Not really the needles or thorns on those cacti , it is those hairs you cannot see (me anyway)

Pliers or Kitchen reach extenders work for me nasty old biters , make bad pets ,

I cover everything with lots of leaves. I have 5 Crepe Myrtles that I build a cage around and fill with leaves. They are only hardy to Zone 6 at best. I will be piling up about 4 - 5 feet of leaves and straw on my Hardy banana.

My Muskogee got > 15 ' tall, but did not bloom 4 of the 5 bloomed - 3 Pink Velour and one Dynamite. Next year I should also have a blooming Sioux which I grew from seed last year. I have 2 more NOIDs that might bloom next year.

Yeah - the Earl May shrubs were covered with 3 feet of leaves after I sank the pots. Everything came thru fine.

Did I mention I will be going to Earl May tomorrow?

Back on topic - It bit me again today somehow. I was no closer than a foot!

BTW - My PP is NOID. How many different types do you have now?

jimard8 said: Not really the needles or thorns on those cacti , it is those hairs you cannot see (me anyway)

Pliers or Kitchen reach extenders work for me nasty old biters , make bad pets ,

Yeah - I had to take off my glasses and squint as hard as possible to see them.
Pretty bloom.
Mine was in a container for some time and just planted on Tuesday. Any chance it will bloom next year?

David the more I talk to you I remember sending them to a David on GW. Did you get them from me? If you got them from me they are Opuntia phaeacantha 'Persimmon'.

I notice if I do not leave on the pad that grows this summer they will not bloom the following summer. So it is like Hydrangea in that sense they bloom on last years pad.

Wasn't me. While I used to participate on GW, I hardly ever go there anymore. Funny - cause I was a member when they first started decades ago. But I never traded or received anything from anyone there. Ditto for DG.

Thanks for the growing info. I just found some seeds on Park - hardy to Zone 3. 30 seeds for $2.95. Since I love to grow from seed (and have grown cactus from seed already) I may give these a try.

GACK! Brushed my left thumb on something and YOWWWW. Looked. Closer. A tiny speck. Started digging with a needle. 15 excuciating minutes later, I finally freed it. YEP. One of the teeny PP thorns.

Poor you, David....I feel your pain. I have PP all over my place....miss being barefoot in the yard all the time The first year here my son came for the weekend...told him to be careful of the PP. Being a rotten know it all "kid", he informed me he was fine... had sneakers on. Could not help myself...laughter flew out of my mouth before I could catch it The hateful spines (as I call them) will also flat the tires on the garden tractor. At the moment I have 2 or 3 cans at the ready....wonder how many times it can be used on the same tire

I adjusted it today and use barbeque grill tongs - an old set. Worked great and NO thorns. Yay.

May I share my worst mistake???
Here in Central California we have gophers.... I mean G O P H E R S!!! They eat everything from the root up. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure. Gophers are a small rodent with 2 prominent front teeth. (Imagine an 8 inch long burrowing beaver) You literally go out to your garden and watch your broccoli plant... first dance, then swoon. Ok, now it's DONE, you'd best harvest right away.
So I'm a savvy gardener, I have had enough of those buggers. I know what I'm doing. Right? I plan a veggie garden/orchard that will be 30'X80'. I rent a trencher and dig a trench (2 1/2 feet deep) around the whole parameter of my new garden. (back in 2001) I bury hardware cloth down the 2 1/2 feet, all the way around. Pretty smart, huh? Well, apparently NOT I have trapped IN a family of gophers and I have Yet to completely eradicate them. OMG, Pretty embarrassing Anybody else want to ante up????

ROTFLMFAO. Good job Lori. Obviously Not.

FWIW - today I was digging up some 4 O'Clock tubers NEAR my prickly pear. Like > 1 foot away. And I got a freaking small thorn - somehow - from it. I was a bit upset to say the least. They apparently DO jump thru the air.

Lori - I had a very similar experience with Woodchucks. Did not know I had a problem til I returneded from a weekend at Niagra Falls. Went out to check our HUGE vegetable garden and it ... was .... GONE. Leveled. NOTHING.

