Author Topic: Your garden's "thugs" and "wimps"  (Read 3098 times)

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Offline barleychown

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Your garden's "thugs" and "wimps"
« on: Jun 16, 2007, 03:00:15 PM »
Who are your garden's "thugs" and "wimps"?

Thugs are plants that sort of bully the plants around them, or try their best to take over a bed.

Wimps are plants that you have trouble with, or have to rescue from the thugs.

One of my thugs is shasta daisy. I love it to death, but it reseeds so well I spend quite a bit of time pulling seedlings. It also flops over on it's neighbors if I don't step in.

One of my wimps is butterfly weed. You would think anything with weed in the name would be tough. Not so with this plant.  :tapfoot1:

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Offline Jim

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Re: Your garden's "thugs" and "wimps"
« Reply #1 on: Jun 18, 2007, 10:06:10 PM »
In our veggie garden we have some cucumbers that are definitely thugs.  We tried to fence them in but they are climbing the fence and trying to take over more space.  If I don't push them back through the fence they will take over my peas.  :tapfoot1:
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Offline Patty S

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Re: Your garden's "thugs" and "wimps"
« Reply #2 on: Jun 19, 2007, 01:39:31 AM »
Oh, poor poor Jim... stuck with all those cucumbers!
(Gosh, I guess I'd better find my pickle recipe that I promised to Dianna!)  My cuke plants are looking good, but they're just now starting to make flowers.

My thugs happen to be weeds! :mad2: I have them under control in my garden beds, but among my Iris & on most of the hill above them, I have a contest going on between the Bindweed, Winter Vetch & what we call the "Sock Grabber" ...cuz I can't remember its real name!  It's a traveling vine sort of thing, that sticks to your socks, your pants, & even your skin.  It's gotten really bad around here this year.
     
Pictured here, the Winter Vetch is the vine with the pretty purple blossom, & the Bindweed is (I think) a cousin to the Morning Glory.  The Sock Grabber is a deep green, delicate looking plant, whose stems & star-shaped leaves have little soft barbs on them.  When mature, it develops seeds that are small round burrs (lower right) that are harder than heck to get out of fabric!

In my other garden beds, these succulent-looking weeds with reddish stems take over in abundance wherever the soil has been disturbed. (Seen here among basil & Devil's Claw starts.)
     
It's not easy to start seeds with these around, cuz they scarf up most of the water! They hoe out with little effort, but I usually let a freshly turned bed sit for a couple weeks, so these can move in & get scraped away before I can plant anything!   Not very many of them come back after their initial attack.

The only other "volunteer" thugs I have are the violets that grow wild, just about anywhere they want to.  I leave some of them in certain places, cuz they make a nice hardy ground cover, but they'll take over & choke out almost anything around them... except trees! 

The only thug that I plant on purpose is the Devil's Claw, in my Deer Barrier bed.  They get huge & try to crowd out my Basil, but they transplant easily when they're young, so it's easy to control where they're located.

All my plants are wimps in the shadow of the weeds I've listed, but I try to stay on top of them.  Pre-emergent is being used heavily here & I'll continue to apply it regularly for the rest of the year, in hopes that so much of my gardening time won't be taken up fighting these nightmares next year!

The Shasta Daisies had a convention going on my gardens last year, Sarah! I gave them away, hand-over-fist, till I got them down to where it looked like I really did like other flowers, & am keeping the starts pulled out now!
« Last Edit: Jun 19, 2007, 01:42:00 AM by Patty S »

Offline duh

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Re: Your garden's "thugs" and "wimps"
« Reply #3 on: Jun 19, 2007, 09:55:43 AM »
Thugs:

Lilly of the valley, Bell Flower, Chinese Lantern, wormwood, Posion Oak and Posion Ivy Anenome 'virginus'(sp), Peacock Orchid, One massive mum don't ask me what's going on with this plant except that it must love the soil it's in.  I've never seen one get this big.  It's pushing everything else out of the pot.  It's amazing.  Infact everything in the pots are going hog wild.  All I did was add a couple of buckets of compost I promise. Peppermint, Chocolate Mint, Pineapple mint.

Whimps:

Well I did have to save the hosta from the chinese lanterns.  I know they have different growing requirements but it was the only place I had for them lol. 

Gee you wouldn't think I like thugs would you?


Offline barleychown

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Re: Your garden's "thugs" and "wimps"
« Reply #4 on: Jul 02, 2007, 11:26:51 PM »
Patty, I hear you on the weeds. The beds that I haven't gotten into shape and added all the compost to are FULL of weeds. :tickedoff: It's really discouraging.

However, the beds that I have spent time amending correctly are doing awesome, and the few weeds that pop up are so easy to pull.

It's definitely given me the modivation to get with amending the backyard beds.

Duh, ya gotta love the thugs.

My thug for the week is sedum. All sedums, all types. Sedums and chickens do not mix...the chicken grabs the sedum, runs 12 feet, drops it because it tastes bad, and then the darn sedum roots where it lies. :SlapSelf:
Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground

Offline Patty S

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Re: Your garden's "thugs" and "wimps"
« Reply #5 on: Jul 03, 2007, 02:24:02 AM »
Even though I don't have chickens anymore, I have Sedum coming up in strange places too!  I have an entire (volunteer) sedum bed at the base of my Tea Rose... right next to where the faucet is, & the hose leaks there, cuz somebody hasn't changed the washer in 2 years! :nutz: While it has also shown up on the hill above the Iris (where it gets very little water), it's going great guns there too.  I always thought that succulents don't like/need water, but apparently Sedum just doesn't care!  I used to move it over next to my succulent wheelbarrow whenever I spotted it coming up in a strange place, but have given up & just let it go now. (When it shows up in the lawn, it will definitely come out!) :rolleyes1:

I know exactly what you mean about the weeds being so easy to pull from the places where the soil has been amended. This evening I was transplanting flowers to a bed that has never been worked before, & cursing the weeds there... ended up removing the first couple of inches of dirt, just to get down to the deeper roots, to pull them out. When I clean that bed out this fall, it'll get a thorough make-over, cuz it sure saves a lot of headaches when the soil is workable!

Offline duh

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Re: Your garden's "thugs" and "wimps"
« Reply #6 on: Jul 04, 2007, 12:11:16 PM »
So very very true.  My shade bed has never really been tilled or amended.  I've just kind of worked around the plants I put there.  Needless to say none of the plants do as well as they could.  So this fall I think I'll be transplanting to temporary beds and working the soil and then putting the plants back in.  They the hostas should take off and the rest of the plants as well. 

Offline Dianna

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Re: Your garden's "thugs" and "wimps"
« Reply #7 on: Jul 04, 2007, 08:11:45 PM »
My garden thug would be the peas that are trying to take over the whole veggie garden. Jim will have to give them their own little area next year! The cucumbers are fast becoming a thug with trying to grow into the squash. I was picking squash this evening and found a cuke right in the middle!  :grinnnn: Am I the only one that notices that the cucumbers and squash both tend to bite while you are picking?  :SmileyQmarks:

For flowers or foliage plants my thugs are the zebra grass and the ginger lilies. They have grown so much and multiplied that it looks like a good nesting area out at the pond for snakes. They will be moved if my foot ever gets better so I can use the shovel... ;)

The wimps have been the first planting of corn. I think that we are much to blame for that, though. Should have watered more consistently... :(

The flowers in the flower beds have really put on a good show for me, even though they have had to compete with the weed thugs, so I can't complain about them at all...
"Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success." - Lao Tzu

 

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