Fall?

Already?

What happened to spring!!!

Next week my temps are supposed to dip down into the low 30s.. 33-34 to be exact. OMG, I'm NOT READY!!!!! Sure, I've got most everyone under at least 6" of mulch & I picked up another 2 cubic yards of mulch that I need to spread around... but I'm NOT ready yet!! NO NO NO!!! In fact, I've got another 5 more roses from Cliff coming in this/next week!! I hope they get in this week so I can get them soaked & planted before then....

*cries when sees pretty roses from everyone in warmer areas...*

Wait, WHAT?!?

Tabby - probably not in your area, but that's what they're predicting for my side (I'm on the northern edge of the Palmer Divide I guess... anything that hits Monument we usually get too).

Time for a rock garden, perhaps?

I understand most rocks are resistant to frost. Also they don't require much water. They don't disappear when exposed to fungus. And they are quite drought tolerant. Sometimes they do turn brown in the sun, though; but not if you buy the right kind of rocks. On the downside: they are difficult to shape with a pruning shears. And their delicious scent is extremely subtle.

I'm not expecting frost here until mid-October. And maybe no hard frost until late November. I resisted planting new roses after April: will see if that made any difference next summer. Most of my new roses are still kicking, though Bambi still deadheads them for me most of the time.

I did a rock garden. Had ice plants, hens & chicks, russian sage. In fact, on the west side of my driveway, I still have a tiny section of rock. Has irises, russian sage, & yarrow. Used Colorado red rock for that area. The area that had the iceplants, H&C, etc just grew lots and lots of bindweed. I'm overrun with bindweed. That nasty crap can wiggle it's way through 2-3 layers of the thick weedblock, too! And all you need is like 1/4" of root to produce a new plant.. and they readily break at the ground level so .. gah! That & some kind of wild morning glory-looking vine w/o the pretty flowers.. blehblehbleh! Bindweed's evil... and I swear the stuff drinks RoundUp like it's KoolAid.

Steve has some convincing arguments for growing rocks!

My rock gardens are weeded better than my roses. The sempervivum, sedums and iceplant don't have thorns and the gardens get a lot less water, so the weeds grow less.

I'm pretty much overrun with bindweed - both the perennial and the annual kind.

Toni,
I know what you mean about bindweed. The only way I've found to get rid of it is to apply enough Roundup that nothing else will ever grow in that space (except rocks, of course).

And it's a good point about watering, Tabby. I had someone water my garden when I was away this summer. I normally water in little hollows that I have established near plants. In between plants, the soil stays drier. But the person who watered, carefully moistened all of the soil evenly. So all the spaces between plants sprouted and grew three ft tall weeds while I was out of town for two weeks. Or so it seemed.

I need to know ; IS THERE A MAGIC FAIRY THAT WILL COME MAKE THE WEEDS GO AWAY IF I PRAY REAL HARD

This is the time of year when I wish for a fairy to obliterate all of the Arum. I can handle weeds. The Arum is an immortal monster that spreads and spreads and is ugly besides. It's coming up everywhere and it won't die down until February or March.

I just pulled an Arum from one of the pots you gave me, can't remember what plant it was now.

Oh, no! Don't let it near any soil. Throw it in the garbage can immediately! It gets into everything, even the hanging pots. It spreads through the air like microbes.

Magic fairy - no, don't know one, but I think I still have Fairy Magic.

It's no magic fairy but our drought has done a pretty good job of eliminating weeds here - after, of course, wiping out all the grass and many trees! Like Steve I only water right at the base of my roses, but normally our weeds don't seem to need water to grow.

well I guess I'll have to go pull my own weeds need to move some Iris out from under a tree !!! so you all have a great day

wow, I wish I had arums as "weeds"... much more prettier than bindweed! And arums don't choke out the roses, either. I didn't have bad pigweed this year, but yet something else, I'm not sure what. The thistles are still in the two sections that I've been fighting bad.. pulled up every one I could find on Sunday w/o gloves.. NOT SMART! Now I have teeny thorns in my fingers still and tons of tiny cuts. And, of course, I went & peeled chile Sunday night.. that felt REAL good

What type arum is a weed for you?
Is it the type we here in zone 5 grow as a houseplant?

Are they those Italian Arum? i have tried and tried to get those to grow. i saw a colony of them at a botanical garden and thought it was the coolest thing.
The only natives we have that people elsewhere buy are ground asters and helianthus.
Oh I think I saw snow on the mountain Euphorbia in a nursery once. That's a weed here.
I was shocked to see ice plant growing all over the freeway right of way in California. We pay $5 for a little start of that here. A friend in South Carolina said it was actually invasive there.

Ice plant is rampant here. People in San Francisco use it for erosion control.

The hideous stuff in my garden is Arum Italicum, and weeds are far preferable to me because they can at least be pulled. I'll take some pictures of the stuff in my garden and you'll see that it actually can choke out little roses. It gets taller than some roses and blocks all of the light and moisture, so I have to rip off the tops of it to let the roses breathe. It grows back constantly, however.

I can't dig it out because every time I dig up a large bulb, lots of little bulbs fall off the big one and embed themselves in the ground. If I wanted to get every single bulb out, I'd have to dig out every plant in my garden and replace the soil, and even then it would soon come back, spreading over here from the neighbors' gardens.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

Cinda, the stuff in my neighborhood did start out as a houseplant. One of my neighbors was trying to see whether her Arum houseplant would grow outside, and now it has spread to about 30 or 40 gardens in the neighborhood.

Wow who knew , kinda like turning hamsters loose.
That plant they sell here $7.99 a pot , I have seen it in the display gardens several places.