20 gauge works nicely for critters like that Lori. Screw whatever gun laws you have.

OK ... I will.

When I bought my house, everything was covered in snow. Yes, I knew I was going to be gardening on several levels because the house was built on a slope, but I truly underestimated how labor intensive that would be as this is my first in-ground garden. I had only owned a condo before and had only done container gardening.

I also didn't know what was under the snow ... I thought I was going to be removing lawn. When I came up for the closing of the escrow, this is what I found:



I also didn't know what was under those rocks .. The native soil under the rocks was/is what we call glacier slurry up here. Tightly compressed small rocks with clay and silt between them. Although it has perfect drainage, I couldn't dig a hole even with a pick. The soil was dead.

I actually thought I could plant a rose garden there.

Someone once told me it takes twenty years to create a garden. I think it will take me a bit longer. I am at the eleven year mark and have all of the roses planted, but need to complete the beds because I don't want a mono garden.

I didn't know you were supposed to prepare whole beds, so I dug rose holes. Over the years I've made beds and improved the soil by hauling in a lot of organic material that was never dug in because I didn't want to wreck the drainage. I can now dig in the beds with a trowel. Also, the soil inside the beds is very alive with lots of worms and soil bacteria and fungi.

This is a photo of part of the house pad garden taken in May, 2014:



This is a photo taken last month:



The bare dirt you see between the beds is the native soil I found under the rocks. It can grow some weeds and grass if it gets water.

I do have a rose garden. I have about 100 roses planted in various beds on the house pad, the top tier in front of the house and a rose in a bed on the street level.

I still have a LOT of work to do.

Smiles,
Lyn

David ...

I use the call of a rabid goose to keep deer away from my property up in the mountains of northern California.

Here is a post I made on the HAPPY thread in the Sandbox Forum with a follow up post about the same buck made about four days later:

http://garden.org/thread/view_...

http://garden.org/thread/view_...

That buck is gone !

Smiles,
Lyn

RoseBlush1 said:

I also didn't know what was under the snow ... I thought I was going to be removing lawn. When I came up for the closing of the escrow, this is what I found:



I also didn't know what was under those rocks .. The native soil under the rocks was/is what we call glacier slurry up here. Tightly compressed small rocks with clay and silt between them. Although it has perfect drainage, I couldn't dig a hole even with a pick. The soil was dead.

Methinks that is a Call and Raise ya 10.

Under our "soil" (which is a layer from 1 - 3 inches or so of wonderful topsoil ripped off from some farmland somewhere) is, depending on moisture content at the time, pure clay or gumbo. The latter after a heavy rain. When it has been dry for some time, the clay is so hard that it is near impenetrable. Jam your shovel into it? Bounces off. Jump up and down on it? You might get the blade in 1/4 inch - if yer lucky. I have on occasion had to use a hand sledge and a coal chisel to get thru this drek.

Digging in a single planting hole can take an hour or two easily. And you always go a few feet deep and several feet wide - cause you have to fill the planting "hole" with something a plant can survive in (Note that planting bulbs is a bummer). Last year I made a new bed (football shaped ~ 30 feet long and at widest ~ 12 feet and 2 1/2 feet deep) in our front yard and I planted a Franklin Tree at one end and a Contorted Filbert at the other. I dug the holes for the two trees 4 feet wide and ~ 8 feet deep using drain tile in bottom 5 feet filled with stone. The other 12 cubic feet was filled with Davids Sooper Sekrit recipe. It took me over 2 weeks working about 6 hours per (every) day to make that bed.

The clay here can be anywhere from 4 feet or so to 20 or more feet deep. Usually by then you have hit bedrock.

Drainage? Surely you jest. A 1 ' x 1 ' hole can take an hour or so to perk.

I just Called you and raised you 10.

David .........

DavidLMO said:I just Called you and raised you 10

I'll fold. Having excellent drainage is what made it possible to create a rose garden in glacier slurry ...

