Yardening 6- Feb 2014- Snow SNow go away!

BBC shows in general tend to be of very good quality and have heard good things about Torchwood and Luther.

Sally, I actually stopped watching House of Cards, only because I didn't have the time. I don't think I'm at the point where the main character is really bad, but I'm sure I'll get there in a few episodes! I'm waiting to binge watch one weekend. Unfortunately, I just read a major spoiler about the new season. Ugh....

I do think Sherlock is one of the smartest shows out there. I watch it with the closed caption on because some of the accents are a little hard to understand!

Back to yardening! I tried sowing Rudbeckia last year but got very poor germination. Everything on line says they're really easy to germinate.

What are your recommendations for sowing Rudbeckia seeds? Should I start them indoors?

This message was edited Feb 18, 2014 10:34 AM

SSG, I bet you could totally do them indoors. Just don't cover them much with soil. Why not give it a shot and let us know how it goes?

SSG are your seeds collected seeds or packaged? Which Rudbeckia?

May need cold/moist treatment:

http://www.wildones.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/004cGerminationInstructionsFinalRevision.pdf

From MOBOT
www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/Portals/0/.../Propagation.pdf

Ooh, I need to read that carefully, Coleup!

I had annual Rudbeckias last year and wintersowed half and direct sowed the other half. I got one flower. :(

Typ and Coleup, how did you sow your Rudbeckia seeds last year?

SS--
If all else fails--do what Mother nature does. Drop/sow the seeds end of
summer-early fall and let them do their thing.

Rudbeckia Goldstrum spreads very well from seed. All by itself.

The R. Hirta--not so readily--but i do not know. I tried to sprinkle some seeds
of the Hirta last year. Nothing much came of it. Maybe they will sprout this year-
being a biennial.

You could also striate the seeds in the fridge and then grow it from seed inside--
like an annual--and plant it outside when the time comes.
Still--it may be 2 years before you get bloom.

This is just off the top of my head....I need to fo;;ow mu own advice and get some
seeds in a moist baggie in the fridge. I SO want my double, yellow Hirta back.

G.

I direct sowed a bunch of the species hirta seeds from a promotional seed packet I got from the State Fair, and now I'm still pulling up plants 3 years later. Sorry but in my tiny yard they are weedy.
Then I sowed a bunch of 'Indian Summer' outside in spring: nothing came up. Could have been many reasons. I sowed my last ~10 Indian Summer seeds into a pot full of potting mix outside in about midsummer and got 6 seedlings which bloomed the following year.
Hoping Indian Summer will proliferate so I can share plants with you guys in addition to seeds.

I've only grown Rudbeckia "Irish Eyes", but I had great germination success with winter sowing them. Back in 2010/11, I believe. That was a really heavily snowy winter, as I recall.

There they are, going nuts all around my Hollyhock.

I would love to have some weedy Rudbeckia! :)

I'll try wintersowing half and indoor sowing the other half.

Speedie---

They look similar to the double yellow "Hirta" I had....from 2009

Oh wow Gita, those are beautiful!! Yours are much prettier than mine were - they have more "personality". Mine just sorta looked like daisies with green "eyes". =)

Gita, that is a gorgeous R. hirta. That's a variation I haven't seen before.

It's too wet to get anything done outside, but I did take pictures of the crocus that are now in full bloom! :)

Sequoia set up a new thread for spring flowers: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1351189/

Thank you for that heads-up!

It's too wet and squishy to do anything outside here too... not that I'd be able to - I'm stuck to my maths. =(

Thanks, everyone--I also wish i could have that Hirta again.
I just WS some of it again--at the proper time of year,,,,NOW.
I had a better picture than the one i posted above---need to find it...
This was the 2nd year they came back--and then never the 3rd....

And--yes! There will be seeds in my BOX... G.

Gita, your Hirta could have been/ can be Winter sown as early as second or third week of December with NO difficulties whatsoever. Put 'em in the winter-sowing container, throw 'em outside with FULL exposure to nature, and forget about 'em until mid-April. Easy peezy. I don't know that it is necessarily 'accurate' to say that "now" is the "proper time of year"; the window is really quite wide. Those in that pic of mine that I showed ^^ up there were sown in December of the previous year. I transplanted them to that bed near the end of April that year... and you can see how they turned out. There is quite a large time frame within which to work.

