Poison Ivy Update

Most of the poison ivy I sprayed last week is dying nicely. But that damn big shrubby one over the fence is reluctant to die. I'll have to give it another spraying (or two). But it is supposed to rain later today, so I'll have to wait.

That tall weed with the purple berries I couldn't remember the name of is "Pokeweed". It isn't the worst weed around here, but it is very large so it stands out. And it is hard to dig up because it has a large swollen root about a foot deep.

The worst one I have is mock strawberry. It grows EVERYWHERE. It isn't hard to kill individually because it depends on a surface stem-knot, but when there are 1,000s it is a real pain. And the birds love the fruits so there is always a new supply of them scatterred everywhere. They get into the thick groundcovers so well that they are nearly impossible to pick out.

I had to finally dig out a large area of ground-cover sedums and dianthus becuase I simply could not get all the mock strawberries out and they just kept growing back (I was able to carefully pick a dozen sedum clean of the "mocks" and replant them. They are spreading again well.

Among the poison ivy, the mock strawberry, the honeysuckle, and the pokeweed, I could go crazy. At least I don't have kudzu!

Lack of Rain

The Weather Channel predicted 30-50% chance of thunderstorms EVERY day this past week. I got 1/4" once! So I spent the day watering the garden, flowerbeds, and even some small trees. I realize a 30-50% chance isn't a promise (they do their best), but I should have gotten more than 1/4" once...

On the other hand, it was a nice day (82F) so it was nice to be outside with the cats. It could have been 97F and humid like a few days ago...

We are almost through the "dog days" so things will cool down and rain a bit more often soon. I shouldn't complain. We had no day over 100F and not only did the lawn soil not dry up and crack open, the grass even stayed (mostly) green! It's not often I have to mow the lawn in August.

By the way, "dog days" has nothing to do with our canine friends panting in the heat. The term comes from the fact that the constellation Canis Major (Big Dog) rises just ahead of the sun at this time of year. So our ancestors in the Northern Hemisphere knew that the hottest days were arriving in mid July. It was once thought that Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, was so bright that it added heat to the day. Well, good thought, but it is just the tilt of the Earth in the Northern half...

The corn failed though. 3' high and it tasselled. 4" ears that may or may not kernel out. I guess I still don't have enough sunlight for corn. At least the tomatoes, cukes and beans are doing well. From 8 tomato plants, I am getting several ripe fruits per day. I am losing many to Blossom End Rot (something I usually only have on the 1st few fruits of the year). I don't know why that is a problem this year. I added plenty of compost to the soil, and I gave them foliar spray several times. I even added saved eggshells for the calcium.

Another Front Landscape Box Update

The Caladiums are really taking off! I was worried about them at first, because they seemed to be coming up so thinly. I thought most of them weren't going to grow. The 1st few emerged July 10th like nervous mice.

But look at it NOW!



And there are still more just emerging!

It's nice when some project you are unsure about works out well...

Fishing Boat Renovation

I have a 16' jon boat. It's 16 years old, but in good shape. But I got tired of replacing the rotting plywood floors every few years. So this Spring, I bought plate aluminum, attached good outdoor carpet to the aluminum, added some additional support under it, and mounted swivel seats.



But the current project was the trailer, which is the same age. I hadn't used it in 3 years, the tires were sitting a muddy spot all that time, the spare wheel bolts were rusted onto the frame, and the coupler was so rusted I had to stomp on it to get the latch to shut. I tried to repack the axles with fresh grease, but the grease fitting was so corroded I couldn't even attach it.

So THIS project was to take the trailer to a trailer store and say "FIX IT"! Sometimes you have to turn a project over to experienced people with specialized tools. For example, they admitted they had to use some serious equipment to break the old bearing buddies loose...

They put on a new coupler, new tires (the rims were OK), a new spare rim&tire (the tire was dry-rotted, cleaned out all the old grease, replaced the seals, repacked the grease, and put on new "bearing buddie". I even bought a keyed trailer coupler lock. I was tired of having to get my reading glasses and a flashlight out to open the lock in the dark when I got home.





I'm ready to go fishing! Now, if the weather would just cool down a bit...

Poison Ivy

I have a perpetual problem with poison ivy, so yesterday was "Seek & Destroy Day". Most of it comes in from the neighbors' yards (4 of 5 sides of me - I have a home plate shaped yard with 2 back neighbors). I have mentioned this problem to all 4 neighbors, but they say they just avoid those patches. So it gradually creeps through my fence and spreads when I'm not looking. Two of the neighbors had poison ivy vines that matured and produce berries, so I get some individual plants growing in the middle of the yard (half of my back yard is semi-wild). I even get some under the deck. How a berry gets under the deck is beyond me...

