Killing Trees That Sprout From the Roots

All It Takes Is Patience, Herbicide (optional) and a Shovel

Black locust, (Robinia pseudoacacia),  Tree of Heaven, (Ailanthus altissima), and a few other shrubs and trees are notorious for coming back from the roots if you cut the main plant. In the wild they make large thickets, in the landscape they make a mess.

We removed a cluster of volunteer Ailanthus trees because they were wrecking the fence, endangering the neighbor's power lines and providing too much shade on the flower bed.

The First Attempt: Because I had heard horror stories about how hard these are to kill, I went 100% forest service style for removing them.  It involves hacking into the trunks with a hatchet and promptly applying glyphosate to the cuts at the "right time of year" to translocate the herbicide for an efficient kill.

It worked, they died that summer, and I had someone remove the trees down to stump level.  They are currently hidden by flowers, quietly rotting away and sprouting many inedible mushrooms. 

Ailanthus Stumps

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Watching Grass Grow: Buffalo 2.0 Is Now a Meadow

A meadow is grass with wildflowers ...and I have it!  At least in parts of the lawn, if you squint just right, I have fluffy clumps of grass with scattered flowers.

Jute mesh, new grass, and some wildflowers (Ratibida columnaris)

It's been slow to establish for several reasons:

• We had a cooler spring than usual.
• The summer rains have not come yet.
• I did not till or amend the area before planting.
• The seeds are not a select improved "turf" strain, it's just generic buffalo grass and blue grama grass. 
• I fertilized very lightly and did not fertilize early.
• Most of the wildflowers are perennials and will not bloom well this year. 

The erosion control mesh is doing exactly what I need it to do - when I water the mesh fills with water like waffles fill with syrup and it sinks in instead of running off.  I am watering daily to encourage the final grass seeds to sprout, with an occasional seep watering to get the roots to go deep.  I really need some rainstorms. Read more!

Weed Control: Herbicides 101, What Plants They Kill

Herbicides are chemicals used to control unwanted plants. All conventional or "organic" herbicides work by somehow interfering with plant growth. They may block photosynthesis and protein production, dry out the leaves, or destroy or inhibit root formation. Because different plant groups have different biochemical pathways, some herbicides can kill only one group and leave other groups unaffected. Other herbicides will kill a wider range of plants.

This means that you might be able to get rid of some plants and not kill the plants you want to keep.  But it also means you have to take the time to find the right herbicide, read labels and apply the herbicide correctly.

WARNING: If something will kill "weeds", it might also kill "flowers", "lawns", "vegetables", "shrubs", "trees", "animals", and you.

Read the labels before you buy a product or open the container. Follow the instructions. What has been sprayed can't be unsprayed.

READ THE LABELS: Yes, that means YOU!

A typical herbicide label has several pages of cautions and warnings and instructions.  The label will tell you how to safely handle the product, what plants to use the product on, and just as important, what not to use it on. You can read the labels online while you are deciding which product you need.

Label from typical lawn weed killer.
They tell you what NOT to apply it to because it will kill those plants.

There is also a long list of weeds it has been tested against that it will kill
if you apply it according to the package directions.

What are you killing, and for how long do you want it dead?

Classified by results, herbicides can be thought of as soil sterilizers, broad spectrum herbicides, broad-leaf herbicides, grass herbicides, and pre-emergent herbicides.  So your first step is to decide what effects you need, and identify the plants you want to kill. Then you can select which product of that class will work best for you.

Soil Sterilizer
A soil sterilizer prevents seed sprouting and regrowth from roots for a long period, months to years.  It usually kills existing plants as well.  This is the equivalent of "nuke it from orbit" for a gardener, and should be very carefully researched.

This is not the product you want to apply to clear the weeds from where you plan to put a lawn or vegetable garden.

Broad Spectrum Herbicide
Affects almost every plant you spray, but will not prevent seeds from sprouting, or only has a short effect on seed sprouting. These are useful for killing off everything and replanting with the desired species. With care they can be used around established plants without harming them.

Glyphosate is in this class, as is horticultural (20%) vinegar, and that stupid mix of salt, vinegar and dish soap. 

Broad-Leaf Herbicide
Affects most plants with two seed leaves, also known as broad-leaf plants, but does not affect plants with one seed leaf, such as grass and corn. This is what you get in the herbicides to kill weeds in lawns.


TIP: Not all plants with grass-like leaves are immune to this class of herbicide.  Some are not botanically a "grass" and others are just delicate varieties of a grass.

Grass Herbicide

This affect plants with one seed leaf or thin leaves, such as grass and corn, but does not affect plants with two seed leaves. These are useful for killing grass in your shrubbery and rose beds or an orchard.

