Hosepipe battle???

We aren't allowed hoses. But there's a tap right by my plot so I can use cans.

Always impressed by your plant lists. The only intentional Ranunculaceae I have are easy Clematis and Japanese anemones. Of course I have a healthy population of R repens and Lesser Celandine and also some Celery leaved buttercup. The latter is from seed I collected by the Thames. I had never seen it before and was very excited. Now, of course, it's become a thug, rather than an unusual native. Oh, I forgot Kingcups in the micro pond.

Suzy ~ I have been admiring rouge's 'Spendide' thalictrum for so many years, but the 3 times I have tried it have been failures, except for the first time (which was indeed splendid). The last time it grew to about 3 feet only, and this year it is barely one foot high (but not entirely dead, hurrah). I do not know what to do...

Floral ~ I am doomed to live with the very pretty but extremely horrible R. repens for the rest of eternity and, again, I do not know what to do. This thug has taken over so much of my gardens and now is creeping (pun intended) into the lawn areas. It has made massive colonies, and as I have a very high water table, and just beyond my cultivated sections is a vernal swamp with attendant wildlife, I cannot use Roundup-style stuff. I am at my wit's end. I won't live long enough to eradicate it, I know! (insert swear words here)

I could support several grandkids' college educations all on my own, IF there was a use for R. repens commercially!!!!! Why isn't there such a use, I want to know? And why is such a thug so pretty? Insult to injury factor here... >(

We are not allowed to use hosepipes either but I have this weird thing whereby the tendons in my fingers have pulled my hands into witchy claws and I cannot carry a watering can with more than around 3 litres...so watering with cans takes hours and I end up doing a really rubbish job because I never water deeply enough for the plants to get a decent drought resistant root system. I had to step on disability rights and 'proportional adjustment'

I use the allotment for growing plants I love, without any of the design limitations in my (tiny) home garden. All the fugitive blooms and ephemeral things I adore but cannot justifiably allocate space at home if they are going to look dismal after the 3 weeks of blooming. Not necessarily flowers - if the foliage looks great, I can live with that, but I am quite strict with myself at home whereas the seed sowing addiction can be fully indulged at the allotment.

I have grass leaved buttercups and am hoping for the bulbous types also. I have really struggled with field buttercups though (r.acris) and don't mind a few clumps of repens.

I Would LOVE kingcups (especially the whites).

Suzy ~ the trouble with R. repens is they don't just stay as nice few clumps! At least here in Massachusetts in my conditions -- they expand exponentially in all directions and smother everything... grrrr.

O, sympathies, roxanna. I have a tale regarding the tenacity of repens. A couple of years ago, I grew some seeds of what were supposedly trollius. They were not...as I soon discovered. Because they were growing in one of those incurved pots, I didn't get around to prising the creeping buttercups out immediately, but left them overwinter. When I did get around to dealing with it, I could not get a trowel in anywhere. Even a sharp hori-knife was difficult and when I eventually cut through the root mass, I was horrified to find a SOLID white mass of roots which occupied the entire (large) pot. Even a decade of agapanthus growth was nothing in comparison.

I rather think I would be using glyphosate, roxanna, just brushing or wiping it onto the growing leaves on a still, dry day at the later end of the season, when the plant is in full growth but at the point of drawing back into dormancy, then covering the area with a tarpaulin. Round-up does not spread in the soil but remains locked in the plants xylem and roots. I have had to use it often (in my professional work), for intractable and persistent weeds. While not ideal, it remains one of the safer and most effective herbicides...unlike the bad old days or 2,4D and sodium chlorate.

Suzy ~ oh, thank you for the tip about Roundup, that it doesn't spread in the soil! If I can gather the strength, stamina and get my aged body to do a lot of bending, I will take some in a glass jar with a small foam brush and attack the thug. With great glee! =)

Our missing friend Ken advocated using a squeeze mustard container ( the bright yellow one, Frenches, i believe) to apply Herbicide. A Paintbrush- foam kind- works.

if you have a bigger item to kill, saw it down and immediately apply herbicide to the stump. it may still resprout but just go at it again.

Suzy good to see you mention zizia. my gardening buddy gave me two buckets of seedings and im planting them everywhere because i need YELLOW. i need yellow (and pink , red and orange) because i managed to plant a purple and blue spring garden this year: the short blue amsonia , Blue Ice, next to amsonia twilight praire blues which disappeared for a couple years, purple geranium magnificum ( 6 clumps in case you miss the first one) and one late huge purple allium. The two large patches of yellow corydalis are a moment of distraction on the ground until the eye is drawn yet again to a purple/blue blob. Same for a couple patches geranium Biviko or is it Karmina. i have quite a lot g. AT johnson (lovely salmon-y pink) in a different bed which i hope will tranplant well.

i realize i hijacked your post. i trust your direct spoken ( but not terse or inarticulate) self will tell me to go fly a kite and start my own thread if it bugs you.

and if you have suggestions for anthing (except purple or blue) to relieve this color monotony in my late spring garden , please tell.

marie

Yep, Marie, yellow and chartreuse are essentials in my gardens as much as I enjoy purple, it does have a slightly deadening effect. I cannot imagine my gardens without euphorbias. I never used to like them...probably because my main experience was based on the large wood spurges - characias, amygdaloides and, of course, the numerous weedy little spurges which infest my allotment. I did grow myrsinites in the gravel gardens but was somewhat underwhelmed until I discovered polychroma, epithymoides, the wonderful ceratocarpa, even the spreading cyparrisus and seedy oblongata. Also have a couple of tender shrubby varieties - mellifera and pasteurii, although I have not really ventured into the shadier Fireglow (martinii?) or flowering 'Diamond Frost and am much too dry to grow palustris. Bupleurums are always welcome without the slightly problematic issues of euphorbias...b.falcatum comes in short and tall forms, I think while b.longflorum is a really interesting umbellifer (probably my main family in spring - the apiacae (sp?)

Have you tried geums? I grow the brighter chiloense varieties (much too dry to grow the water avens, g.rivale). So many gorgeous plants in reds, oranges, yellows. You can keep them flowering for weeks with some judicious dead-heading - couldn't be without them as they fill that vague space when the bulbs are going over but the early summer flowers are not really in high gear.

What I am finding, Marie, is that the heights of my plants change through the season - nearly all the spring blooms are low growing or knee-high at best, with the heights increasing throughout the year until September/October when a lot of stuff is over my head. This is mostly cos of limited space but it does seem to work well for me...but still, I want to break up the spring gardens with a few statelier plants (which is why zizia is a goer). The bronze fennel is also elongating - much more of a filler but useful.

Apart from the bulbs, the other essential spring flowers are the wallflowers...of all types from the orange allioni, through to the perennials such as Winter Orchid, Harper Crewe and the stalwart biennials (I did Ivory this year). And anenomes...but only the cormous coronarias cos too dry for the lovely leveleii, rivularis and sylvestris and such.

I am discovering this year that I really do not care for sweet williams (dianthus barbatus) at all.

I also have 3 large clumps of 'Rosemoor' which is, I think, g.magnificum or possibly himalayense) in my small raised beds. Have bullied everything in the vicinity while flowering for a really short space of time. The spade approacheth, quicksmart.

I've tried A sylvestris 3 times. Disaster. Snail caviar.