Stormy Weather

[salymap]

saly, Round-Up (glysophate) starts working almost at once, though some plants are zapped faster than others. I did some "round-upping" in my garden last week and had unexpected showers in the afternoon. The weeds are now quite shrivelled, brown, and ready to be pulled out of the garden. I spent many years in the "green" industry. Round-Up application was part of the weed-control routine especially in peripheral areas. The idea was to keep weed seeds from blowing onto adjacent nursery stock. Our biggest concern was wind not rain. Wind caused Round-Up to drift onto good plants so we always waited for calm weather to do any spraying.

Hello marthe, it's well away from things I want to keep. Imagine three sides of a 4 metre square. A brick wall, my wooden shed and the house wall makeup the three side, leading to the patio.

Grass cutter has cut it in the past but it seems off bounds now to him. The only 'nice' plant is alchamella mollis or something, Ladies' Mantle' is easier to spell. It is pretty but grows like a weed.

I hope it works, if you use it, it must be okay

[marthe]

Hello marthe, it's well away from things I want to keep. Imagine three sides of a 4 metre square. A brick wall, my wooden shed and the house wall makeup the three side, leading to the patio.

Grass cutter has cut it in the past but it seems off bounds now to him. The only 'nice' plant is alchamella mollis or something, Ladies' Mantle' is easier to spell. It is pretty but grows like a weed.

I hope it works, if you use it, it must be okay

I'm laughing about your description of 'nice' Ladies' Mantle. In my garden, much as I love it, it's become a weed! I keep digging up the extras to transplant elsewhere or to give away. Maybe I should threaten it with Round-Up! LM looks its best in June when the flowers are fresh and green. By late August they've become brown and tired looking. I've just cut back the offending brown flowers so the foliage now looks much fresher. My biggest headache now is black spot on the roses. It's so humid here that black spot is in everyone's rose gardens, even the fancy estate gardens in the posh part of town! Today turned out to be quite lovely with lots of sun and low humidity. This will continue tomorrow but change back to the really sticky, tropical air we've had for nearly a week.

[salymap]

I'm laughing about your description of 'nice' Ladies' Mantle. In my garden, much as I love it, it's become a weed! I keep digging up the extras to transplant elsewhere or to give away. Maybe I should threaten it with Round-Up! LM looks its best in June when the flowers are fresh and green. By late August they've become brown and tired looking. I've just cut back the offending brown flowers so the foliage now looks much fresher. My biggest headache now is black spot on the roses. It's so humid here that black spot is in everyone's rose gardens, even the fancy estate gardens in the posh part of town! Today turned out to be quite lovely with lots of sun and low humidity. This will continue tomorrow but change back to the really sticky, tropical air we've had for nearly a week.

marthe good morning, another problem plant is Ajuga [Bugle ?} which is popping up in a paved area, making it dangerous for me in my tottery state. If I had some 'dug over' ground I would try to persuade it to grow somewhere more suitable, but I don't. The once pretty flower beds haven't been touched for years.

The leaves of Ladies' Mantle look so pretty with either dew or raindrops on them, don't they?

[Serial_Apologist]

My biggest headache now is black spot on the roses. It's so humid here that black spot is in everyone's rose gardens, even the fancy estate gardens in the posh part of town!

An endemic problem over here too, marthe!

There is a cure, but it is expensive and really time-consuming. Apparently you can avoid black spot repeating by not allowing affected leaves fall onto the soil, as it is by transfer through the ground and up through the roots and stems that the problem replicates! The only way this can be done is either by removing all black-spotted leaves before they fall - in which case your rose bush will probably soon end up leafless, and therefore temporarily incapable of photosynthesising - or by laying some sort of non-permeable material on the ground below the plants to catch them. The leaves must then be burned - if put on the compost heap the resultant compost will contain the black spot virus. The more expensive, but equally time consuming option, is to buy one of the rather expensive chemical spray products available on the market. Spraying has to start right from the beginning of the growing season, ie. March. The preparation then has to be mixed and put into a sprayer, and every single leaf on your roses must be thoroughly soaked, both sides, at least every fortnight, if my memory serves me correctly - a great wrist-strengthening exercise!. The other "good" news is that, though unsightly, black spot is not a killer, though I would imagine the leaf loss it entails probably does weaken the plant by shortening its growing season, and therefore shortens the plant's life.