Pre-Emergent Herbicide
This is often sold as a "weed preventer" because it sounds more appealing than "pre-emergent herbicide".  However it is labelled, it will prevent most seeds from germinating, so don't try to use it to keep weeds from sprouting in the vegetable bed or lawn you just seeded.


TIP:Timing is everything with pre-emergents. Applied too early or if there is too much rain and the herbicide might be washed below the level where the seeds are germinating. Applied too late and the weeds can be too mature to be affected.

On-Line References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbicide

http://extension.psu.edu/pests/weeds/control/introduction-to-weeds-and-herbicides/safe-herbicide-use 

http://extension.psu.edu/pests/weeds/control/introduction-to-weeds-and-herbicides/herbicides

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/plants-80501-weed-herbicides.html  Read more!

World-wide Naked Gardening Day

Protective Gear for Desert Gardeners 

I knew there was a drawback to desert landscaping. I can't participate in World Naked Gardening Day because it's too dangerous.

Mark Storey, the founder of WNDG writes of "the innocent joy of working with the earth as nature intended".  He may frolic through the English landscape nekkid as a jaybird, but nature in the desert does its best to leave gardeners blistered, dehydrated, punctured, and cooked medium rare.

Spiny things and tender flesh are not a good mix.

I have to protect myself from the plants, the tools I use, and nature. 
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Curb Appeal #1: Getting From Curb to Door

Your first thought about your house's curb appeal should not be what color to paint the front door, where to hang hand-crafted wreaths, or what to plant under the windows.

Neglected house

Having the cutest front door on the block doesn't matter if it's hard to get from the curb to the front door.  I'll expand these bullet points later into posts with examples, explaining why they are important, but for now, here's some things to think about.
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Jute Erosion Mesh As a Seed Cover

Lawn Upholstering? 

Jute erosion control mesh is not burlap - it's a fabric woven with extremely coarse yarn and large holes.  The mesh is commonly used for erosion control along new road construction while grasses and shrubs are being established. It is biodegradable, and within a couple of years, maybe more in a dry area, will decay and turn into organic material in the soil.

I'm using it like a mulch to protect newly scattered buffalo and blue grama grass seed and native wildflower mix. It should prevent my seeds from blowing away, discourage seed-eating birds and hold moisture.  It is definitely weed-free, which my compost is not.  It supposedly decomposes in a couple of years, so I will write more than this post about how it works.

Upholstered Lawn

It does look like I carpeted the lawn, and the neighbors are looking at me funny.
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4 Weekends = Improved Curb Appeal

No matter how great the interior of your house may be, first you have to convince buyers that it's worth it to get out of the car and into the house. That's what "curb appeal" is.  I'm assuming you have a short time to get ready to sell your house, so this advice concentrates on removing negative curb appeal quickly and cheaply, not adding positives.

This would take more than four weekends.

The typical suburban house will take about 4 weekends dedicated to yard work to remove the negatives from the curb appeal before the listing date. That gives the shrubs time to recover from pruning, and the lawn time to green up. If your landscape is exceptionally large or neglected, some steps might take more than one weekend. Evaluate what you can do for yourself and hire professionals for the rest.

Remember:

• Dead plants don't sell houses.
  
• If potential buyers can't see the house behind trees and bushes, they won't want to buy it.
  
• Clean and tidy is appealing.
  
• Well-maintained is appealing.
  
• Closely mowed green weeds have more curb appeal than overgrown or dead lawns.
  

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The problem with USDA Plant Hardiness Zones

Any system that puts Phoenix, Arizona and Orlando, Florida together has a serious flaw.  But they are both USDA Hardiness Zone 10.

"USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map is the standard by which gardeners and growers can determine which plants are most likely to thrive at a location. The map is based on the average annual minimum winter temperature, divided into 10-degree F zones."

What it really means:  The USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map helps determine which plants are unlikely to die of cold weather at a location, not thrive.   There are many other reasons your location will kill unsuitable plants.  The picture below shows part of the problem.

Both city parks are in USDA Hardiness Zone 10

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No-Tool Frost Cover Supports for Tender Landscape Plants

We joke that the the classiest house in the Phoenix area looks like a low-class Victorian washerwoman's house when a freeze is coming, because Phoenicians grab anything at hand to cover plants (Check the images. The Superman sheets are fab!) when one of the rare freezes is coming.  King size sheets and muslin curtains are popular, propped up with anything from saw horses to dining chairs to keep the covers off the plants.  Plastic drop cloths are popular, but you can cook your plants under the plastic if you forget to take it off.

If you have a bit more time to prepare, or live where frost protection is needed several times a winter, try this inexpensive solution that won't leave you sitting on the floor with no sheets on the bed. It looks like an old-fashioned circus tent.