According to Prairie Moon native seed germination guidelines

https://www.prairiemoon.com/How-to-Germinate-Native-Seeds.html
Rudbeckia hirta (a bennial) does best with 30 days of treatment C (cold moist stratification)
"C: (Number of stratifying days): Seeds germinate after a period of cold, moist stratification (click for a picture tutorial on how to artificially stratify)
Please note: You do not need to stratify if you are fall planting or using a seed drill. Also, do not use this method if you are planting a seed mix and cannot keep the site moist.
Mix seeds with equal amounts or more of damp sand, vermiculite, or other sterile media (moist—but not so wet that water will squeeze out of a handful). We use silica sand (available for sale) for small quantities. For large quantities we use coarse grade vermiculite. Place mixture in a labeled, sealed plastic bag and store in a refrigerator (33–38°F). Stratify for the # days indicated in parentheses. If two months (C(60)) of this cold storage before planting is normally required to break the dormancy of these seeds, one month may work for many species if time is a constraint. Some seeds may sprout in the storage bag if moist stratified too long. If sprouting occurs, plant immediately. Another method of breaking dormancy for species requiring moist stratification is to sow seeds outdoors in the fall so they may overwinter."
___________________________.

Unless they are 'winter sowed' now, there may not be enough winter left for nature to do the work and still get seedlings to plant out for this year. Some rudbeckias require 60 or more days of cold/moist treatment.

What can you do to fix an arborvitae that's been splayed open by wet snow?

I have one that still looks very pretty (must be a single leader) and another one that looks terrible on top.

Ss, are any branches actually cracked or broken? Do you have any pics you could share please? A "simple" pruning back may be able to do the trick, but I think it would be safer to let us see it first, if you could, please.

Speedie, I didn't take a close look, but I'll take a picture tomorrow. Nothing looks broken, but it's ugly!

SSG: A lot of people take thin string and actually tie them together. I would definitely not recommend this. I suppose you could tie them together as long as you had something thick to pad the branches as to not cut off circulation.

My first wise guy off the cuff response to your questions was to cut them down though ;P

My neighbor has barricaded his yard with arbs and they are all over 30 years old. In Feb of '11 we got a heavy wet snow and the ones bordering our property were about 18' tall. I had to chop them all off at 10' afterward because they were all splayed and looked terrible. Unfortunately, they still look terrible because of the trim job I did on them. They were never trimmed so in my defense I had little to work with. I think I'm going to hedge trim them a little this summer to see if they will fill in a little.

I have heard success stories of people using duct tape, believe it or not! When the branches were cracked, but not broken all the way through, they splinted well around the crack, and held it all together with firmly-(but not tightly) wrapped duct tape, checking on it periodically to make sure there was no girding/cutting into the branch.

Heeheeheee Sequoia, you crack me up! I have a tendency toward a 'wise-guy' personality - wonder if we're related!? =)

Lol...sometimes it gets me in trouble :)

I weeded the spinach and asparagus beds yesterday. The spinach had had row cover over it, turns out the voles came back and enjoyed that. Most of the spinach is just disappeared, with a few small plants looking fine. And there was a surface tunnel on top of the dirt and under the row cover. I hope the owls I heard were saying Thank you for letting them get a better view of the voles.
THe deep cold has killed all my little beet/chard seedlings from fall, and many of the mustard plants look gone. This winter puts a new perspective on the winter crops I had such good luck with the last two years.

I turned my compost, it has barely done anything this month and is wet and smelly, the food scraps can't do much in the cold.

Sally---

I feel for you! You had high hopes for all these greens--and now there is none...
Is there NO way to deal with these Voles??? Remember that long Thread we had
about Voles a few years ago? It was the one I started about "Ravenous Critters" Part. #1.
I am sure you could dig it up. There was SOOO much talk about Voles on it.

If it were safe for Addy--could you cut up the green, waxy, bait cubes (sold for mice)
and scatter them under your row covers? I am sure the Voles would eat those....

Years ago--when we had one of those long-lasting snows....when it finally melted,
I saw those surface tunnels...I was not aware of Voles doing that--and I thought that
a snake had cruised under the snow...Scared me a bit...

Talking about snakes--do you have any that call your garden "home"....
Would they be able to find and eat the Voles?
How does one attract a nice, big Black Snake? I had one last summer--somewhere--
caught a glimpse of it twice. They are so skittish!
I really think that it decimated the many baby rabbits running around...we will see...

G.

North Creek Group Buy still need to complete some flats for ordering for delivery by Spring Plant Swap

Goldenrods and Asters
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=9772998

Other Native or Nectar or Host plants
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=9773013

FERNS (4 plants of 6 different ferns)
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=9775679

Please indicate your interest. Thanks

I love our big black snake, we have a few around here and there is one that lives under the brick patio somewhere. We were just over run with those cute little Chipmunks. They are so cute when you have a few, not so cute when there are dozens and dozens of them.
Sally, Sorry to hear of your culinary loss.

