Amen on the ditch lillies...I have been trying to get rid of them for 30 years and they still pop up where I think a nice one is going to be.
If you plant this, you'll regret it
Hey guys........at least you don't have MY problem I bet! I have a hubby that won't LET me dig up the ditch lilies!!! Or get rid of them! Or anything else for that matter! Can you imagine how hard it is for me to change anything around here?????????? LOL!!! But...I am used to him...been married for 45 years!
34 years, huh? Wow, he's almost like one of the family....hehehehe.
34?????????????? I said 45!!!!!!!!!!
Oooops, I must have been thinking of me! 8=} 45 is even better!!!
Well my DH won't let me trim or cut down any trees...We have practicaly a black garden..and we live above a beautiful lake but do you think we can see it??????????/ Boy are they stubborn sometimes! It's all about control...oops I guess we are supposed to be talking about plants.
This message was edited Jul 14, 2005 8:32 AM
I am going to try this paint brush method.
My biggest mistake was planting Artemisia 'Oriental Limelight'. I planted it last year. The tag said 12" x 12", but I cut it back when it got to about 3' x 3'. I searched around and saw references to its invasive nature. When my one plant turned into 30+ this spring I knew that I had to get rid of it. I have been pulling new sprouts all year. It spreads aggressively by underground runners.
- Brent
Catnip...I have easily pulled 1,000 seedlings since I first planted this. Thought the cats would like it, and they do, but I let that first plant go to seed, and without thinking put the deadheaded seedheads in the compost heap, which happens to be COLD compost. You can deduce the rest of the story.
Others--lamiastrum or yellow archangel escaped from pots and is taking over the areas where it rooted. Tiny pieces left in the ground or between paving stones keep on growing and insinuate themselves in the middle of other plants. It roots at any leaf axil that touches the ground. Equally badly behaved is that #!*# chameleon plant (Houttuynia cordata) which pops up uninvited amazingly far from the parent plants. Japanese anemones have spread like lava with runners under the ground. They fill every empty space and come up in the middle of big plants like peonies. They're even in the lawn! I threw out at least a bushel this spring. Finally, rudbeckia Goldsturm and its 5,000 children are unbelievably agressive, crowding out peacefull neighbors and making pathways impassable. It is truly uncomfortable for me to rip out perfectly good plants, even those with wandering habits, but this plant drives me to murder without guilt.
My pink evening primrose is very aggressive, but I like what it looks like when it blooms in mass. I have had it for 7 years, started from one plant. Every year I let it come up and bloom, (it blooms pretty early) then when it starts to fade I pull it all out like it was an annual. It comes back from roots but stays small the rest of the season so it won't bully the other plants. Chuck
cmaley, that is how I feel about the pink primrose. Wouldn't want to be without the masses of pink. I pull the clumps out by the roots and it comes back the next year.
For ditch lillies - the perfect solution is ROUNDUP. Well saturated - works for me.
Gee, I think I've had all but the may apple and the first ones mentioned. Lamium is a curse, houttuynia is a double curse, ditch dayliles a big pain because they do return time and time again and get into my other daylily stock, oenthera until I could scream and the miserable horrible Aegopodium (Bishop's Weed, Gout Weed).
If wishing could just make them disappear forever! Instead I dig, I send to the dump, I forage in the morning and evening, I dig more and still have all but the lamium but then there's always next spring.
May apple is invasive? I just planted one native in the garden, plus several asian may apples. Maybe I should put them somewhere else.
As I walk around my yard I am beginning to believe I only have a very few plants that I really like..the rest are thugs! Now someone start a thread of plants that are really well behaved, look nice all the time, and you don't like to "share" when someone asks for some.
This message was edited Jul 15, 2005 3:07 PM
Vossner - I did read on a thread, today, about someone hating their Gooseneck Loosestrife but I love mine. When she wanders I rip her out and have chunks of granite to tell me when she goes too far. For me she's well behaved.
Now that hummingbird vine that I just "had to have" and it's never flowered since I bought it in '98 but pops up all over: OUT OUT OUT.
Levilyla- I'm with you! I looked around and saw Evening Primrose, Lady's Mantle, Phlox that is seeding everywhere, Ironweed that I left in because it was pretty, Catmint, Bee Balm (actually well-behaved), Ajuga, and a horrible fern someone planted right before we bought the house that has taken over the entire side of the house!
We bought this house in winter and when yellow flowers popped up in spring, at first I thought they were nice, then they expanded and then I found out the culprit was Oenthera! Fourteen years later and no matter how I rip them out, they still grow.
All this talk about primroses got me nervous, because we just planted Chihuahuan (aka Baja) primrose. However, I did some more research and Oenothera stubbei is not described as invasive (some others are) in any of the sources I checked, including this one: http://tinyurl.com/7o7uo
It is a groundcover, though, and will spread as a clump. We have it planted under a tree, surrounded by rocks, in a sea of gravel, so perhaps it will work for us!
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This message was edited Jul 16, 2005 4:18 PM
Brent - I almost got bushwhacked by that artemisia as well. I liked the variegation and my other artemisia just stayed in a clump. I stuck the first ones around the edge of a honesuckle as I didn't know how much sun they wanted. They grew and stretched a bit and that was ok. The next spring they were popping up in the grass 4 feet away and had to run under sunken field stone to do it. Red Alert!!! The originals were cut cut in half and treated to healthy shot of roundup and luckily I smoked 'em all to the ends of the stolons.