Frost Cloth and Rebar Tent

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Four Cheap, Effective Fertilizers

For Occasional Use by a Lazy Gardener

I seldom use fertilizers, but if I have to, I use the simplest ones that will do the job.  I am reluctant to use combination fertilizer and weed killer or pest killer. If landscaping has weeds or pests, I'll buy the right single-purpose product. I am also reluctant to apply "time-release" products because in my experience, they are timed for the typical Eastern lawn and garden with more rainfall.

1914 Fertilizer Brochure Cover

If a landscape that I'm responsible for needs fertilizer, one of these four fertilizers will be applied: ammonium nitrate, ammonium sulfate, ammonium phosphate, or soil sulfur. In keeping with my gardening philosophy, they are the simplest, cheapest fertilizers you can buy.
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Controlling Caterpillar Pests with Packing Tape

I was coming in from the laundry room before sunrise one June morning and in what little light there was, I saw something moving down a mesquite tree that shades the patio. It was a squirming army of caterpillars of some sort, moving down the trunk as fast as they could wiggle and vanishing into the pebbles around the tree.

The caterpillar infestation explained the tree's failure to thrive that spring - the bean crop was vanishing, and unlike the other mesquites, it had not put out many new shoots. It wasn't dying, just not thriving, and had never recovered from the usual ratty winter mesquite look.

A co-worker and I discussed the easiest way to get the pests under control and came up with a brilliant idea.

The brilliant plan:

• Let the worms get up in the tree from their daytime hiding place in the pebble mulch.
• Band the trunk with an adhesive material late that night.
• Worms would get stuck on the adhesive on their way down at dawn.
• Mockingbirds would arrive at daylight and eat the worms for breakfast.
• The tree would be saved.

Caterpillars on and above the packing tape

What actually happened with the brilliant plan:

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Weed Control Methods: Flame Throwers and Weed Burners

Flame Throwers and Weed Burners

Weed burners or flamers are blowtorches adapted to deliver flames to ground level.  They do not have to burn the plants to ash as long as the heat cooks the leaves.  Flamers work best on small weeds with a high moisture content because the plant doesn't have the resources to regrow after the leaves are dead.

Too big for most of us, but a very striking photo from www.lpg-apps.org. 
Flaming the weeds on a large field before planting the crop.

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Weed Control: Know the Enemy

It's not the weeds you see that are the problem, it's the ones hiding in the dirt, waiting to grow.

Weeds in Rye
By Agronom (Own work)
[CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

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Removing Landscape Spikes the Easy Way

The common method of securing landscape timbers is to pound a 12-inch chunk of 3/8 rebar through a hole drilled in the wood into the dirt underneath.  This is secure and cheap method.

However, when the timbers rot or you need to remove them, you are left with a short steel stub sticking out of the ground, firmly anchored by 11 inches of rusted metal.

Spike in Rotting Timber

It's just the right size to puncture tires and the right height to slice open someone's bare foot.

Dangerous Rebar Stub

The spike will be rusted in place and seem to be difficult to pry out, but there is an easy way of removing them.
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How to Kill Bermuda Grass in 10 Easy Steps

In its proper place, Bermuda grass (Cynodon dactylon) makes a good lawn or good pasture. Unfortunately it doesn't stay in its proper place. The underground roots and the above ground runners spread everywhere. Soon you have Bermuda grass erupting from your flower beds, creeping through your cactus, tangling in your shrubs and even invading your garden shed.

Killing Bermuda grass is not difficult, but it's not going to happen overnight. I'm a desert landscaper. I spend a lot of time killing lawns, especially Bermuda grass lawns, to replace them groundcovers that use less water. I have learned that no matter what the herbicide package says, it will take at least a month and several applications of herbicide to kill 90 to 95% of the Bermuda grass, then several months of spot application on surviving sprigs to get the remainder. It's a tough plant. It's so tough that it grows in the cracks of the concrete medians in the middle of a Phoenix freeway.

Bermuda Grass with seed heads
By Harry Rose from South West Rocks, Australia via Wikimedia Commons

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Watching Grass Grow: Week Eleventy To Mow or Not to Mow, That is the Question

 It's Fluffy!  It's Green!

I came back after a summer's absence to find that the lawn had not missed my care.  This is  what dethatching, fertilizing, and a few heavy rains can do for a lawn,  It was fluffy and green and dense.

Buffalo Grass, Sept 21, 2014,
Mowed 6+ Weeks Ago

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Gimme Shelter! Queen's Wreath (Antigonon leptopus)

We needed shade for the west wall of the house to keep the electric bills down, so we built an arbor. Then came the discussion of what to grow on it.

• We wanted pretty flowers, if possible.
• We wanted native plants if possible.
• We needed a thornless vine
• We needed heat loving vines that would cover the arbor for the summer.
• We wanted a perennial vine to come back every year.
• We needed a drought tolerant vine in case we slacked on the watering.

TAH DAH!!!!  The winner was Queen's Wreath Vine (Antigonon leptopus), an  incredibly hardy, fast-growing, flamboyantly blooming native from the lower parts of the Sonoran desert.

