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Plants Around My Yard

Started by solarscreen, July 08, 2014, 08:48:44 PM

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solarscreen

I am a suburbanite with only 1/4th acre, but, I do what I can for a garden of sorts around the house.  It's a weekend hobby I wish I could spend more time making better.


Here are some pics from around the yard:

Hostas:
These are blue hostas. I have split these and moved many of them to the backyard.




Dianthus:
These bloom about once a month all spring.




Liriope:
These have now taken over nearly the whole space they are in.




Rose of Sharon:
Young Rose of Sharon Hibiscus - They bloom red late summer to fall.




Bananas:
I have had flowers on these the last three years now but the frost gets them before fruit can set.
I have to cut them back down and mulch over the winter.
Grows to about 18 feet tall.
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irrelevant

Nice hostas. Don't let an herbalist see those  ;)

How long have the bananas been there? Looks pretty well established.

What zone are you in?

solarscreen

Quote from: irrelevant on July 09, 2014, 01:35:13 PM
Nice hostas. Don't let an herbalist see those  ;)

How long have the bananas been there? Looks pretty well established.

What zone are you in?
I need to snap a new photo of the hostas in the back. They are loving their new home!

The bananas are on their 5th year. I need to dig them up this winter and split the root ball.

Zone 6
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slink

My collection of hostas came from my mother, about 22 years ago.  The two smallest are varieties that died out after about ten years, from being more tender than the other three and also mowed a few times too often by someone who didn't notice them coming up in the spring.  I replaced those two for, ironically, the same price as the ones I got from my mother.  We were buying a large order of items and the cash register got stuck on something requiring confirmation of age.  The clerk didn't notice this and was scanning things anyway.  The lilac bush didn't scan properly and he had to enter it by hand.  That was when he noticed that the register was asking that he confirm that we were adults.  He failed to realize that the two hostas he scanned while that question was displaying did not go into the ticket.  So in the end, I paid the same for the replacement specimens as I had for the originals: nothing.

We have wild grapes growing rampant on our property.  I was allowing one specimen to grow quite large, on a small tree in the front of the home theater windows.  I kept hoping to see some grapes develop.  This spring I noticed the grapes when they were green and very tiny.  I walk by that tree on the average of 60 times a day, during our morning walk, so I could not have missed those grapes ripening.  Yet, I never saw anything other than the tiny green fruit.  The birds ate them all before they could ripen.  I took a look around the front yard and realized that the wild grapes were not just taking over dying trees, but actively killing them.  Thus, we have cut down that nicely grown vine on the little tree in front of our windows.  The tree bears small red fruit which, although only possibly edible by humans, at least ripens before everything eats them.  I asked my husband to save the grape vines, which are shown leaning against the sycamore in front of our front door.  The third photo shows the dead grape vines in the little tree.  The tree may survive, although it is not in very good shape due to a split in the trunk which has left it with a hollow in the center our of which I recently plucked a sprouted maple seed.  This is the tree at the base of which the hostas are planted.  The far side still has three bishop's goutweed, or possibly goatweed, which have somehow survived inundation by poison ivy and Virginia creeper.  The poison ivy is gone, and the Virgina creeper will soon be gone, from the general vicinity.  Also gone is the cat briar, also called sweet briar, of which I am fond but it also was trying to climb the little tree.  Poor little tree.  Anyway, the goatweed, although enduring, was never very exuberant.  I may thin the three large clumps of hostas and plant the thinnings on the other side of the tree.  I wish I knew whether the tree was likely to live another twenty years.  There is no point in planting hostas and then trampling them while replacing the tree they are planted around.

How difficult was it to thin your hostas?  Does one have to dig very deeply?  Are they firmly connected to each other?

rkelly17

Quote from: slink on July 15, 2014, 04:16:25 PM
How difficult was it to thin your hostas?  Does one have to dig very deeply?  Are they firmly connected to each other?

Growing up in So. Cal. I'd never seen a hosta until we moved to So. Ontario. It took me awhile to warm up to them, but in the last 12ish years we've been planting them around the yard. A couple of years ago I divided some of the smaller-leaved variety that had been growing behind the house and moved some into the front. Dividing them wasn't too hard. I dug about 12-18" deep around the clump and lifted it out. Then used my spade to divide the clump into three pieces. I left one in the original location and moved two to the new location. All survived. I did it in Spring when the plants were just coming out and the ground was nice and wet. We've received most of our hostas as gifts from friends who were dividing largish clumps and even when out of the ground for a few days they mostly survived. My one mistake has been to plant a couple of clumps where they get too much sun, so those can get pretty ragged by September. This year not so much so since July has been cool and wet.

I tried planting grapes on our side fence to screen the neighboring back yard (student rental, pool that often doesn't get cleaned). Wouldn't you know it, the two vines that had the best tasting grapes died after a few years and only the Concords are left. Every year we try to figure out what to do with the harvest. Last year the racoons saved us the trouble. My grandson and I had just gotten home from his football practice and when he got out of the car he said, Granddad, I think there's something in our yard. We shined a light down the side of the house and three or four racoons were hanging on the fence eating Concord grapes. We went in the house and let them have at it. So it may not be birds eating the wild grapes--there are a lot of wild grapes in the countryside around here and I have never seen any ripe.

solarscreen

@slink wait until you get the spikes just poking up from the ground in spring, then dig about 8 to 10 inches down around the outside of the hosta clump.  Turn that clump over and chop it into and many pieces as you want as long as each piece has a spike.  The root ball is fairly dense and solid so there are no bulbs or tubers to fish out of the dirt.  Just cut it dirt and all and transplant wherever you want them.
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