Oh man, Sally, I'm so sorry to hear of the lost of those plants.. especially the spinach! =( Those darned voles are just so awful! Gonna go see if I can find that thread Gita was talking about, I'm sure there's gotta be something good in it for us.

My neighbor had this same problem a few years ago. His wife wanted to cut down the shrub but he didn't. I suggested that he remove some damaged parts at the top and then wrap soft rope around the entire shrub until it had a chance to bounce back. If he wrapped rope around it, I didn't see it, so he might have just tied the interior branches together. Several years later, it's still a little flat on the top, but otherwise it looks great.

I personally wouldn't use duct tape; it adheres too well and might pull off bark when you remove it. Good alternatives are anything (esp. wire) that's threaded through a 6-10" section of garden hose, rope with padding underneath as mentioned above (sections of garden hoses work well), or soft clothesline type rope.

Black electrical tape works really well for rescuing branches that are broken but still hanging on by a thread. Depending on how bad the break is and how thick the branch is, I either use just the tape or a popsicle stick splint wrapped with ample amounts of electrical tape. It expands as the branch grows, is easy to remove without tearing off bark, and blends in well. I have left electrical tape on branches for over a year. It doesn't disintegrate or fall off, and the branches always mend.

This message was edited Feb 25, 2014 7:04 PM

Thanks for the tip, Muddy! I need to take a picture but probably won't get a chance until later this week.

I have 2 other arborvitae that have a wide, shrubby growth habit. They look awful when it snows but bounce back beautifully without any help from me.

Nylons work pretty well you tie them a bit tight because they have a good bit of give to them. That type of damage is why I don't have them. In this area you see so much of that type of damage.

Speedie---

I searched for it. This is the part #1. There is #2 ans, maybe even #3.

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/865841/

Lots to read.....G.

Well--that didi not load for me-maybe to old--it also had 300 Posts to it.
Here id the link to part #2. You caan, most likely, grt to #1 as they are linked.

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/893935/?hl=Ravenous+Critters+and+other+pests

This message was edited Feb 25, 2014 9:15 PM

Nylons, good tip Holly....although I wouldn't have any of those myself ;)

I dunno, remember that Joe Namath commercial??? Not too shabby he he he...

This message was edited Feb 26, 2014 6:02 AM

Suuuurrrrrre! < =P

Haha, I've never dressed like a woman although there was one time in high school that I was bought by some freshmen girls for our senior elves fundraiser and they made me dress in some questionable attire for school.

His senior year of high school, my son borrowed one of my dresses, a pair of my smaller mixing bowls (and a "holder" for the bowls, if ya know what I mean)... let me put make up on him (which was difficult around his beard), and he went to school dressed as a girl for Halloween! Hahahahaahaa!!!!! What a total crack-up!! He looked lovely in my pink floral print dress and his hiking boots! =)

The best one my son ever did was dress up in my wig and stockings.

He was three and came into the kitchen absolutely starkers except for a pair of my white knee hi's that ended just at his bum and my wig with this huge "aren't I great" grin. There was absolutely nothing inbetween. He was so proud of himself. I wanted so badly to take a picture but since I didn't have a digital camera I didn't dare. Man he was so cute!

Yehudith

ROFLOL, I have a pic around here somewhere of Jamie dressed up in a tutu type dance costume. He was about 3 at the time and his sister and some of her friends dressed him up and took him outside where all the neighborhood kids thought he was hysterical and he was loving being the center of attention. LOL

hahahaha!
I have hidden a picture of my younger boy about age 2 in a pink tutu and cutest hysterical grin on his face. he made sure I tore it up and threw it away, or so he thinks...

Our football coach in Jr. high recommended the whole team wear support pantyhose. I don't know where he got it but he said it reduced injuries and leg fatigue. It also kept you warm.

Well he's certainly right about the "keeping you warm" part, but... tell us Ric, did it help with injuries? Were they uncomfortable with all that hair on your legs!? Haahahhaaaa!!!!

Sally, Hahahahahaahaaaa!!!!! So, you don't still have that picture floating around somewhere, huh?? Noooooooo, you're a good Mom, you tore it up!! < =D LOL!!!!!!!!

I actually do have a pic of my son sitting down trying to put on a pair of my panty hose... I think he was about 2. Heehee, they do the cutest things!!