Rose literature says roses have to have nice loamy soil to grow well. I guess someone forgot to tell the roses ..

DavidLMO said:The latter after a heavy rain. When it has been dry for some time, the clay is so hard that it is near impenetrable. Jam your shovel into it? Bounces off. Jump up and down on it? You might get the blade in 1/4 inch - if yer lucky. I have on occasion had to use a hand sledge and a coal chisel to get thru this drek.

After days of heavy rain, I can go out and walk on my soil without worrying about compression or sinking to my knees in mud. I traded my Wellingtons for snow boots ... The soil is moist, but there is so much rock in it, walking on it doesn't make any difference and I don't sink. As for "jamming my shovel into the soil" .. HA ! In the early days of the garden I had the same experience you wrote about, but I used what we call a "Trinity shovel" ... a digging bar ... and a hand mattock once I got down deeper to widen the hole.

DavidLMO said:Digging in a single planting hole can take an hour or two easily. And you always go a few feet deep and several feet wide - cause you have to fill the planting "hole" with something a plant can survive in

After the first year, I found that I didn't dare use any organic material in my back fill or else the plant would sink when the OM decomposed. Of course, I had to learn that the hard way .. Now, I just use the native soil for my back fill and put all organics on top of the planting hole. The key for me was to grow a large root mass for the plant as its foundation before planting because then the plant had sufficient resources to withstand a lot of different kinds of stress.

DavidLMO said:Drainage? .... Surely you jest. A 1 ' x 1 ' hole can take an hour or so to perk.

Actually, an hour is pretty good. I was told by an experienced rose grower that if my rose hole drained over night, the plant would be OK. She was right. Many of the rose holes I dug didn't drain over night, so I just deeper and bigger holes. When it did drain over night, I planted the rose. None of them have died.

I have no idea what "Davids Sooper Sekrit recipe" is ...

One of the things I love about ATP is that people are quite willing to share their knowledge and experience.

I learned something about soil dynamics from Sue, @sooby, when I asked a question about preparing the soil for a raised bed adjacent to the foundation of my home that will not drain.

She wrote,"gravel at the base of a planter under finer soil actually impedes drainage of the top layer. This is because water doesn't cross the interface between finer material overlaying coarse material until the upper layer is saturated. So it has the opposite effect of what one would intuitively think. Sooo, based on that, it would make the planting soil hold more water. This phenomenon is called a "perched water table".

I don't know if that applies to your bed.

Smiles,
Lyn

RoseBlush1 said:

Actually, an hour is pretty good. I was told by an experienced rose grower that if my rose hole drained over night, the plant would be OK. She was right. Many of the rose holes I dug didn't drain over night, so I just deeper and bigger holes. When it did drain over night, I planted the rose. None of them have died.

I have no idea what "Davids Sooper Sekrit recipe" is ...

She wrote,"gravel at the base of a planter under finer soil actually impedes drainage of the top layer. This is because water doesn't cross the interface between finer material overlaying coarse material until the upper layer is saturated. So it has the opposite effect of what one would intuitively think. Sooo, based on that, it would make the planting soil hold more water. This phenomenon is called a "perched water table".

I don't know if that applies to your bed.

Smiles,
Lyn

Well - I had a temporary (?) spell of insanity. Regarding THOSE holes, they 2 barely perked overnight - 1 still had standing water in one. But at least the water helped me to dig the holes with more ease. Soaking a planting area the day before is an old trick that can facilitate digging a planting hole. It will also contribute to the surrounding area being moist.

WRT lining bottoms of planting holes with rocks, I never ever do that for the indicated reasons. If I put in a drain pipe or tile, I fill those with gravel. I do sometimes line the bottoms of pots with broken pieces of clay pots to ensure the drainage hole (s) are covered.

I have a typical mix for in-ground soil mix:

1 part sphagnum peat moss
2 parts pine bark fines
2 parts composted cow manure
4 parts top soil - cheaper stuff - not Scotts at 7 - 9 $/bag

If I have or can get cheaply Cotton Burr and/or Mushroom compost, I will substitute that for 1 of the pine bark fines and/or manure.

