Mexican Marigold

Probably invasive and probably allelopathic to quite a number of plants.

I planted Mexican marigolds this year. Mine have not flowered. They need a long season of warm weather. Mine were cut off with the lawn mower because DH didn't see them, which set them back a bit. The bind weed didn't grow up the plants, but it grew near by. Now I wonder, would they be invasive in Owasso, since it is slightly cooler than Love County. I actually wanted them to grow outside my fence in the city right of way where the bind weed came from. There is nothing left out there but bindweed and quack grass. And maybe some bermuda. The city cut down all the trees, used herbicide for seversl years and now there is nothing there but evil weeds. Discouraging, Dawn, but I don't want to start a new invasion.

Amy, even in Owasso!

Okay. I giggled at concrete. I'll stick with wheat. Not a permanent solution,but it knocks it back. I sure wish the rabbits couod eat it. I see the molokia is hardy but the rabbits love it so it won't be a prob, much like lambs quarters. I'm more likely to forage than weed. Well, perhaps after foraging I'm too tired to weed.

Amy, I think that mine bloomed in October, but it might even have been November.

Like Moni said, this type of marigold will be invasive anywhere it is planted as long as it has time to set seed for the next year's "crop".

I've started plenty of invasions here in my garden and have lived to regret many of them, but there are some invasive plants I like so much that I tolerate them anyhow. Four o'clocks are one of those and datura is another. Ditto for morning glories. They're wickedly invasive and I yank out oodles of them but I just pull the excess seedlings and leave a few to climb the fence. I think it is likely I'll regret planting the lavendar-flowered form of moonflower vine because this year we had about 80 million seedlings of it sprout. In the previous 2 years it wasn't invasive and didn't spread much, but this year the seeds sprouted everywhere. The flowers are gorgeous (though very small compared to the white-flowered version of moonflower vine) and I like having something that blooms at night for the moths, but I can see where this plant could totally take over a garden if the gardener didn't mulch heavily and religiously weed out most of the seedlings as they sprouted. They grow very vigorously, so I just hack them back with scissors when they try to leap from the fence to adjacent tomato plants growing in cages. It can get annoying, but I just remind myself that all those green vines are good fodder for the compost pile.

Bon, I think concrete is a great solution to many of our garden ills. Unfortunately, I cannot convince Tim to pour a concrete yard and just paint it green. : ) He is obsessed with having a lawn to mow. I could be happy with no lawn.

I start out with so much energy in late winter and early spring. I don't even mind weeding then, but as the season goes on and I pour so much energy into gardening and into putting up the harvest, my energy levels slowly fall. I think the extreme summer heat plays a role in that too. By late August or early September, by the time I harvest, I've used up whatever energy I started with. The more tired I get, the less I want to work in the garden or in the kitchen and I start telling myself sternly to plant a smaller garden next year so that I won't have to spend the whole summer putting up the harvest. Of course, the energy returns over the winter and by the time planting time rolls around, I plant a garden that is way too big.....it is a vicious cycle. I can sit here right now and say I'll plant fewer tomato, cucumber and pepper plants next spring so there won't be so many to can, but deep in my heart I know I'll plant just as many next year.

Today I noticed bindweed in bloom mixed in with some moonvines and morning glories on the south garden fence. Grrrr. I need to get out there and pull those before the flowers set seed. The danged bindweed is really good at hiding in the other vines so that I won't realize it is even there until it blooms.

Charlie WIlbur made incredible compost with kudzu as a main ingredient in his compost piles. I always wondered if that compost ed kudzu helped explain how he grew plants that got so ridiculously tall and that were so highly productive. If so, those of us with bindweed should he composting all of it.....it might not grow as vigorously as kudzu, but it is really vigorous and I'd like to think it helps make great compost.

Dawn

I've been thinking about 4 oclocks, too. I would like to get some native plants going in the "ditch" (city drainage ditch/right of way next to our house.). The city mows it MAYBE twice a year and once a year they come through with weedeaters. DH mows regularly, to keep critters and snakes away. When we moved in, the previous owner had fruit trees and grape vines on the outside of the fence. Further down stream, there were BIG sicamores and cottonwoods. Willows grew along the bank and it looked like a nice little stream running next to the house. The city eventually cut down all the trees, except one apple tree which DH managed to stop them from cutting down. Just last year the electric people cut that down because we weren't home and the dogs wouldn't let them in the yard, so they cut it down to use a cherrypicker on the pole in our yard. The variety of plants that pnce grew out there is just gone.

Amy, that is just so sad! our property had a crabapple tree and a pear tree. We cut the crabapple tree down because it just didn't produce and was looking bad. The pear tree bore much fruit but it was extremely bitter.

