Comments on: LADYSLIPPERS, HORNEY ORIOLES AND PEA TENDRIL SALADS

By: François

François — Mon, 19 May 2014 22:01:21 +0000

That ladyslipper is a wonderful plant… even if you have to lose two to get one flowering.
I'm trying them for the first year and they are doing… well, we'll see.
And your mesclun opens my appetite. A table !

By: Matt Mattus

Matt Mattus — Mon, 19 May 2014 21:25:47 +0000

I think that there is a time and place for landscape fabric, and certainly not places where one should place it. For this location, I am using contractor grade, because I need strength, but I have used inexpensive fiber types in the past, which I do not recommend. If you are ever planning to plant in the location, it can be problematic, as you found out, roots can grow into it. Never use black plastic, as someone this weekend was telling me about, as water must be able to pass through, and the soil should breath. In this spot, I have a lot of invasive plant material, a strong timber bamboo which we have been trying to irradiate for ten years not, but which has become stubborn with small shoots, and some bittersweet. This is a protected area, about 5 feet wide by 200 feet long, which runs along a gravel path, and a stone wall, so I approve its use for here. I hate mulch, but with a full time job, it's either mulch or weeds. An old garden has many weed trees, and invasives, but if I lived in a more rural undeveloped garden, I could simply allow nature to drop leaves as a natural mulch. Cinnamon Flakes came from Song Sparrow Nursery. Online.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 19 May 2014 18:15:14 +0000

Does that Landscape fabric actually work? I spent a month ripping one out by hand from under a dogwood. It was full of Winged Euonymus roots from the bottom and seedlings from the top. All of these were embedded into the fabric. BTW, where can I get a Betula chinensis 'Cinnamon Flakes'. What a cool plant!