who is an un-welcome guest in your garden? Pest-hotline

begging works for me... But overall he's a sweet kid who does his chores.
I just wish he would have an interest in gardening. Longer than 5 minutes, and he's gone...
When I had his age, I planted the potato peels, and harvested my big crop!

I was kidding of course. They do their chores without too much fuss - at least so far. I am happy to report that both the four and eight year olds have shown an interest in gardening. Last year they each had their own veggie garden (1/2 whiskey barrel) and they often help me water and do some minor weeding. If they could only get their mom to show a bit of interest!

There, I've hijacked my own thread!!! LOL

Hijacked? We were hijacked?????
And to think that all this time I thought we were taking the scenic route!

Oh yes, what a mistake I make, this IS the scenic route!!! What would we be without you garden_mermaid!! You put me straight, thanks ever so much!! :o)

It's the fishtail. It's hard to keep a totally straight line when you're swishing. Sometimes you just have to drift with the current.
:D

all right, you have an excuse, but what about me... I don't! :-)

That's the spirit! Hi-jack your own thread!

Scenic route suits what has happened to this thread. We're going somewhere... but we don't know where.

Hey Victor, Our youngest is a little bit older than your oldest so we're in a different phase right now. Ours are really pretty good too so I can't complain. I did recently liberated myself from making their lunches because they all seemed to be bored with everything and I was sick and tired of listening to how bored they were with anything I picked. Now they all have to go grocery shopping with me to pick what they want for lunch and they also all have to get up 15 minutes earlier every morning to pack their own lunches because I was pretty much to the point where I wanted to cry every morning over listening to them whine about their lunches and thoughts of cyanide injected into their pudding cups were beginning to float through my head. My soon to be 12 year old recently made the mistake of commenting that he didn't like the way I was folding his sweatshirts because there was a (gasp) crease down the center. I've begun to teach them how to sort, wash, fold, and put away their own laundry now. Nope, these kids don't complain much any more. They're afraid of what they'll get saddled with next. Truth be known, I should have had them doing their own laundry by Jr High anyway and they should have been making their own lunches long before that. A fellow gardener who has educated and gainfully employed kids in their 30's and 40's told me to be strong and make them do their own lunches and I did. The laundry was my brainchild since making them do their own lunches for whining worked so well. They do like to garden. We have had small vegetable gardens in the past and that was very exciting to them. They like to grow pumpkins and gourds and they've got their own house plants. Other than that, they will help me plant out in the woods as well as in some of the beds when I ask. That's kind of neat because I get a chance to talk to who ever is helping me and some really interesting things get shared. Are you getting any ideas for future use mrs_colla??? Gardeners with children need to stick together.

Well I'm lucky enough to have a young family across the street that will do just about anything for a home cooked meal or some brownies! They have an almost 5 year old that in another 2 years will probably be usable for all sorts of things! I was able to dust off some old garden dreams when they moved in. It's all rather amazing to me how much gardening I can get done for a roast beef w/mashed potatoes n gravy, peas, pineapple salad and cherry cobbler dinner. Lol .. I think it was my super duper lawn mower and stupendous collection of power and garden tools that first attracted them.

X

Not sure why but I find myself drawn to the Hijackable threads. I hate to take myself too seriously and like gardening this is recreation.

Equilibrium, you make me curious when you said "they will help me plant out in the woods" (sorry I don't know how to do one of those boxy things). What do you plant out in the woods?

Hey X, I'm really happy for you. I like the way you viewed that family when they moved in. I like the "bait" you use too. If lived by you, I would have been over for dinner and brownies and those gardening toys...er uh... tools would have been far too tempting to me. You're obviously a sweetheart for a neighbor. That family is real lucky.

Hey podster, I've been restoring the property here for a while now. We remove species like Buckthorn, Japanese Honeysuckle, Barberry, Siberian Red Twig Dogwood, and such and I try to buy flats of native plant plugs (affordable) to try to restore some balance here. Last year I planted a couple thousand plant plugs in the woods. A few years before that I planted about 1400 trees and a hundred or so shrubs in the woods. In the dappled shade of the trees, it can be 100F out and if there is a breeze it's cool under the trees. Nice time to play in the dirt...and nice time to talk to a kid when it's just the two of you.

Lauren

I was curious as I've had an urge to make a woodlands trail or path on our small acreage with native plantings. Need some kids to help I guess. But then I think I would like to be a kid at your house... : ))

Lauren, (now I know your name!) how much property do you have? It's wonderful to have such a big area to play with. That's one thing I really, really wish I had. I'm stuck with a suburban lot.