The walnut trees nearby were killed from bugs and storms. Low and behold, this year the pears are sweet and juicy. If I had only known at the time the juglone from the black walnut was causing a malfunction we'd have crabapples. I didn't know the pear would be any good so it's too late the harvest. There's some ripe on the trees but red wasps are having a field day. Next year we'll get out there and harvest for ourselves and rid the red wasps of their food source. But maybe not? I may not if I can determine how important they are... or if they're real bad next year. They didn't eat the toxic fruit as much last year. This year, they're all over it.

Come to think of it, the crabapple keeps trying to come up from the old stump. hmm..

Dawn, I think that's a wonderful idea! Bindweed absolutely MUST have some nutritional and/or mineral value! I've been shy from composting invasives until this summer where I successfully composted bermuda and johnson grass. I did allow them all a sun death before carefully, cautiously, judiciously and meticulously feeding them into the center of the hot compost pile.

I think I'll try putting in some bindweed before winter arrives.

DH gave me some fresh compost to put in container plants. I have invasive tomato plants coming up like grass!

I thought bind weed rooted at leaf nodes, kind of like pumpkins. That is why I was afraid to compost it. Maybe kudzu does too. I guess you would need a hot pile. I've considered borrowing a goat. That would take care of the poison ivy, too. Of course how do you keep a goat away from the garden?

Has any one grown millet? Just read an article about it, it was recipes for people, not livestock. It said millet was related to crab grass, wonder if they would cross. Apparentlr it will grow in poor soil with little water. I could throe that over my fence....

Here is a link that might be useful: Mother Earth News Millet

Amy, All the removal of trees and those grapevines is regrettable, but I do understand why they removed them from the drainage ditch area. When you let trees and brush take over a drainage ditch, during heavy rainfall with lots of debris being washed downstream, that debris can pile up against trees and sturdy brush and clog the drainage ditch, which prevents the ditch from functioning properly. Then, all that debris builds up repeatedly with each successive storm and can clog the drainage ditch and lead to flooding of nearby roads or property. I don't think that the city is biased against trees, but rather they are using the standard methods that municipalities use to keep drainage ditches open and less likely to clog.

I think that if you planted shorter plants that are annuals, biennials or perennials, they'd likely tolerate that.

In our bar ditch area and in the utility easement area where trees and brush are not allowed because eventually the trees will get tall enough to impede on the power lines, I have sown wildflower seed blends. I resow every few years as needed--for example, I sowed wildflower seeds during the winter of 2011-2012 because the drought of 2011 killed most of the flowers before they could set seed. The two wildflower seed mixes I sow most often are from Wildseed Farms and are their Texas/Oklahoma mix and their Poppy mix. We just make sure that we mow that area only after the cool-season flowers have had time to make seed, and then we don't mow it again until the warm-season wildflowers have matured their seed as well. The county only mows the 3-4' right alongside the road, and the utility company only comes through about once every 4-5 years and cuts trees down, so we do our best to maintain that area the rest of the time. I'd rather have a 20-25' wide strip of wildflowers and native grasses growing in the utility easement and bar ditch than to have head-high Johnson grass which is what was growing there when we moved here.

When we first moved here and planted the poppies alongside the road, I think I met almost every surviving military veteran who lived in our part of the county because they loved driving by to see the red poppies. They'd stop and talk, invite me to come over and see their gardens and landscapes and ask if they could come back and collect poppy seeds to sow on their place. It was a great way to meet all those older gentlemen who had served our nation in times of war. With the connection between the poppies of Flanders and the WWI military cemetaries where so many US servicement were buried, you could see the affection that military veterans had for the poppies. Nothing I've grown has given more people more joy than those red poppies.

Sometimes teenagers stop and hop out of a car and quickly pick a bunch of the poppies. I have to resist the urge to run down the driveway and yell "these are not that kind of poppy!" because I grow field poppies and corn poppies, not opium poppies. Maybe, just maybe, they're picking my poppies because they think they are beautiful, but I doubt it, and I think they are hoping to find a way to use the poppies to get high.

Tomato seeds are notorious for surviving compost piles if the pile wasn't kept hot enough long enough, and I think even if you keep it as hot as they say for as long as they say, there's still always going to be some tomato seeds that survive. I just yank out tomato volunteers because there's no way of knowing what variety they are, and I'm a picky tomato grower---I want to grow the varieties I want and not just whatever random seed sprouted in compost. However, some people will grow a few of those volunteers just to see what sort of tomatoes they produce.

