Plants You Can't Beat To Death With A Stick!

Leisurelee, Welcome to Dave's Garden!

Horrible thought, nuking Goutweed! Might make it an even worse super-weed *grin

Tina, something I bet you couldn't kill: purslane. Even on bare blacktop in full sun for a week and it is still fat and sassy and nasty. *grin

Hens and chicks! The only way that any of mine die is when the squirrels bowl with them too often. At least that is what I guess they are doing: get the ones that haven't got good roots yet and roll them all over the yard! They do it too often, and the poor things die from leaf-loss :(

I bought a beautiful hanging basket of Purslane several years ago and killed it in record time! I think it's just too wet for it here. I haven't had the heart to try any since then.

My friend is still grumbling about her runaway bananas. I told her she should sell them on eBay :-) At least she'd have some extra cash to make her feel better! Her 12-year-old usually whacks at them for her but he says there's a nest of those huge flying cockroaches (our other state bird) in them and he refuses to go back out there!

Oh my God!!! Zulu, you HAD to say that cockroaches nest in banana trees??? I love my banana trees (which stay in a nice, neat clump), but if I keep hearing that they harbor spiders and roaches and other repulsive insects, I'm gonna have to take a flame-thrower to them! LOL.

Where in South Louisiana do cockroaches and spiders NOT nest?

Your friend's son has my fullest sympathy and understanding, Zulu. Spiders I can deal with, but the giant flying cockroaches .... eeewwwweeee *shudder*

Cheri'

Those are the state bird of Arizona too! Even contests to see who has the biggest...

Roaches also love palms.

Tina, if you need some grass for your yard, I have some Johnson grass I have been mowing for about 18 years and we still havent eradicated it!

Lavanda I really must trade you some crab grass for your Johnson's variety;)

Tina

How about Artemisia "Limelight"..ugh! I planted it 2 yrs. ago when it was so cute and varigated. That thug turned into the ugliest big plant, looked like a weed. It also was sprouting up within 2 ft away in all directions. DH helped me dig it up and we couldn't believe the runners that were taking off. We thought we had gotten all the roots and pieces...but nooo. If there was a small piece left in the soil, it became another plant. I am still seeing little seedlings pop up in the same area.

Now this plant might grow like this out here in zone 10, compared to lower zones. Talk about pushing zones, do you have any idea how much I would love to grow some of the lower zone plants and can't? We don't get cold enough for many of them and they rot during our mild winters. I still push my zones and it's fun to try. hehe

Donna

Donna please tell me this "thug" WAS NOT one of the wonderful plants you sent me!!!

Tina:)

Ohhh no Tina, I wouldn't do that to anyone who is a true gardener. lol

Donna :-)

Lavanda just HAD to mention that roaches love nesting in PALMS -- my OTHER most-favorite tree (besides banana trees). Geez! I can't win. -- Jean

I think the wild purslane is the one you can't kill. The pretty hybrids will die out in a couple of years. And I don't care what Euell Gibbons said, it doesn't inspire me to eat it. But I do let it grow here and there, until I need the spot for something else.

Johnson grass has a backup root system. If you want to get rid of it, ignoring the fact that seeds will still find their way back into the area, you must dig way down. When you pull just the top and roots, you will have left a little swollen root much further down, and this will sprout up as soon as the ground is warm.

When I am running short of lettuce for the evening meal, I have been known to put all the seedling purslane in with the salad. Everyone raves about how good it is that night. Never had the courage to tell the family they are eating weeds ;D

I do have fancy pewter plant tags for a few of my herbs. One for onion, one for tarragon, one for thyme. One is really engraved "weeds". My favorite ;D

I found out what one of my unknown plants is: somehow or other, Star of Bethlehem bulbs got mixed in with my gardens. Stuff comes up everywhere! Small black bulbs hide under the roots, so no matter how often I pull off the green tops, the bulb stays put and puts up new foliage. Gggrrrrr! It would make a great substitute for Johnson grass, for those who want to grow it and can't.