X, I think I would work for your yummies as well, bad back and all! I'm just starting to cook and I realize how much better food tastes when someone else makes it.

Victor

Hey podster, I tried a woodland path. I followed the path of least resistance by utilizing a pre-existing Bambi trail. The concept was fine but I made a few mistakes, actually quite a few. I learned from them and will be using shop vacs this year to suck up my mistakes and start again from scratch. Fortunately, I only have around 150' of mistakes. That shouldn't be that bad.

Hey Victor, I have a decent amount of land up north that I watch like a hawk and keep on top of because it's in relatively good shape. Few spot problems and a massive area of around 40 some odd acres to reclaim in the next few years but overall the lake on it and the surrounding coniferous forest and quaking bogs are virtually pristine. I recently blocked off quads, mini bikes, and snow mobiles from getting on the property. They can really make a mess of things and I was finding invasive species along the trails they were making on my property and I had to clean them up. One thing for quads and such that remain on the property to use the trails but another thing entirely when people from the big cities haul their toys up north and leave seeds from their home states and such from the treads of their tires on our property. That's exactly where the invasives came from so I blocked them off from getting on unless they want to enter via the quakingg bogs and that's gonna spell death for anyone who tries that. If you haven't ever experienced a true quaking bog... think quick sand. I only have 5 acres here where I live year round. Quite degraded like most properties in this area but I plug along. Remarkable difference here since I mechanically removed a couple thousand Buckthorn. It's amazing how the European Buckthorn can colonize and choke out the entire understory in a matter of a few decades. Last year for the first time I found species popping up from a long lost seedbank that I'd never seen on this property before. Amazing. The wetlands are next on my list.

I agree, food tastes much better when somebody else makes it. We should all get signs to hang around our necks that say, "Will work for food- really".

Sounds wonderful. Wish I 'only' had 5 acres!

Victor

Not if they were 5 fully degraded acres and you hadn't a clue your spouse had bought the property to build on as a "surprise" ;) Can we all say "surprise" in unison?

Oh - so we should not expect photos??!

I post photos all the time and the PlantFiles are littered with photos of native plants growing here. Haven't been out to take any recently as there isn't much going on in the dead of winter. There is a neat series somewhere in the threads here of an area I started clearing last fall. I sort of took a before and after and it's rather shocking. One of my favorite photos is of a natural little pond on the property here. It looks so serene blanketed in snow. I'm not embarrased about posting photos because I inherited this mess and I'm trying to do something about it and learning a lot while I go. Nothing we can be taught can compare with hands on. You really need to start one ickie at a time. After a while you kick in to high gear once you see the difference you can make. For me, it was beginning to notice that the critters were appearing. Then the ultimate was when we had cleaned up so much that we were contacted for a fox family, They were tranquilized and relocated to our property from a suburban area. Now I'm psyched. I told them to bring me a skunk next and any grub eating moles or shrews they can get their hands on for me. I'll take it all.

Sounds like a labor of love. So what exactly do you mean by a degraded property and a mess? Overrun with weeds and invasives? Was the house in good shape? Do you have source of clean, moving water? That is a magnet for good animals as well as insects. When I installed my pond a few years back, the wildlife increased many times over. Provide all the elements they need - shelter, food, water and a place to raise young - and you'll have a great habitat.

Many exotic invasive species present which discounted this property as having any habitat value whatsoever. More exotic invasives than what was ever imagined. I have a large natural pond out back and then that small naturally occurring pond over to the north. The Narrow Leaf Cattails are destroying the large pond and so is the European Phragmites. When those start closing in, better look out. In addition to the naturally occurring ponds, I have specialty ponds that are preforms for herps and odonata. And then there's one that I call the sacrifice to the raccoons where I waste out rusty crayfish (exotic invasive fauna species) and that helps keep the raccoons occupied and out of my herp ponds. There is a vernal creek on the property also. The wetlands are fully encroached at this point. That's going to get tricky and costly cleaning those up. The rest of the property has shaped up quite nicely. I couldn't focus on all of it at one time or else I'd have strange ticks to my head with drool coming out of my mouth.

You missed one of the unspoken elements to habitat creation- sustainable gardening practices ;)

The house was new construction just over 4 years ago. No issues there.

Correct - no chemicals in my gardens. Lots of beneficials. Put up a bathouse over five years ago but they never came. Time to try a new location or hang a poster of Batgirl.

Thanks - I'll check it out. I was hoping for some free bat scat (guano) too!