Hello and welcome to DG...I know you will like it here...Please come to this..Michigan forum, to chat...gab...and tell us about your gardens...Welcome...come often..
Smiles...Diana...
Lets welcome "throckmorzog" Okemos, Mi.
welcome pull up a chair and sit a spell we love to chat!!
Gloria
Welcome!!!!
Cindy
Welcome to Dave's garden and to the Michigan forum. Hope to see you here often. Tell us about your garden.
Brenda
Thanks for the welcome!
I started looking at Dave's Garden to identify the weeds that have me stumped... (turns out to be Canada Thistle, aargh)...and found I wanted more! So I joined the club.
My tended garden is about 1/2 an acre, triangle shaped lot, plus an acre of woodlot along one side, an 8 acre wild pond area behind me, and my front yard is on a a cul de sac in the suburbs where most of the neighbors have perfect lawns and a service that mows and fertilizes for them .
The owner before me was an avid gardener, so there are perennial beds covering most of the lot. She hadn't tended them in 5 or 6 years so they were about 80% weeds... Still fighting the wild grapes (non fruiting), wild roses (non blooming), rampant raspberry bushes (non producing), crabapple and cherry tree sprouts, thistle, virginia creeper, milk weed, poison ivy, and other maniacally large weeds.
Mostly at this point I have hundreds of hosta, daylilies, groundcovers, delphinium, astilbe, ferns, Alchemilla mollis, water lilies, dianthus, geraniums, etc in temporary beds or in containers. I'm 'rescuing' all that I can from the overgrown beds so the hardscape can be repaired and the soils amended.
My house is on the top of a little hill next to the neighborhood water run off gully for the pond. Therefore, it is VERY VERY dry on that side of the house (west). The house is dug down to a walk-out basement on the east side and there at about 6-9" below grade there is standing water all year round.
I took out 3 pickup truck loads of grape vine, dead honeysuckle, pawpaws, and rose vine from the woodlot this year... I'm afraid several of the older trees are dead from it, but most can be saved. One tree has been dead so long it now houses racoon nests and woodpeckers, which is great.
I have groundhogs, deer, canadian geese, squirrels, chipmunks, and moles that I wish were gentler on the garden; and blue heron, fox, birds, ducks, bees, and butterflies that I enjoy sharing my yard with. Oh, the wasps can be a problem, too.
Currently I'm working on keeping my rescued plants alive, repairing the swimming pool, and removing all the invasive vines and weeds. Not the most fun part of gardening, but in a few years it will be WOW! I like doing all the work myself, but am considering hiring out some hardscape work this summer.
Glad to be here!
Sue
Wowow....throckmorzog, sounds like a fun..thing..please..post..how you are doing....smiles..Diana
geezz Sue when do you have time to rest I'v been fighting wild grape vines for 20 years and no end in sight LOL :0(
Gloria
Can you spray some of those vines with something like Roundup to kill them? Sounds like a lot of work. You should take before and after pics. :)
Brenda
Hi and welcome! I'm new this spring to Dave's Garden also. It's a great place. I'm sure you will enjoy it here. Wow, you have been busy! It sounds like you will have a beautiful place. I'm close to you--I live in Mason.
Pat
Brenda I wish round up would work It did not !!!
I think theres some thing you can "inject " into them? to kill them to the root but I can't find it so its pull and chop !!
Gloria