What's happening in your early spring garden?

I had a daylily try to bloom yesterday, barely able to open though, too cold. A lot of my succulents are sending up bloom stalk, that's always fun!

Roses, daylilies, wow, what a difference one zone up can make.
Here are my Helleborus

Doss your combination of plants with your Helleborus is outstanding!

Here are anemones

Daffodil Ice Carnival, and Muscari

I love anemones! Those are so pretty!

I think I'm going to have to try some Helleborus.
I wanted to give you all an update. Earlier in the thread I showed a photo of my front walkway. I took these (3) today so that you can be Amazed like I was with the corn gluten pre emergent.
In this area, some seedlings had already emerged so I didn't put down any Amaze.
WIB,
SW

In this photo you can see where I didn't use the pre-emergent and the area I did treat.
WIB,
SW

Should have mentioned in the previous post that the sad looking Bird of Paradise was my dividing line. To the left, no pre-emergent, and to the right I used the Amaze corn gluten. Approximately, two to two and a half weeks ago. The Bird of Paradise is at the lower edge of the photo.
This view shows that I haven't made much more progress weeding out that devil grass, but I haven't got to go back and pull more than a couple of weeds, and those were hiding under leaves.
I'm pretty impressed with this product and thought you should see why, too.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing this with me. Life is easier now.
WIB,
SW

Eeeeek, SW, what is that stuff? I want some! Take a look at the area I poured pre-emergent on, gently moistened as directed, didn't walk on or otherwise disturb, and STILL resulted in weeds, weeds, weeds!! The areas lacking weeds do so only because they were/are covered in leaves from fall, ie mulch, eh!

BTW, I'm wondering if I should/could use piles of those leaves to cover my rose beds in the back yard next fall. Whaddya think?

Sure wish I had a flock of silly wabbits!

Linda

That photo was a mistake. Those are the leaves that I just left on top of the mulch on my side of the yard. I meant to post this photo, to show how well the product works.
It's called AMAZE and has mostly inert material. The rest is corn gluten. DH picked it up at Lowes. I hand scattered it, and did not wet it down, as we were expecting drizzled the next day. Left it alone, but gave it a good watering yesterday.
Anyway, I found out about AMAZE here on this thread. (THANKS AGAIN)
Here is the photo I meant to post.
Oh, and if you can find some way to keep them leaves from blowing all over, I don't see why you couldn't use them to cover your roses. You might consider mulching or composting them.
WIB,
SW

Twincol, if the weeds had already started to sprout (even if you couldn't seen them), pre-emergent of any kind won't work. It has to be applied before the seeds start to germinate.

I've had my best luck on doing away with sprouted weedlings with my Weed Dragon---it's basically a propane flame-thrower that cooks the little buggers.

You might put sheets of wetted newspaper down on top of your weedy areas, and then put some attractive mulch on top. If you use about 4 sheets of newspaper, it will break down in one season. It will smother your weed seedlings, which will also break down & compost. Worms love the newspaper, so they'll move in and improve the soil. The newspaper blocks the light getting to dormant weed seeds. You can basically start over with a clean slate, and improve your soil at the same time. It doesn't work on bermudagrass (nothing does), but I've had great success with this technique on everything else.

Oh wow...Bareroots, beautiful garden! You just made me add hellebores and anemones to my (ever increasing) wishlist!

You live in a jungle paradise Rob.

I am off to google Weed Dragon,we have a large area that is IMPOssiblE and driving me crazy !

Here ya go:
http://www.groworganic.com/item_PWC502_Red_Dragon__Home__Garden_Flamer.html

haha thanks Doss! ; )

ooh, they have the same one at Amazon for $53/free shipping. I'm trying to convince my husband he can trust me with a torch in the backyard. He said my eyes were too "wide eyed and crazy" when I talked about it..... if only I had been more calm !!!!!!!

Any tips? I told him you loved it.


fyi, I just made an old-fashioned buttermilk bundt cake.mmmmm smells & tastes good. My kids are recovering from high fevers, I'm trying to temp them to eat.

I have used mine for several years, and loaned it out to the neighbors. You don't have to cook them to a crisp, just gently "steam" them till they turn dark green. Most die within 48 hours. I love using mine when it's raining gently; then I don't need a firewatch (someone standing by with a hose). This time of year, it's perfect for quickly killing weeds organically, and you can do large areas really fast! DH put my propane tank on a little dolly so I can haul it around the yard easily.

I'm careful never to use mine when it's the least bit breezy, and unless it's actually raining out and everything's wet, we always team up so DH handles the firewatch. It's the best non-toxic way I've ever found to kill weeds. As for the "wide-eyed and crazy" look, I'm sure I get the same one...sigh....yeah, cuz it's fun, too.

Imapigeon, no, no, the ground looked like the photo posted on another thread here http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/fp.php?pid=5505588 when I laid out the pre-emergent last October. But the earlier photo shows you the result, sadly. Totally unsuccessful attempt to keep the weeds out.

I'll look into your recommendation quoted here:

Oh, dear. Well, if it's bermuda, all it will do is eat the weed cloth and come up through it. I just helped my friend deal with a parking strip of that combo a few months ago (weed cloth laid on bermuda roots & rock over the top---the runners just "stapled" the weedcloth down and grew right through & around it). You have to get rid of the bermuda before you put down the pavers, or you'll just have pavers with bermuda between them. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, if you want green between the pavers & don't care what it is. The downside is that you'd have to put barriers down to keep it from going into your beds, and you'd have to periodically weedeat the paver joints to keep it from sending runners over the top.

The best solution I've found for eliminating bermuda is a combination of digging and mulching and digging again over a period of several months. Even Roundup really doesn't kill it, and it's expensive and toxic, too---and you have your poodles & other plants to think of. Even one of those blasted runners left in the soil can start the whole cycle all over. Bermuda seems to like crappy, compacted, dense soil. If you improve the soil it has a less-hospitable environment, and it's also easier to pull rogue runners out of healthy, looser soil.

Thank you Ima, I'm going to order one right now - I will wait for a sprinkly day to use it.

BWAHAHAHA!

I thought those flamers were outlawed in CA, but when I looked on the web site, couldn't see any indication. Has something changed? Anybody else ever hear this?

I did order one. Someone said that they used it on their pavers and that's one of my most difficult places to keep weed free!

I love it between my concrete chunks. That's why I first bought mine. Tried growing ground cover, and it was hopeless.

The place I bought mine is in CA and they still sell them. I've never heard anything about them being outlawed.

lol at the evil laughter, I will hear it echoing in my head when I'm torching those suckers!

I've had decent luck getting rid of Bermuda with Green Light grass killer (Ortho Grass B Gone has the same active). It isn't very fast acting--you spray and then you don't see any results for a week or so, but then all of a sudden it'll start to die. I don't know if it'll ever completely go away, but ever since I discovered that product it's made it pretty easy to keep up with the bits of it that show up every year.

Bayer has a product for getting rid of bermuda in lawns. Maybe that would be worth a try.

I'm starting a new thread.
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/962152/