Invasive Vine

I have a severe problem with Periwinkle.  It is a broadleaf evergreen vine that keeps its glossy leaves in winter. It’s fast growing, making a six-inch (15-cm) thick weed-suppressing mat, rooting from junctures in its long tendrils as they spread along the ground.  It has a pretty blue flower, which saved it from immediate attacks.  Had I known what it was like, I would have killed it immediately!

It is very difficult to eliminate.  First, the roots grow several feet deep, so it just resprouts when pulled or cut.  Second, it is basically immune to most herbicides (water-based, like Round-Up) because it has a waxy coating on the leaves that repel water.  It takes an oil-based one (and those are seriously nasty).  Third, even small bits of it will rereoot on ground-contact.  Fourth, the stuff grows more vigorously than English or Poison ivy (and I have those too from the Southern neighbor).

I didn't plant it!  It spred into my yard from the yard East of me.  That place seems to get new residents every few years.  One from 2 or 3 times ago planted it and it came through the fence.  It was a relatively ignored area with a few hardy shrubs.

The neighbors after the one that planted it were able to get rid of it by mowing.  Their yard was void of any landscaping.  Constant mowing exhausts the roots and it dies.  I am not that lucky.  It is growing in a narrow strip between the fence and garden.  A regular push mower can fit, but it is a real pain to maneuver.  A gas mower is powerful enough, but mine died a few years ago and I bought a good electric one.  But it can't handle such a tall thick mat and I have to lift it around a few obstacles.

It can be killed with oil herbicides, deep repeated digging, regular mowing, or smothering under black plastic.  Through my failure to kill it where it entered the yard, it has gotten among my perennial beds.  I can't use any of those methods there very well.  I could dig up all the perennials, pot them, and watch for any growth in the pots.  I'm getting too old for that.  

I may have to redo most of the perennial bed.  It is old, and most of the flowers have been dying off anyway.  The Euonymous and Butterfly bushes need to be removed due to age or growing out of control.  The dwarf apple trees it is growing around have never produced edible fruit (squirrels and insect pests ruin them every year).  In fact, if I cut down the dwarf apples, I can use the wood in the smoker/grill.

That would allow me to get in the whole area to mow the periwinkle rototill it, and then cover it with black plastic for a year.  Apparently, that would be sufficient.  Or I could just get a landscaping service to do it.  And then replant it myself the next year.  

I can still do that myself.  And I know a lot more about good perennials and bushes than I did when I planted it 25 years ago!

But dang, periwinkle is an evil vine!

Tomorrow, the perennial bed at its prime...

Answering Questions

I get many more questions on Mark's Mews, but sometimes I get some here.  And Megan asked a bunch!  She was on a roll...  And since they were posted on the blog (sometimes they are email), I'll answer them on the blog.

Comment:  "You'll laugh when I say it - your experience is exactly what Australia has all over the country! Our polls are always conducted on Saturdays and many of the polling stations are school assembly halls or church halls etc. Drive, park right outside, walk in, get your name checked off, vote, put the paper in the box and leave. Done in 10 minutes. And ... voting is compulsory, which I know is always of some amusement to Americans."

Answer:  I was pleased to read that Australia has my positive experience with voting.  It should be like that everywhere.  I do note that voting is compulsory.  That probably wouldn't work here, but I like the idea of getting more people to vote.  In invests them in the results.

Saturday is a good choice of days to vote.  As I understand it, Tuesday was chosen in the US for religious reasons (though practical ones).  The US was so rural once that it took a day to get to a place to vote.  So, since so many were church-goers, they needed Monday to travel in order to vote, so Tuesday it was!

Comment:  "I'm voting for no daylight savings where I am - it means that in summer, it can still be quite hot at 9pm or 10pm." 

Answer:  Many people want a single time system (and most seem to like Standard over Daylight Saving).  But there are good arguments for both or just one.  Most in favor of Standard mention schoolchildren or farmers.  Most in favor of Daylight Saving mention commuting conditions or being retired (and appreciating the later daylight).  For myself, early morning daylight is wasted daylight.  I haven't gotten up at 7 am in 16 years!  And around here schoolbus pickups would be in daylight even if Daylight Saving was year-round.

Comment:  "Could you not poison the invasive stuff?"

Answer:  The invasive vines are intermixed with my flowers in many places, so I can't just spray them (and I try to stay organic).  But also, this particular invasive wine is resistant to herbicides (waxy leaves) and have very deep roots which survive and regrow.  Among the flowers, I would have to cut them out or dig individually.  Among the solid areas of it, smothering them with black plastic for a year is really the only solution and I should do that!

Comment:  "I lurve the way you just slip into the conversation that you've been holding onto leftover timber for 30 bloody years, Mark! What a hoot!!!

Answer:  While I am not exactly a "hoarder" (the living areas are fine), I do keep stuff that seems potentially useful.  I have a weakness for identical glass jars (for refrigerator stuff), large plastic shelled nut containers (to keep cat kibble, distilled/rainwater water for the Venus Fly Traps, and goldfinch thistle seed in).  The black oil sunflower seeds for the rest of the birds are kept in a metal trash barrel.

So, when I built the 6' high fence

 

around the backyard (to keep large straying dogs away from The Mews and deer out) with 8' boards, I ended up with a lot of 18"-24" pieces.  My yard slopes.  It was a step-down fence, which meant every board had to be cut to exact height.  Which means the leftovers are all slightly different in length.