If I am planting a prized and/or expensive tree or shrub, I sometimes intentionally buy the Cotton Burr and Mushroom composts. I do like them both, but they are quite expensive.

Bringing this back to my mistake Prickly Pear, I used:

1 part top soil
1 part peat moss
2 parts pea gravel

After planting, I covered the area with sand.

Back to your prickly pear......I do not want to weed the area so I have 90% gravel and 10% soil. I see a weed every now and then but it quickly dies when the sun is out for a week with no rain.

This area was once a gravel parking area which made it perfect for plants that do not really need soil.

I think if I had planted PP by mistake, I think I would eradicate it and be done with it. My mom's neighbor did plant some, but it was never told how nasty it was. All I remember was how beautiful the flowers were in the spring. But then those neighbors moved and new ones moved in, and the PP was very soon gone.

As for me, the Biggest Plant Mistake, was:
I had bordered the west side of my garden, running north to south, with the large concrete blocks. I had found that weed seeds wash, that including clover and other type seeds that I didn't mind in the yard, but didn't want in the flower garden. I had already decided I would plant all the holes in the concrete blocks and my original intentions were things like creeping phlox, or good hardy short but slightly trailing plants.
Well, I had a pot full of tall bearded Iris seedlings that I didn't know what to do with, since at that moment I was out of space for planting. I had all the concrete block holes filled in with a combination of top soil and potting mix. Most still had not yet been planted. I decided spur of the moment to plant those baby Iris seedlings, (one per) in the holes. Who the heck would have been so wise to do such a thing?!. Well, one thing I didn't realize was that the soil in the holes was going to drop considerably through the winter, leaving the hole only about half full. Time passed quickly, and before I knew it, those Iris were to a mature state. Trying to get well rooted mature Iris out of those concrete block holes just isn't easy. Now I certainly didn't have to deal with pricks from PP, but it's hard to get well rooted mature Iris out concrete block holes without destroying them. And I did not want to destroy them! . . . these were my babies. So I don't suggest planting Iris in concrete block holes unless you are absolutely certain there is no further settling of the soil to happen.

Still haven't got them all out of there. You can't exactly tell from this photo I took quickly today, as to the depth that the rhizome is down.

David, I grew up in Denver, CO, and the prickly pear cactus was native there. I now will NEVER, EVER plant cactus or anything that looks like it has thorns. Except. I do have a Meyers Lemon tree that has thorns and so does the bougainvillea. Easy to dodge most of those huge thorns, but I use long leather rose gloves to prune the bougainvillea. Seems a lot easier to deal with big thorns rather than smaller ones.

Now, about clay. I lived in the Atlanta, GA area for 9 years. The clay there is red. Water runs off it and it sticks to shoes. I've never had platform sneakers before! The only way we could break it up was by using a ditch witch and then adding masses and masses of perlite. Perlite was the only thing that would stay in the clay to keep it broken up. After the perlite I used cow stuff and got really good results. The broken up clay would hold water but not excessively due to the perlite.

Now I live with sand, palm tree roots and whatever. Grow my daylilies in boxes because palm tree roots will strangle daylilies in the ground (sand) in order to get to the fertilizer. Now I have to use perlite to keep the soil from packing down in the boxes. Have I done this before??????

HoosierHarvester said:

As for me, the Biggest Plant Mistake, was:

... large concrete blocks.....

Well, I had a pot full of tall bearded Iris seedlings that I didn't know what to do with, I decided spur of the moment to plant those baby Iris seedlings, (one per) in the holes.

Still haven't got them all out of there. You can't exactly tell from this photo I took quickly today, as to the depth that the rhizome is down.

Bwahahahahahha. Sorry

Arlene ... I have 3 Bougainvillea - one with tiny thorns, one with HUGE thorns and one with NO thorns. Guess which I like to deal with the best.