collects. What I do is to spray some water on the cloth after I install it to see if there are any places it collects, then put a pole under that spot to raise it up enough. Good luck. Mike
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ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
3 years ago
there is a typo in my search term... try here .. all kinds of alternatives ... might be hard to find locally.. this time of year ...

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=small+decorative+garden+fence&t=ffcm&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images
User thanked ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
Adrian Sclafani
3 years ago
heres what i do...it has fixed all my issues...go to a hardware store and buy cinder blocks...line your gardens with the blocks and tell your landscapers that if they get too close, they may hit the cinder blocks which will cause injury. they wont go close to your plants again!

haha, just kidding, dont do that...just get mailbox markers for heavy snow, the kind with a flag on top, and line the garden, if your landscapers arent mentally questionable, they will respect the obvious boundaries...that is actually what works for me
User thanked Adrian Sclafani
HU-352499387
3 years ago
1. Cover the soil around the base of the young tree with a 2- to 3-inch layer of mulch. Spread the mulch out over the root zone of the tree, but leave a 2-inch space between the trunk and the mulch layer. The mulch suppresses weeds so they don't grow near the tree trunk and helps prevent lawn grass from encroaching on the area.

2. Open a plastic tree guard, which resembles a length of plastic corrugated pipe, along its opening seam. Slip the guard around the trunk and slide it down until the bottom rests on the soil. The guard protects the tree from mechanical damage and also prevents rodents from chewing on the tender young bark.

3. Pull any weeds by hand that grow through the mulch. Use string trimmers only around the perimeter of the mulched area to prevent damage to the trunk.

4. Remove the tree guard when the trunk grows too large for the device, usually within one to two years depending on the tree variety. Replenish the mulch layer once or twice a year to maintain its depth so it can continue to suppress weed growth.

How do you protect your plants from the weedwackers?

Comments (5)

Sherry8aNorthAL

ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5

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ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5

Adrian Sclafani

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