My Husband’s Gardening Hobby Has Spiraled Out of Control....
rouge21_gw (CDN Z5b/6a)
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Tiffany, purpleinopp Z8b Opp, AL
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hobby vs. small commercial GH
Comments (20)fts074, I became a member specifically to respond to the question about Farmtek. I've read these posts for years but I've never wanted to discuss my professional opinion. This issue was just a bit too close to home. Several years ago Farmtek purchased several products from us that we developed. They carried them in their catalog and then developed copycat products of inferior quality. They used our pictures and the text we provided but sold a different product. We had their product tested and discovered that it was grossly inferior and would not hold up to normal use. It would be very easy for a consumer to be misled, especially if they saw the same pictures for a product for a different price listed elsewhere. Most consumers who purchased that product knew about it from our advertising dollars and efforts. This is troubling because people thinking they were purchasing our product ended up with junk. This makes us and the entire industry look bad. This was not an isolated incident with Farmtek. They have done this with quite a few companies. If price is your only consideration, then they may be a good option. If you want to buy good product from honest businesses there are many other good options out there....See MoreHuntington member article on the decline of the rose hobby
Comments (65)It took me a long time to find out which roses worked for me, in an admittedly difficult environment, and then a rose that worked well for some years, like Burgundy Iceberg, suddenly decided to have blackspot and pass it on. I wish I could start over again with a clean slate and with the knowledge I have now. With roses being taken out or moved, I've often been left with spots to put new roses that are too close to other roses or not right for that particular rose, and glaringly empty spots. The whole thing strikes me as a hodgebodge which is further removed from my dream garden than ever. I hope that with six new roses to plant soon I can try to alleviate some of these defects. The bottom line is - roses are indispensable to me but they're not easy. Ingrid...See MoreGarden tragedy-toxic Sevin has wiped out my Dad's honeybees
Comments (82)Donnann, your Bee Balm garden sounds like heaven! and I am so sorry that naughty Woodchuck literally cleaned up his plate with your garden...I am sending much warm wishes for your Bee balm garden's speedy recovery...Yes, definitely get wire fencing for it. I would have loved to have seen your Bee Balm Garden.I am keeping my fingers crossed that Mr. Woodchuck will chomp on only the wild weeds instead, like crabgrass or nutsedge or those invasive tree shrubs! I recently saw Kristenflower's absolutely gorgeous rose/lavender heaven too at the gallery and was so impressed! Yours and hers are ideal bee gardens just like Celestialrose. I need to grow much more bee balm because I found out that my dwarf bee balm is not as "invasive" as I had hoped, LOL, no thanks to my crappy soil. I actually planted my bee balm away from my roses in a bare 3 by 3 area. My bee-attracting plants are too young, too few to really attract many bees so next time I have to amp the collection and not! deadhead my beebalm, hoping the seeds will scatter My dad on the other hand has 3 crabapple trees, a persimmon tree, a dwarf apple tree, his yard is completely overrun with wild honeysuckle bushes, lilacs, a forest of hollyhocks and sweet peas(which the bumblebees used to love before they died, one flowering redbud tree, winterberry, azaleas, gardenias, jasmine, 3 crazy rosebushes that are like 8' tall because he never prunes them, 1 rootstock Dr. Huey, all these bee and bird attracting plants which I am so jealous about...But! he does not have bee balm... I think he can certainly add this to his collection...Donna, LOL! I think you will be "enabling" him; the neighbors already think he's got enough of a jungle...Also genes run in the family, hahahaha! I tried to keep as tidy of a garden as I could, but my garden still looks like a jungle because I planted like 50! overly tall gladiolus and now I want to grab some of my Dads overly tall hollyhocks as well! Anyway, I cant wait to see your bee balm garden recover and flourish once again. Hugs! Greenhaven alas I have just a handful of those native beesbut am grateful that at least I have those few. Your post reminded me, do you remember that "I am so excited thread" I wrote? The wonderful cute Mr. Bumblebee that used to visit my garden in May did not survive it seemsIn Mid-June it disappeared after my next door neighbor hired a professional pesticide company to spray the foundations of their home. Perhaps it too was Sevin? It was not until an entire month and a half passed that my Dads bees disappeared... (he and I live in completely separate neighborhoods and bees only have that 3 mi. radius anyways) So as you can see I feel why I feel so guilty. Perhaps if I had mentioned this to my Dad, who knows something could have been prevented? Again, you may be right in that the wild bees are hardier in comparison. They have shorter life spans and dont have communal hives, and that is why they have survived You see if you do the research and look up native bees youll discover thisThey dont have the hives and therefore, they dont have the communal death that the honeybees experience when they are exposed to Sevin. Because wild bees have so many tiny individual nests, each is independent of each other ... Not so with honeybees. Once their hive is contaminated, their entire hive is destroyed, thousands are gone. But to be honest I will always love the honeybee and bumblebees more... There's just something so special about their fuzziness that I love!...See MoreSempervivum spiral rock garden bed
Comments (47)Update June 25, 2018 ... 11 months later :) I didn’t cover it to overwinter. I lost 3 Semps to diggers/chompers. I suspect jackrabbits as there is quite a bit of rabbit poop in there. I just split off a couple larger clumps and filled in the holes. I lost some of the sedums as well but what survived is filling in very nicely!!! you can see on the left where I quit filling last year - I’ll get more plants this year and continue around the bottom, fanning out wide to spill into the existing bed. I laid a big E. PVN stump with lots of air roots in there as an experiment and it’s grown a wee pup :) One semp about to bloom: Many different sedums :) only the tricolour hasn’t taken off very well. I can only find wee sprigs here and there. Whatever that big clump at top left is, it has done very well! This section has filled in wonderfully...See Moreprairiemoon2 z6b MA
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