So I mixed up some Brush-B-Gon and went on patrol. I had to carry the 2 gallon sprayer by hand because there is a slow drip I need to fix. I have a shoulder strap, but it dripped on me that way. My left arm is still sore!

Well, I must have sprayed 100 individual (small) plants, counting neighbor's plants for as far as I could spray through the fence. I was surprised to realize that what I thought was a neighbor's shrub was actually poison ivy! I covered it thoroughly!

I am always careful to choose a calm day and stand upwind from the spot I am spraying. And BTW, if you smoke, this is a good time to do it. The smoke alerts me to any slight shift in wind direction (and therefore spray drift). More than once I have suddenly had to back away from a spot quickly because of a mild wind shift.

I also make it a point to hose down my garden area afterwards, just in case of drift. And I keep the cats inside the whole day after. I wear disposable latex gloves, too.

As long as I had extra spray. I took the opportunity to knock off some plant I had too many of and I can never remember the name of. It has large leaves, purple berries, grows to about 6' high, has a weak stalk, and has a large swollen root (corm, rhizome, whatever). It is easy to break it, but the root seems immortal. Fortunately, it dies quickly when sprayed.

Having some still left over, I sprayed my driveway because I'm tired of mowing it. I should explain... The driveway is asphault, is 23 years old and I have never resurfaced it. There were a few spots where grass established itself in cracks a few years ago, but this year it seems to have really exploded.

I think I will replace it with concrete soon. But for now, just killing the grass would be nice.

Watering and Weeding

The weather has been very weird here this year. It rained almost every day in May and most of June. Then it stopped utterly. I was so used to the soil being well watered that I didn't think about it when it didn't rain for 3 weeks.

The Cucumbers wilted, so I watered them. Then I tried to push a finger into the soil next to the tomatoes and couldn't! So I spent the past 2 days watering everything. I don't water the lawn, often. If it goes dormant, that's fine; it always comes back.

But I gave the vegetable garden and the flowerbeds a good soaking. The veggies are in separate framed beds, so I don't want to water the spaces between. The flowerbeds are about 8' wide, and I don't have any sprinkler system the waters so narrowly. I have some drip hoses, but they are unimagimably slow and don't work evenly.

So, I did it by hand. By spading fork actually...

A few years ago, I discovered that the fan hose-end nozzle fit in the handle of my D-shaped spading fork. It occurred to me I could just set it in there and drive the spade fork into the ground to shower an area many minutes at a time.

It works great. I keep a kithchen timer in my pocket, set it for 4 minutes, and weed a dry area of the garden while the water showers down on the other parts. The fan sprayer nozzle is perfect for 6-8' deep beds and almost all the water goes to the plants. The timer gives me consistent watering.

To all you gardeners out there, don't worry, I watered the tomatoes and such by hand only at ground level. I know about the diseases that wet plants can get.

I also watered the flowers at mid-day when they were sure to dry off the leaves before evening...

It took most of 2 days to do it.

But everything seems recuperated now, and it is supposed to rain a couple times next week. Yay! The lawn needs it and the garden/flowers will appreciate it!

Harvest Time, Finally

Well, I spent a few days weeding the garden and flowerbed. Nothing worth taking a picture of or posting about. But I was amply rewarded!

I picked my 1st 2 tomatoes and a cucumber.



Some years ago, I started growing heirloom Brandywine tomatoes. They were so superior to even the best home-grown hybrid tomatoes that I finally stopped bothering to grow even Celebrity and Big Beef (the best tasting hybrids). I've expanded to include Cherokee Purple, Prudens Purple, Caspian Pink, Tennessee Britches, and Aunt Gerties Gold.

While Brandywine routinely wins taste tests, I consider Cherokee Purple the best heirloom tomato. Brandywine is both sweet and acidic, but it is not very productive and it succumbs to disease too easily. Cherokee Purple has a more complex taste, and it is meaty, productive, and stays healthier.

Here is the Cherokee Purple, cut open (as well as the cucumber - note the small seeds):

Front Landscape Box Update

Some of the Caladium bulbs are emerging. Yay!

One is even opening the first leaf.



But I don't think I will try to save the bulbs each Fall. It seems like a lot of work and I am definitely a low-maintenance kind of person. So I am going to try to correct one bad decision happily in my theory of landscaping.

You see, I used to have another landscaping box (the OTHER side of the front steps) filled with Snow-On-The-Mountain. But I made the mistake of planting some other stuff (temporarily, hah, hah) there. That box seriously overgrew, and when I cleared it out last Fall (a seriously hard project), there were only 3 individual surviving "Snows". I carefully set them aside while emptying out the other plants.

I decided to replant 2 Nandinas in the back corners with 2 salvaged azaleas in between. The entire rest of the bed became a hosta and japanese painted fern bed. And because I had the 3 surviving "Snows", I stuck them in.