Now people (tongue in cheek), you know it is agin the law to import Johnson grass to anywhere that it isn't, don't you???

on the serious side, in NY state, if some shows up on your farm, you are supposed to report it to the department of Environmental Conservation. It is a big fine if they find it and you haven't reported it.

Leisurlee, I can sympathize about the Japanese Knotweed. We have it one big flower bed and while I do pull it alot, I'm also giving lots of RoundUp. We seem to be making some headway. these are the times that try gardeners souls and bring out the herbicidal maniac in all of us.

Kathleen, Japanese knot weed may cause my divorce! My husband (who doesn't do one ounce of the gardening) is a total organic guy and really doesn't want me to use round up. I don't know any other way to get rid of it. I'm on vacation next week, and he'll be gone. There is no food crop near it, so what he doesn't know won't kill him! heh heh. I just wish it would work on our burdock forest, too.

Ok, here's my rationalization: Round Up affects only the plants you spray it on. It has no carryover and if you don't get it on anything that you don't want to die, it will not even affect plants in the immediate vicinity. I am pretty organic myself. In fact, if the USDA hadn't gotten into the organic certification game, we could almost be called an organic dairy, but we won't go into that. Round-Up does severely affect burdock as well as the knotweed. In fact, I have some knotweed that is looking pretty much mostly dead, some burdock that is dead and some curly dock that has vanished from the face of the earth. You have to use the industrial strength stuff, but I think there's a point with some of these weeds where we just have to take it to them. I am not a major supporter of Monsanto, I'd bet you money I can tell you a whole lot more bad things about that particular corperation than good. But, since some blind government officials brought us the scourge of knotweed, I guess we'll just have to put up with their favorite corp to get rid of it.

Just to illustrate the futility of digging the stuff out, last year, I decided to do just that. I was standing in a rather large hole that was a yard across and getting past a yard deep, when my husband asked if I was trying to dig my way to Japan to give the stuff back to the Japanese. I had not reached the end of the root - it was still at least an inch across and I couldn't pull it out. I KNOW that the plants I have been spraying once a week all summer are spawn of that root, and it is still sending up new little plants to bedevil me. I have planted around it, it is growing up through my plantings. I will not give up! LOL, it does cause a bit of fanaticism after a bit.

Does anyone have some ditch lilies for postge that I could sweet-talk you into sending me?

Sure, you want some ditch iris to go with them?

Ditch Iris? Is that the same stuff as Swamp Iris?

=)

Cheri'

Similar, but yellow rather than blue. They have apparently used them to hold dikes from eroding in Holland fo years. I. pseudosomething or other - I was just out moving an echinacea and my brain melted - it's HOT!


pseudocarus?

yup, that's what we call swamp iris. The blue are "purple swamp iris", and they are shorter and not so invasive, er I mean prolific. ;)

Cheri'

Heehee, well prolific and invasive just depend on which side of the garden fence you on, right???

lol
I'm just bitter because mine nearly killed some of my daylilies. ;-)
I shouldn't have had them in the same bed, I guess, but no one warned me about them! 5 rhizomes became over 100 in a year and a half! Now THAT'S prolific!

I rescued the daylilies, dug up all those rhizomes and now keep them confined. I'm just grateful they spread on the surface and not by runners ...

Cheri'

I threw mine in the road ditch. The state mows them off after they bloom and they keep the ditch from washing out - best of both worlds!

Hey, I've got a tall one for you--TANSY!!! It's a relative of yarrow but 4 foot tall. Nice yellow button flowers & lacey leaves. Spreads like mad! Mow it, stomp it, dig it up! Grows in dry or wet areas. I use it around my utility boxes. Repairman can't kill it!!! LOL

Love this thread...hard to believe there is somewhere
that creeping charlie can't take hold! In our yard
it was planted 60 years ago...3 generations of gardeners
still can't get rid of it!!

darius, can I have some of the seed of the pink primrose? I was supposed to get some plants from someone but it never happened.........