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You are here: Home / Garden Chats / Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Strange Things Grow In My ‘Garden’

Reader Interactions

33Comments

  1. 1.

    eclare

    Oh those cacti are so cheery with the bright colors!  Were those at a nursery?  Looks like there is a price tag on a plant behind them.

  7. 7.

    Jeffery

    The bulbs ordered in May should arrive tomorrow. Restrained myself this year. Only putting in 40 new bulbs.

    Sowed alyssum seeds this week. They are up. Will winter over then grow as it gets warmer next spring. the down side is I have to keep picking the leaves that fall on them off to keep the leave from smothering the seedlings.

  9. 9.

    Kristine

    I love those little blue flowers. Asiatic dayflower, nicknamed “mouse ears.”  They’re non-native to the US and considered invasive, but I let the ones that showed up in my garden grow because of that gorgeous and rare true blue color.

    Still a few leaves to fall here in NE Illinois. I mower mulched the first batch; second round is sometime this week. Fall colors were really good this year.

  11. 11.

    Benno

    Last year I shifted to a new, ground floor portion with attached garden in Sindh, Pakistan. We have some really lovely things, almost none of which I know the name of except for frangipani. We also have two producing mango trees, some moringa, and a banana tree that you would not believe how fast it grows. But there were a couple of budding things that I’ve let grow since January just to see what they turned out to be. One turned out to be millet, locally called bajra, a very unlovely plant that looks like the gawky kid corn made fun of in high school. The other I let grow because it looked a little like the oak trees I grew up playing under in central Illinois. Turned out to be castor-oil plants, which is what ricin comes from apparently. Anybody know if I would be better getting rid of them?

  13. 13.

    eclare

    @Benno:   I would not want that in my backyard, and I would either wear really heavy duty gloves while I dug it up and handled it or hire someone with experience.

    I don’t have any practical experience, that plant would just make me nervous.

    Jealous of your mango trees!

  14. 14.

    delphinium

    @prostratedragon: Just beautiful-thanks for sharing! Always enjoy checking out cathedrals whenever I’m traveling about.

    And, cool photos Ema-definitely a nice variety of plants.

  17. 17.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Benno: Castor bean plants are sold as ornamentals here, you can buy them anywhere, even on Amazon. Just dont eat the seeds.

  18. 18.

    MomSense

    I love these photos!!

    Today brings the unpleasant task of putting the gardens to bed for the winter.  I usually don’t mind it but the growing season was sooooooooo disappointing and frustrating this year that I just dread going out in the garden.

  19. 19.

    Benno

    @MagdaInBlack: good to know! They’re not…unattractive. And they are limited to one bed and one huge pot. Are the ones in the bed likely to smother what’s already there? Are they like mint, but deadly poison?

  21. 21.

    Reboot

    If you didn’t mind a bit of untidiness, you’d be providing food for birds with the millet seed.

    ETA: reply to Benno at #11 😐 Apologies for the indirect route….

  22. 22.

    J R in WV

    @Benno: ​
     

    Many of our old-timer native neighbors grew castor plants around their gardens when we moved out to the country here in South western West Virginia. I think they believed it kept some bugs and other vermin away from their plants. I think they are not dangerous at all if you don’t eat the beans.

  24. 24.

    Benno

    @Reboot: I don’t mind untidiness at all. We kept quite a messy bug and snake garden on the side of our house in PA before we moved here.

  28. 28.

    Jeffery

    @Lapassionara: I accidentally discovered it by them reseeding themselves years ago in the fall. They germinate and I never thought they would survive the winter. Being a cool  weather plant they were fine. Once the freeze sets in they sit there. When the sun and warmer weather come back in March they start to grow. Any warm period in the winter when there is a thaw they grow.

    I’ve planted cilantro/coriander in the fall and had it winter over in the ground. That was an eye opener.

    I am in Philadelphia zone 7a.

  30. 30.

    StringOnAStick

    Did a little clean up yesterday because it is pine needle drop season, and one good sized Ponderosa can fill your garden waste bin for weeks.

    We had been noticing little bits of white insulation in the yard occasionally, and a new large deposit led me to realize that a flicker had pushed through the weak plastic mesh on the attic side of the round hole soffit vents.  Some hardware cloth and staples later, and all of these sets of 3 perfect woodpecker sized round vent holes on that side of the house are covered from the exterior side.  Not a gorgeous solution, but hopefully an effective one.  Something tells me I’d better cover every set of these vents.

  31. 31.

    Benno

    @StringOnAStick: They’ve grown six feet since January. Is it worth pruning them to control growth, or does that just make them stronger (like my moringa sapling that I topped in August and is now 10’ tall)?

    ETA I did do some light research on them before asking here. Google here tends to turn up results from Australia before the US, where they seem to be classified as a non-invasive weed. Most of the results from that direction specifically say that they are not illegal to plant, which is about the best thing Australia has to say about them.

  32. 32.

    LiminalOwl

    @Kristine: Thank you! I’ve always loved those flowers for the same reason, but never learned their name until now.

    I also love the blue morning-glories…

Comments are closed.