Bad move!

The Snows thrived and spread several feet. Among the hostas and ferns, the place just looks way too "busy" with different foliage. The hostas look great individually, but with all the Snows intermingling and filling up the spaces, it is just plain ugly!



So there I was with the very nice low-maintenance Snows not working with the equally nice low maintenance hosta in one bed, and the high-maintenance caladiums in the other bed...

You can guess where I'm going with this, I hope. I dug up a dozen individual Snows and moved them to the Caladium bed. I will enjoy the caladiums for this season and maybe even save a few dozen in the Fall for use elsewhere (but don't bet any money on that). The new landscape box will become a permanent "Snows" box, the older box will be just hostas and ferns (I'll dig out the Snows there) and neither will require much maintenance (a litle weeding, and good mulch will take care of most of that).

The remaining caladiums will become indoor hanging houseplants (out of reach of the cats - the caladiums are toxic) where they will brighten up dark corners (they love deep shade).

When I am sure the transplanted Snows are taking root in the new landscaping box, I will rip them out of the old one.

Win-win!

Removing Vines From Garden Beds

Well, I started pulling vines on out of another garden bed today. I loosened the soil around the roots to get out as much vine roots as possible.

Even with a leverage fork, it wasn't easy. That a great tool. BTW. The whole thing is solid metal and the bar behind it provides great leverage. It works great. You stab it into the soil then pull back.






When I came across a poison ivy plant in the bed, I stopped and went inside to wash my hands and arms and douse them with rubbing alcohol. I used to be immune to it. Several years ago, I developed a terrible case of it that lasted 2 weeks. I won't risk that again!



But I did dig up a real pile of vines as deep as I could get at the roots.



I'll dig up the poison ivy plants and deep as I can dig, and wearing rubber gloves for protection. I'll have a bucket of soapy water to put them into before I so much as touch a door to the house.

I'm getting there...

Impulsiveness Attack!

I stared at the "hedge" yesterday morning and suddenly decided I just couldn't live with it another day.



It started out a decade or so ago as one red twigged dogwood shrub. It really did have bright red stems in the Winter. I liked it so much that I bought a dozen more (from a cheap catalog source). Bad decision. Yes, none of them ever had red stems in Winter. I cut them down twice, but they wouldn't die. And I couldn't cut them down low enough with loppers to mow over, so they grew back. In fact, I eventually got used to the ugly things and mowed around them. Naturally, "other stuff" started growing up alongside them and soon it was the ugly thicket shown above...

So it HAD to go. NOW! I plugged in my electric chain saw (no more attempts with the pruners) and hacked into everything at ground level. I got this far before the chain saw wasn't cutting through anything anymore.



After that, I used a hedge trimmer to take out the soft stuff, and an axe to chop out stumps and junk saplings. The hedge trimmer is a rechargeble electric type (I hate noisey gas-power tools and can never keep those 2-stroke tools working anyway). Then I couldn't find the recharger transformer... Argh.

OK, pruners for the vines and the ax for the shrub roots and saplings... I finally got to the top where the one good original red-twigged dogwood is (still surviving, amazingly). It took some real work to get the junk out from around it without damaging it!



And least I had some company! I seem to have made a new friend.



He (I think - well it didn't seem appropriate to investigate too much) seems to live across the street as a daytime outdoors cat. I had never seem him (?) before, but his predecessor was also friendly and would come over for scritches whenever I worked outside in the front yard. He sat in the shade of a bush watching me work and whenever I sat down for a minute, he was right there rubbing and curling up at my feet. Apparently, I am very cat-attractive. He enjoyed investigating the garage thoroughly whenever I got too active with tools.

Well, I managed to fill the trailer with "hedge" debris.



I'll bring it to the brush recycling center Saturday so that I can have the trailer filled with free mulch. The new front landscaping box needs a couple of inches worth and I have places in the backyard perennial bed that are bare ground and want to grow weeds.

I could take tip cuttings from the "good" red-twigged dogwood shrub, but I bought a primo plant of that type named "Arctic Fire" that is suppose to be even brighter red, So I will plant it next to the orginal dogwood and see which looks best. I'll take tip cuttings from the winner next Summer. I LIKE having the hedge along the driveway; I just want it to be something worth looking at and maintaining...

And if the tip cuttings work, I will eventually plant a row on the other side of the driveway.

BTW, the big shrub that appears in some of the pictures is a "burning bush" (Euonymus alata "Compactus"). Praying mantises love it (I sometimes get a couple on me while mowing around it) and it IS a spectacular crimson color in the Fall.

But I have to say that, between moving the upright bar yesterday and all the cutting work today, every muscle in my body hurts. Heck, my toes hurt! Just lifting a beer to my lips hurts (it's the triceps). But I'll manage. ;)