I wish that bindweed responded to roundup so well. :(
Years ago I planted pink evening primrose (Oenothera speciosa) and it was beautiful but after a couple months I had to rip it out. It was taking over everything! After doing some research I replaced it with O. 'Siskiyou Pink' which is just as lovely and extremely well behaved. In fact, it shares space with Dianthus 'Zing Rose' and has a hard time keeping up.
Now why can't dianthus Zing Rose just get as wild as Oenthera? Love that plant!!!
If the zing rose got as wild as everything else then you would hate it and want to get rid of that also! If all the ditch lillies were an azure blue we would probably hate them. (Although that does sound rather nice).
It really does sound nice! The dianthus are so simple to lift and move and even give away that I doubt if it would be like Houttuynia or Aegopodium.
I failed to mention the fern invaders. Bracken fern comes up in all the wrong places and I can't even find where the roots are, they're so deep. Then there's the stand of sensitive fern, which spreads all over the place, looks beautiful for about the first six weeks of the season, and then suddenly starts falling over and turning brown. Does it every year, and every year I'm seduced again by that beautiful early foliage, and disappointed when it fails.
Asparagus fern! Had it in the ground at our last house and it took soooo much back-breaking work to dig it all out, I can't look at a fern anymore.
We bought a package of ferns but I lost the label for the INVADER FERN. It forms roots that are like baseball sized. It runs underground but not so deep that I can't move them to the dump. Just when I think they're gone, they come back. Now they've invaded my Japanese irises and Asiatic lilies. Time to dig again!
I've been really lucky so far with most of the invaders listed, but thank goodness thought about it when I planted them. Part of my garden was leveled before I moved here, and sandy subsoil and rocks was what I was left with in areas. Other areas in the same garden were deep, rich, and organic. I stuck gooseneck loosestrife, chameleon plant, pink evening primrose, goldstrum rudbeckias, and lamiastrum in these areas till I could get around to ammending there. Now, I don't think I'll worry about ammending; the plants are forced to remain well behaved(so far-3rd year) and are giving me good color in problem areas.
The ditch daylilies on the other hand...AAAUUUUG! One thing that did make the addition of my last new bed that was full of them easier was mowing them for 1 full year before I started pulling them out. The roots decreased in size and were weekened so they pulled out easier.
The roots on those ARE different, somehow, than regular daylilies. Long ago I read where they should be put in with household garbage and not composted. They're supposed to carry a virus that can spread to other daylilies. I just pop them out and put them into our own garbage every time I spot one. Guess the bits and pieces of the roots would live on forever.
The ditch lillies that I dug out last year went into the burn pile, which has been burned off twice since then. There is a very helathy patch of them left on the side. I'm going to have to round-up the burn pile.
Isn't it odd that when people see a garden they look at the flowers and plants but never consider what had to be ripped up and burned or sent off somewhere? When I think of the truckloads of weeds (bad ones that we won't compost) that DH has taken to the dump, just this year, it boggles my mind.
Yet, when I look at other gardens I don't think of them as having waste. I just never thought about it before today!
The worst I ever have planted is Graveyard Moss (Euphorbia cyparissias). This keeps coming up and are difficult to pull out. They are so fragile and it breaks of...the tiny roots stay invislble in the ground...so they keep popping up everywhere in the garden because it travels too..
This entire thread is really encouraging in a way. I'm finding out about more invasive plants than I ever knew about.
i feel bad because i really don't mind the ditch lilies in some places and have planted them. i will find out i am sure that i am sorry to have done so!
Don't feel bad at all...that is why all of us gardeners are here...we have ALL planted things we have later regreted. I transplanted the fulva years ago also and believe me them are very pretty. It all boils down to where they are and whether you want them there. If you have the room..have them!
You may love them there! Don't worry. Never feel like you made a mistake - That may be the perfect plant for your spot.
The other day I got a sinking feeling in my belly when someone wrote about Monarda, which of course I had just planted 3 different varieties of! I even had some already that never gets out of control! I worried for 2 days, then decided to let it go. If I listened to everyone who told me I was doing the wrong thing, I wouldn't have a garden at all.
Gardening is all about doing it yourself, making your own choices, making yourself happy. It shouldn't be stressful. It's an extension of you. There are no mistakes.
This message was edited Jul 17, 2005 7:11 PM
And I did not mean to say "them" are very pretty. LOL
Maybe if we just looked at some of these plants with the thought in mind that they could get out of hand we'd keep more of any eye on them. I still love Houttuynia (just now so much of it) but from now on I'd plant it with at least two layers of weedblock in a pot and then plant the pot. To me, that's the message here: nobody is saying don't plant this but "If you plant this....". Just think of it as a warning.
I have been ruthless about protecting my new property from the plotting
takeover artists that attacked my old city garden. I had love-in-the-mist
nigella & spider plant cleome's seeding all over! I had those yellow evening
primrose coming back after I'd sifted out *almost* every peice of root.
So... I've pulled out budlea's that self seeded, dug out that nasty artemesia
a couple of months after planting it. But I goofed with the "ditch lilies" I
planted them on a very rocky hillside that I thought I'd never want to plant.
ARGH! I've found other prettier things can be grown there and now I'm
trying to rid that hillside of those survivors.
Can you wound the leaves with a weed whacker and spray with Roundup every three days until they die? Or cover with black plastic for a few months?
What gets rid of trumpet vine? I have it coming up all over the place with my new daylilies. I've dug it up and it still comes back. Would round-up kill it?