Beginner Gardening: Brown & green balls on Boston fern roots, 0 by plantladylin

plantladylin wrote:
Oh my goodness ... I don't know how there could possibly be a market shortage on Boston Fern! Someone could become a "gazbillionaire" here in Florida if they wanted to take the time to dig those suckers!We have mostly sand in my area of Florida but those Boston Ferns are still a lot of hard work to dig up!

And, don't get me started on the Asparagus 'Sprengeri' ... those are MONSTERS! We made the mistake of planting those years ago and still haven't totally gotten rid of them all. Hubby built me two very large wooden boxes on either side of the end of the driveway. The Asparagus Ferns were really beautiful draping over the sides but those things ended up hanging all the way down to the ground and dropping berries ... ended up taking over my Azalea bed, where I had also made the mistake of planting a couple of Boston Ferns that ended up multiplying and both were hard to eradicate. Hurricanes took down the large trees next to the area and we transplanted a few of the old Azaleas to a new location, some were too damaged to save, from the large trees falling on them. We finally were able to get a little bobcat machine in to dig out all of the ferns.

My husband has a very large heavy truck for pulling our boat and one time he tied marine grade dock line to the undercarriage of his truck and around the base of a large Asparagus fern to try to get it out of the ground ... it broke the rope! Those plants are very strong and tenacious! I still have one bed by the back driveway that is full of them ... I want them out so bad but we can't have a bobcat machine in there because it is where the water line is coming into the house and we sure don't want that broken. It will have to be cleared by hand. I have cut them back to ground level so many times only to have them be huge and full within a couple of weeks. My neighbor keeps telling me to pour gasoline on them but I could never do that, I hate even to use chemicals because of possible contamination of the ground water.

So many plants are pests and some downright invasive here in the South. I have learned that the both the Asparagus and Boston ferns are best kept in hanging baskets here in my part of the world.

This bed along my back driveway is overrun with the stuff. I's a snake haven during spring and summer so if we ever get around to clearing the space, it will be during winter months!