Millet is a two-edged sword. Yes, it is easy to grow and is very drought tolerant, which is a plus. Even in the hottest, driest years it tends to make some seedheads, even if they are smaller than the ones you get in wetter years. Unfortunately, it is a real stink bug magnet. You can think of that in two different ways: 1) A person should avoid planting millet because it will attract large numbers of stinkbugs, or 2) A person could plant millet away from the garden in order to lure stinkbugs to the millet and away from the garden. Some people use millet as a trap crop to lure those stink bugs away from the garden, and when used this way, it works best if you wait until there's lots of stinkbugs on the millet plants and then spray them with a pesticide labeled to control stink bugs. If you don't want to spray the stinkbug-infested millet plants to kill the bugs, then in essence that area will become a stinkbug mecca where they can meet and greet and breed.....instead of the trap crop it was intended to be.

You keep a goat away from a garden (or a car or a boat) with a good, sturdy fence. My brother had to use a good, sturdy chain-link fence around his quarter-acre vegetable garden to keep his goats out of it. If the goats got out of their fenced goat yard, they'd climb up onto the top of his boat and play King of the Hill.

People near us who have goats use electric fences to keep the goats where they belong, or conversely, to keep them out of areas where they don't belong. If goats can find their way into a garden (some people insist the goats learn to open garden gates), they will totally destroy it because they are not picky eaters---they are equal opportunity eaters who will eat anything and everything that appeals to them.

Bon, With the bitter pears, I suspect you were picking them too early and their sugar components had not yet fully developed.

Pears are a unique fruit, in that they are higher quality if you harvest them while they are fully mature but have not yet begun to soften. It can take a couple of years of experience to know exactly when to pick them. If you pick them when they are mature but still hard, they'll ripen indoors on the kitchen counter at average room temperatures in roughly a week, give or take a couple of days. If, by chance, you have a place to store them in very cool, but not freezing conditions, they can last a month or more. I think for this to happen you need something like a cellar where you can hold them in cool, moist, shaded condition with temperatures around 40 degrees or slightly higher. When you want to eat some of these, you bring them out of the cool storage area to the house and they will then ripen on the counter in a week or so.

If you leave pears on the trees until they are softened up, then they will become magnets for bees, red wasps, yellow jackets, birds, etc. and you'll lose a lot of the crop to them. Also, if they are very soft while still on the tree, they are almost overripe and you have to use them up very quickly (think---pear preserves, pear jam, pear butter, etc.). You also can choose to preserve the pears by canning, but if that is going to be done, you should pick them mature but hard and then can them right when they start to soften so that you are canning them when they are fully ripe but not overripe.

I don't know of anything that would give you bitter pears on a pear tree except that they weren't mature yet, particularly since that same tree produced pears that are perfectly fine this year. You could get permanently inedible pears produced from a volunteer type pear that grew from a seed that had reverted to one of the inedible parent plants that was involved in its breeding, or from a pear tree that regrew from the root system of a grafted tree after the main trunk of the grafted tree died.

Dawn

I read that pear trees are sensitive to juglone. The black walnut were monsters and it was clearly within the root zone. I'm amazed the darn thing was still producing. At the time, I just figured it was some odd ball ornamental tree with worthless fruits. The change in quality of the pears is outstanding. We all loved the graceful walnut trees in the area and my husband was disappointed to hear that I will not allow it to grow back (in that area).

There is, at least, 60 lbs of pears on that tree. Next year should be awesome. The storm cellar is the perfect spot!

Bon, what time of year did you plant your wheat?

Now, if I want it there next year. It's important to grow it to establish solid root mass before frosts and freezing. It is this root mass that stymies bindweed. Weeding is necessary until it is established. Cover it to keep the birds from running off with the seed.

Growing for production requires some knowledge to avoid certain pests for which I am unfamiliar. OSU has some information.

bon

Does that mean you start it in the fall? You told me before, Bob's Red mill was what you planted? I don't know if I want the wheat...well, of course that would be nice, but wheat straw for mulch would be worth while, too. I don't have much room. Probably too late to plant, anyway. My marigolds started blooming. I am debating cutting the flowers off.

Now is a good time to start if you're not wanting the berries. I agree. The straw is very useful. I love hand mowing the greens for me and the bunnies to eat. It doesn't hurt it. Wait until it is about 6" tall before clipping. Don't disrupt the root zone. Just cut. It grows really fast. Heck, put some rich soil in a pot, seed some wheat and put it on your counter. I do that and when it reaches about 4" tall Bill walks by the counter and says, "Ma. It's time to mow."

I have a cat who would eat it befoe then, LOL. Thanks.

I can definitely testify that bindweed adores Austrian peas as a cover crop. And trying to weed them out is ... well, let's not go there.

Rule # 5,826: Don't plant Austrian Peas in areas infested with bindweed.

Well, that just figures. You'd think that something on this earth would crowd out bindweed.

I am convinced that if it ever comes down to a battle between a nuclear warhead and bindweed, somehow the bindweed will find a way to win.