We're due for some of that tropical air here, next week, they think!

[Serial_Apologist]

marthe good morning, another problem plant is Ajuga [Bugle ?} which is popping up in a paved area, making it dangerous for me in my tottery state. If I had some 'dug over' ground I would try to persuade it to grow somewhere more suitable, but I don't.

A kettleful of boiling water poured over the weeds will kill them instantly, saly, along with any seeds or root systems established.

[salymap]

Rain holding off so far but a few drops when I went to local shop. Alittle chillyfor August but I shall be grumbling about the heat soon, if S_A is right, and he usually is.

[John Wright]

Just had .... a nice little break from the British weather, trip with family to Iceland (and to see son-in-law play football)

Iceland, a very barren place, but very beautiful (especially with last week's fine weather!).

[salymap]

Thanks for those JW, lovely pictures

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Thanks for those JW, lovely pictures

, JW

[John Wright]

And thank you, it was quite lovely, that blue sky!! so missed here.

I think we were lucky with the weather in Iceland last week, though it's not difficult to be better than UK's this summer.

It was about 20degC, slight breeze, never rained, very little cloud (and never got dark!). And there is old lava everywhere!!

The calm blue water in photos 4 & 5 is actually the sea, some bays come well-inland on the south of the island.

Photo 1 is a lake in the centre of Reykjavik. The last photo is the Blue Lagoon, Mrs W was there, not me.

The trip to the Geysir and Gullfoss falls was by car and there is no charge on the sites, there's a decent restaurant.

An Iceland trip IS expensive, I think the flights alone were over £300 quid each, decent hotel £100 a night/room. Except for fish, everything has to be imported into Iceland so restaurant meals are expensive, beer is expensive, and buying anything in the shops is too. I'd say prices for everything is twice UK. Good meal out for four of us was always about £100 including drinks.

[Angle]

Several years ago, I went to Iceland for lunch.

[marthe]

marthe good morning, another problem plant is Ajuga [Bugle ?} which is popping up in a paved area, making it dangerous for me in my tottery state. If I had some 'dug over' ground I would try to persuade it to grow somewhere more suitable, but I don't. The once pretty flower beds haven't been touched for years.

The leaves of Ladies' Mantle look so pretty with either dew or raindrops on them, don't they?

saly, I very much like the dewy leaves of Ladies' Mantle. I read somewhere that the botanical name, Alchemilla, or "Little Magical One," refers to the magical quality of Ladies' Mantle's dew-gathering leaves. Bugle Weed (Ajuga spps) can be an awful pest in the wrong spot. I have three named varieties of Ajuga in my garden. They earn their keep by providing ground cover in the more hopeless patches of my lawn.

S_A, thanks for the info about Black Spot prevention. I've tried sprays, powders, cleaning up diseased foliage from the ground. In the end, I try to keep it from getting too awful and I just accept that it's part of life in my garden. All the control methods are too tedious and time consuming. The cooler autumn weather gives the roses a new lease on life until it's time to shut the garden down for winter.

JW, thanks for the mini tour of Iceland!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Gorgeous day today in the Pennines: proper Summer weather.

[salymap]

Gorgeous day today in the Pennines: proper Summer weather.

Lucky old you It is supposed to be getting better this week according to S-A. It's middling here, a few ominious clouds now, raining in W London earlier and in Hampshire.

[BBMmk2]

I hope iot'sgoijng tom bhe beter at least by saturday, as me and my jamming partner hope to go on a jolly that day!!