But since I had LOTS of those pieces, it seemed useful to keep them.  I have used some over the years for various projects.  All The Mews Memorials were built from some of the pieces, I have used some short ones vertically to anchor framed landscaping bed boards horizontally, and some have been part of 1"-4" platforms for my Spring seed-starting.

The small bits on top are double left-overs.  But I have plans for them.

But you have a point.  The first board I brought to the new house in 1986 was a 2"x12"x12' board I brought from the previous (rented) house.  It is still where I put it in the garage on Moving Day, LOL!  But every wood-worker has "stuff" they keep around.  It sometimes is useful.

Hope you all enjoyed all that.

But is it just me, or are you seeing reverse black/white text scatterred all over?  I have no idea why that happens sometimes...

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Yard Work 1

I finally learned the name of the invasive vine that has been creeping into my yard from the neighbor's yard.  It's Periwinkle.  I thought Periwinkle was a small plant like violets!  But a couple of posters on a garden site clued me in, and when I looked it up, there it was.  I can't believe a week of searching "invasive vines" didn't help me find that out myself. 

It is apparently hard to kill.  Deep resilient spreading roots, leaves that don't absorb water, tolerant of many soils and sunlight.  I even have some I put a trash barrel over last summer; the entire vine is white but won't die.  They are surviving by nutrient spread from uncovered vines.

I weed-whacked them last week.  That should weaken them for a while.  But it seems there are only a few ways to eliminate them.  Digging the roots out 2' down, covering them in black plastic for a couple years, and using herbicides.

Digging down that far needs heavy equipment and the space is too tight.  I can't cover them all with plastic as they are among plants I want to keep.  So that means herbicide.  And it means an oil-based herbicide.

I try to stay organic.  Not certified, but in general practice.  So in the open areas it has invaded, I will spray carefully.  I have a large cardboard box I have cut the bottom out of and made a small hole in the top.  I will spray Triclopyr into the hole, let the box sit sit 5 minutes and move it to the next spot (wearing latex gloves and a mask).

Then I will cover the area with black plastic (I have large rolls of the stuff).  For the individual plants in the flower beds, I will apply it with a 1" brush on leaves.  And since I'm going that far, I will use the box on the poison ivy and the english ivy ("in for a penny, in for a pound").

Gardening And Yardwork

I had a successful day today - I planted 6 annual sunflower seedlings!  There was a lot more to the day's work, of course, but by the time I planted the sunflower seedlings, I felt I was done.

For starters, the temperature reached 88.5F according to my 2 different brands of digital wireless outdoor thermometers*.  In April.  In the shade.  And I didn't spend much of the day in the shade.

My PRIMARY desire for the day was to plant the sunflower seedlings.  For some reason, I sow 6 sunflower seeds every Spring, and never get around to planting them before they are too leggy and weak to thrive.  They are always "last on the list".  Partly, I never have a really good spot to put them.  Well, this year I did.

I have mentioned before that I set up 3 edged beds in the back yard.  One is for wildflowers, one is for  Spring bulbs and daylillies, the last is for bee/butterfly/hummingbird flowers.

In the center of that last (middle) one (only 10' in diameter), I wanted to plant sunflowers as a centerpoint.

But I had trimming to do first.  I mowed the lawn 2 days ago and the more constructed beds I create, the more trimming there is.  My new Ryobi 40 battery-powered string trimmer does a grand job!  But you have to USE it, so I did that first to get it out of the way.  It was a lot more work than I expected.  The trimmer battery last about 40 minutes; I used that up and set it to recharge.



While I was waiting, I took my hedge-trimmer and dead-headed all the Spring bulbs, and I have more bulbs than I used to (when I could do that with my sheep-sheers).

Still with time before the string trimmer fully charged, I caught up on making more plant labels.  I found a great deal on metal plant labels last Fall and got 120 for 50 cents each.  Plastic labels just don't last.  After that was done for all my existing crops and some specimen hostas, I went back at trimming the yard with the string trimmer.  It takes longer to trim than to mow the whole yard!  And I was using it to cut down an invasive vine, an invasive self-sowing spreading loosestrife (Lysimachia Firecracker) shipped to me in error as a Coreopsis, and some self-sowing Salvia(?) perennial I regret ever planting.  I'll keep cutting them down until they all die!

I was pretty much used up for the day, but remembered the sunflowers.  I HAD to plant them, sweaty and tired as I was.  My idea was to set a 1' diameter 2' tall wire cage in the center of the bed and plant the sunflowers around it attached to the cage.  I measured out the center and set the cage there with some stakes to hold it in place firmly and used an auger to drill 6 holes around it.  It was awkward reaching around the cage to set the seedlings in while not stepping on newly-emerging hummer/bee/butterfly seedlings, but I managed it.

I have a couple hundred plant clips (another good deal I found, and endlessly useful), and supported the sunflower seedlings  to the cage with the clips.  The clips are about 1" around, so they wont restrict the stems.


Support 2' high should help the sunflowers stay upright, but if not, I can attach a 2nd cage on top of the 1st.  Yes, I should have just planted the sunflower seeds directly and they would have been sturdier.  But I always try to rush the season by starting them indoors.  Next year, I will sow them direct.

But for once, they are planted and have a chance.