Unlike the "other native", Cat's Claw (Macfadyena unguis-cati), Queens wreath is frost-tender and dies back to the ground every winter.  It's a less aggressive grower and can be controlled with occasional pruning.

Except for the trees ... It goes from the arbor to the old orange tree and covers it like a hat. This doesn't appear to harm the tree, and the oranges ripen under the vine.  We pull the vine out when the oranges are ripe.

Queen's Wreath Covering Orange Tree
(the tree is the mound at the left)

Are Bees a Problem?

Queen's Wreath attracts bees, dozens of honey bees and wild alkali bees - it's a great way to attract pollinators to your garden all summer long. 

Because it's growing on an arbor, the flowers are all "up there" and so are the bees. You can sit under the arbor and listen to the bees, but they stay with the flowers.

Self-Seeding

This is a prolific seed-producer. The quail and other seed-eating birds forage under the arbor most of the year, gorging on seeds.  They don't find them all, and those that land in a moist spot will germinate.

They pop up all over the yard, but they are easy to recognize and pull up.

Volunteer Queen's Wreath Seedlings
(after a summer of unusually heavy rains)

Removing the Dead Vines

We need to remove the vines every year or they build up a heavy, ugly dead mess on the arbor. The stems tend to lie on top of an arbor instead of twining through the mesh. We left space between the top of the vertical mesh and the side of the top mesh to make vine removing easier, and there is a foot or so between the top mesh and the wall of the house.

Removing the old vines in early winter is easy. Don't let them get dry and brittle.

1. Trim off all dangling vines at the top and edges of the trellis or arbor.
2. Roll up any mat of vines that is on top of an arbor and toss it in the compost heap. A rake works well to get the mat going.
   You may need to clip a few stems, but Queen's Wreath is more of a sprawler than a clinging vine on a horizontal lattice or mesh.
3. If you have room, get behind the trellis and cut the stems that you can find passing behind the trellis.
4. If the trellis is large, cut the stems to divide the growth into vertical sections 3 or 4 feet wide.
5. Start pulling the vines down from the sunny side.  I use a rake and pull from the top down, rolling the vines as I pull.  This removes most of the growth. 
6. Cut the stems close to the roots.
7. That's it until next year.

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The Yahoo Files: Coming Soon

When Yahoo!  (aka Associated Content)  shut down its article publishing, they returned rights to the authors.

I'll be reposting the relevant ones here over the next few weeks, as I have time to reformat and find good pictures.
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Watching Grass Grow: Blue Grama Grass

Another Experiment

This is a total experiment ... I over-seeded the buffalo grass with another low-care native grass from the short-grass prairies, Blue grama grass, (Bouteloua gracilis).

It's supposed to sprout in 5 or 6 days, so for a couple of weeks the lawn is getting a couple of minutes of water 3 times a day to encourage the seeds. Then we'll cut back as the Blue Grama gets established.

Blue grama. Bouteloua gracilis at Minnesota Landscape Arboretum
Photo by SEWilco from Wikimedia Commons

If it works, I'll know when we see seed heads pop up in the late summer.  The birds will love it, and maybe it will help choke out the Bermuda grass.

Blue Grama grown as an ornamental accent in Japan.

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Birds that Live in Glass Houses

The Verdins Built It Where?

Verdins (Auriparus flaviceps) are tiny yellow-headed birds that flit around the desert eating bugs. They are almost always in motion, cheeping and flitting incessantly, bustling around in the branches and flowers. They are great for keeping aphids and whiteflies under control in my yard.

Verdin on Peruvian Cereus

They build big, messy nests that are disguised as a clump of dead twigs caught in a branch. The entrance is low on the side, or even under the nest.  They build nests that are rough shelters for adults and more elaborate nests lined with soft material for raising a brood.

This pair of verdins started out in a mesquite tree.  Even when we pruned off a broken branch next to the nest, they kept building.

Verdin nest in mesquite tree.

Unfortunately we had a serious wind storm a couple days after I took this photo. The branch with the nest broke off and was dangling. We checked the nest for eggs or hatchlings and found none, so we pruned off the branch and scattered the nesting materials out for them to reuse. If we had to destroy their house, we could at least help them rebuild.

Several days later one of the cats was chittering at the front window, intently watching a pair of verdins picking up tiny twigs. I watched them fly .... here.

Yup ... the solar light over the entry.

They were stuffing one of the solar entry lights full of twigs and fiber, beginning another nest.

We moved it into a shadier location under a nearby eave, fearing the afternoon sun would cook any eggs they laid. The verdins kept building until that afternoon, when they apparently realized the nest was too hot. They abandoned the glass house briefly and are building a nest in the ironwood in the back yard.

Work is continuing on the glass house as well as the other nest. Maybe they like the view.





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