Originally Posted by robin1234 (Post 12237973)

Spring - daffodil season! We have several thousand in flower now, and more to flower over the next couple of weeks. I've planted at least a couple of hundred bulbs most year for the past twenty years. We moved in to this house Memorial Day in 1997, so the anniversary is just coming up...

Originally Posted by robin1234 (Post 12237973)

A less welcome sign of Spring is the Japanese knotweed. Locals call it bamboo, I'm trying to educate them .... but I've noticed that knowledge of plant names is not a strong point around here. Anyway, like bamboo, Japanese knotweed does burn very nicely even when green.

We have two major patches of knotweed. One I've contained pretty well by mowing. Twenty years ago, it was in a patch of trash trees and other undergrowth, so impossible to control, but now we've taken all the trees out so are able to mow, the Japanese knotweed is suppressed and no longer spreading. The other area, I can mow part of, but unfortunately it's going down a steep slope into a ravine & stream so is hard to get at, and it's still slowly spreading in that direction.

Originally Posted by WEBlue (Post 12238015)

I love daffies too! They are just about the ONLY pretty flower that our local wildlife (deer, voles, mice, chipmunks, squirrels) will not eat. Well, I'm not completely certain about the voles....:thumbdown: ...but for the most part all planted daff bulbs DO come up.


I barely see Japanese knotweed here. Here the truly horrible invasives are (in order of awfulness) poison ivy, Oriental bittersweet, black swallowwort aka black dog-strangling vine, catbriar aka greenbriar, and English ivy. These are the things I fight almost every day I'm here at home, from March through December. I never use chemicals except for poison ivy which I'm extremely sensitive to.

My first project was rescuing a hillside in the front garden which was choked with only three of these, poison ivy, black swallowwort, & E. ivy. All three have such extensive root systems I have to sift any dirt I want to plant anything good in. I can't tear out the infected dirt and replace because there ARE some lovely plants growing there, but they were so covered (absolutely drowned!!) in all those invasive vines that I didn't even realise some of them were there until I started my "excavations" a few years ago....

However, soon I've really got to tackle a larger hillside in our back garden which is chock-a-block with all the above invasives, plus I think a few others.... So far I've only zapped the PI whenever I've seen it there, so at the very least I can walk around it to start my full-on attack.

Hillsides are so hard! Rewarding once you've got them under control, but tough to work on!!!

Originally Posted by robin1234 (Post 12238175)

.... my daughter was doing spring clean up & burn last week there, and belatedly realized she got a fair dose of poison ivy which she suffers badly from.

Originally Posted by Pulaski (Post 12238179)

Burning poison ivy is extremely dangerous as the oil which causes the irritation can be present in the smoke, and if inhaled can lead to significant lung damage that requires hospitalization. :eek:

Originally Posted by robin1234 (Post 12238175)

We've had amazing luck with other bulbs too, for instance crocus and chionodoxia (not sure of the sp there.) I'm sure they are spread by chipmunks, who bury them for later eating and forget about them....

Originally Posted by robin1234 (Post 12238175)

Fortunately we are way too far north for poison ivy. We have it down on cape cod though ... my daughter was doing Spring clean up & burn last week there, and belatedly realised she got a fair dose of poison ivy which she suffers badly from.

Originally Posted by Pulaski (Post 12238179)

Burning poison ivy is extremely dangerous as the oil which causes the irritation can be present in the smoke, and if inhaled can lead to significant lung damage that requires hospitalization. :eek:

Originally Posted by robin1234 (Post 12238194)

Yes that's right fortunately she was using respiratory equipment for that reason - she used to do this professionally. I think she just got the pi on her arms. She sort of knows where the stuff grows, but it's hard to tell in winter/early spring...

Originally Posted by WEBlue (Post 12238198)

Interesting!! I've planted crocus bulbs, & had very mixed results. Some I planted in my regular garden beds were found & consumed by some creature...not sure who but I've seen the evidence. On the other hand, the ones that I plant in the lawn or at the woodsy edges of the property seem to have a better chance of survival.... :/

Chionodoxa-- aka glory-of-the-snow aka scilla (not sure of this spelling)-- is beautiful! Just a week ago I found some sprouting in my front garden because I'd finally removed all the final bits of (dreadful) landscape fabric that the previous owners had put down to sell the house. (Hate that stuff!!) A few poor little chionodoxa bulbs had somehow survived 4 years under that horrible heavy black fabric and they burst up into bloom now that it was all gone. I'm determined to plant more of them!




I hope she wasn't burning the poison ivy too, Robin! Doing that puts people in the hospital. My fear of inhaling any little unknown bit of PI is what prevents me from even considering burning any of my garden clippings. Besides I think it's illegal here. My neighbor who I regard as my American gardening tutor double-bags all her invasives & buries them in her rubbish. It's time-consuming & fiddly but I do it too.

Even though I would never burn poison ivy, I did get a horrendous case a few years back. I was pulling up horrible tangles of weedy roots in very early March, when I foolishly assumed said weeds weren't "awake" yet.

I soon discovered that PI sap/poison never sleeps. I was very ill, probably due to a few tiny drops of root sap which had likely landed on my clothes & somehow worked through to the skin an hour or so later. The doctor told me to get rid of those clothes & all the gardening tools I'd used, as there was no way to clean them & the poison never fades.

Originally Posted by robin1234 (Post 12238212)

Poison ivy is a scourge down in your part of the world. However, people do burn extensively. For instance, Cape Cod National Seashore have fire crews who travel all over the US and Canada for wild country fire suppression, so they burn a lot on Cape Cod for training etc. Largely a question of protective clothing & respiratory equipment.

In gardens and back yards, poison ivy is eventually suppressed by mowing (as with Japanese knotweed and other plants.) That doesn't help when it's among trees, on a steep slope or rocky ground etc.

Originally Posted by Pulaski (Post 12238231)

Depending on the size of the plant and the number of leaves visible I usually cut through the main stem a little above ground level - leaving some leaves to be sprayed with PI and brush herbicide. For a major plant that has climbed high up into the tree canopy I cut it off near ground level than wait for the roots to sprout new shoots, which they do, prolifically, then spray those. A few years ago our property was almost PI free, but I haven't sprayed for two years and now I need to get out and spray where it has sprouted in a number of places that I have already seen/ know about, and I haven't even walked through our woodland looking yet this spring.

Originally Posted by lizzyq (Post 12238295)

What is your herbicide of choice for PI? I am sure we have it on our new land and would like to start the control programme as soon as I can.

Originally Posted by tom169 (Post 12238321)

Our new home and garden project: Find a new home. TLDR: The seller turned into a jerk and I terminated everything.

Originally Posted by Pulaski (Post 12238328)

:blink: Seriously?

Originally Posted by tom169 (Post 12238333)

Yeah. Long story is that I had the 15 year old AC inspected and it turns out (like I suspected) it didn't work. The thing was a total rust bucket.

He continued to profess that it did work and then went on to perform his own DIY bodge job (an unlicensed person).

I gave ultimatum of replace the AC with a new one (quoted $6.5k) or I walk. He decided to say good bye and we terminated.

A day later he phones my agent and said he's had a change of heart and he will get a new AC.

He gets a new AC fitted (we are now out of contract) and so our agent then drew up a new contract.

Given I had told the bank that we are no longer pursuing the mortgage it needed to be sent to the underwriter again.

This means that our closing date would be another 2 weeks away (May 9th). He didn't like that and so on Friday said he would think about it over the weekend and get back to us with a decision yesterday on if he wants to sell us the house.

He never phoned and wouldn't pick up his phone (also hung up multiple times on my agent) so I've now said sod it. If he wants to sell us the house we will offer him 10k less. Otherwise we are going to find another one.

He was the listing agent of his own house. I'm tempted to write to the commission about his unprofessional behavior.

Originally Posted by tom169 (Post 12238333)

Yeah. Long story is that I had the 15 year old AC inspected and it turns out (like I suspected) it didn't work. The thing was a total rust bucket.

He continued to profess that it did work and then went on to perform his own DIY bodge job (an unlicensed person).

I gave ultimatum of replace the AC with a new one (quoted $6.5k) or I walk. He decided to say good bye and we terminated.

A day later he phones my agent and said he's had a change of heart and he will get a new AC.

He gets a new AC fitted (we are now out of contract) and so our agent then drew up a new contract.

Given I had told the bank that we are no longer pursuing the mortgage it needed to be sent to the underwriter again.

This means that our closing date would be another 2 weeks away (May 9th). He didn't like that and so on Friday said he would think about it over the weekend and get back to us with a decision yesterday on if he wants to sell us the house.

He never phoned and wouldn't pick up his phone (also hung up multiple times on my agent) so I've now said sod it. If he wants to sell us the house we will offer him 10k less. Otherwise we are going to find another one.

He was the listing agent of his own house. I'm tempted to write to the commission about his unprofessional behavior.