<p>I like growing heirloom tomatoes. I try not to grow too many things that are easy to find in the grocery store. No zucchini for me! Unfortunately while we have only one small cherry tree on our property we are surrounded by neighbors with mature trees, so finding sunny places for vegetables is a problem. I think I should build my addition with a green roof!</p>
<p>worrywart: Japanese beetle adults come from “grubs” in lawns. The grub is their larval phase, the flying critter is their adult/reproductive phase. Controlling Japanese beetles is tough.</p>
<p><a href=“Pueblo.GPO.gov Main Page”>Pueblo.GPO.gov Main Page;
<p>Some people treat their lawn for grubs. You need to know that most grubs are completely immune to common pesticides, so it is not a sure cure at all. (Contrary to what the lawn places tell you. They just want to sell you pesticides.) Plus, I don’t know where you live - so you need to check out your state’s information for WHEN the right time to treat is. They are only susceptible to pesticides at certain stages of their life cycle. </p>
<p>Spraying the adults is pretty pointless. Nothing kills them well, and you simply can not stop more (from all over the neighborhood) from arriving. </p>
<p>Same with traps. Unless you own acres and acres, and you can put the traps REALLY far away from your house or garden, all the traps will do for you is attract every beetle in town to your yard. (But your neighbors will thank you.) </p>
<p>If they are eating flowers or vegetables that you like you can try picking them off and drowning them in soapy water. But if you are terrified of them that might not work. Maybe you can pay a kid to do it.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>Ewwww. Too much information.</p>
<p>Anyone know how to best take care of Oenothera Younggi (sp)? It looks like I lost two of three plants over the winter. I keep replacing them . . .
Oh, and I’m in Minnesota, which isn’t as cold as it used to be.</p>
<p>Here’s my gardening question: I’ve attended conferences in DC the last several years in June and noticed lots of planters with sweet potato vine trailing over the sides–at least I think that’s what it was–beautiful, lush, flourescent green leaves, a perfect foil for brightly colored coleus and annuals, and I thought to myself, “I want some of that!” So I have haunted the amazing garden stores here in Germany, but it seems to be something that just isn’t available in my part of the world. Can anyone tell me, is this a special kind of plant, or is it really just plain old sweet potatoes? I had a sweet potato that was starting to sprout about three weeks ago, so I cut that end off and buried it in a pot, but nothing has happened. Am I going about this all wrong? Is there a way to get those beautiful plants from regular sweet potatoes from the grocery store?</p>
<p>sweet potato vine is ipomoea – with many different varieties and more each year. I think the most common chartreuse one is ‘maragarita.’ There’s also a great deep purple one – ‘blackie.’ It’s still a little early to be seeing this in nurseries. I run my kid’s school’s plant sale, which was held last weekend, and the sweet potato vines we had were looking pretty scrawny. I can’t imagine the climate in Germany is so different that they couldn’t grow there, but I think you’re out of luck trying to grow one from a potato. The vines do produce tubers, and I’m told you can eat them when you pull them out in the fall. Never tried, though.</p>
<p>They are ornamental sweet potato vines used as an annual groundcover or in containers, and are available at nurseries in the U.S., I don’t know if they’re available overseas. Are there any mail order nurseries that deliver to Germany? that might be a place to check. They are a tropical plant, so they don’t survive winter. There are 3 varieties, the margarita, a dark foliage variety called “Blackie” and a tri-color (don’t remember its name).</p>
<p>I just bought the tri-color this past weekend at my local nursery. Can’t recall the name but it’s very sweet and delicate looking.</p>
<p>Hmmmm, this will take more research. I’ve lived here for five years, and I’m a fairly avid gardener, but I’ve never seen anything like that in Germany. We have lots of Dutch plant growers that come to a monthly market, so I’ll ask around next month and also check with some German gardener friends. Climate-wise, I think it would do just fine here treated as a summer annual. </p>
<p>Generally US nurseries can’t ship here because of customs regulations, but maybe it would be available in a UK nursery. The pound is killing the dollar, but at least within the EU shipping shouldn’t be a problem. I really like the effect of the vines in planters, so I think it’s worth the effort to try to get some.</p>
<p>The sweet potatoes (Ipomoea, I think) that you see in containers are not the same as the eating kind. Those also come in a great black color, very cool to have both together, I think. However, you can try sprouting store bought sweet potatoes – I think you’ll get a less lush vine, with smaller leaves, and not such cool colors. That said, they may not sprout, they might be treated with an anti-spouting chemical.</p>
<p>worrywart: Ummm…you’re welcome?</p>
<p>Here are pictures! <a href=“http://www.naturehills.com/new/product/annuals_subcategories.aspx?catname=Sweet+Potato+Vine[/url]”>http://www.naturehills.com/new/product/annuals_subcategories.aspx?catname=Sweet+Potato+Vine</a></p>
<p>After finding some of my beautiful hosta looking like lace samplers, I decided to try the beer idea to get rid of slugs. So I put a dish of beer out to try to deplete the surplus population. The next morning I went out to check the success (or failure) of this idea I’d heard so much about. Good news: I found a whole bunch of slimy little slugs (all smiling, of course) floating yuckily in the beer. </p>
<p>So here’s the problem: what do I do with a dish of warm beer with dead slug carcases ?</p>
<p>I would flush them down the toilet.</p>
<p>I put them in the compost pile. :)</p>
<p>So I can either treck the slimy mess across the oriental rug to the bathroom, or have the beer thrown outside to waft the alchoholic fumes around so that the neightbors think we drink a lot. <em>sigh</em> </p>
<p>Curse you, slugs! Which brings up a question: what are the natural enemies of slugs? </p>
<p>Seriously, thanks for your helpful posts.</p>
<p>Natural enemies of slugs = toads, snakes, mice, some birds. </p>
<p>I just toss the container out in the garden under a bush - they’re dead anyway, the whole thing decomposes. </p>
<p>Here’s a tip - rake out your garden really well in the fall. If you live in a place with cold winters, the exposure is tough on slug eggs and adults if they have no place to hide. (The bad news is that it is also tough on their predators…)</p>
<p>I don’t like to use the beer method, since my dogs go out into the garden and it’s poisonous to dogs… so I actually go out in the garden with a pair of scissors and cut the slugs in half. I do this in the evening while I’m waiting for the dogs to do their thing. It may sound weird, but it also allows me to keep the good slugs and get rid of the bad ones. Here in western WA, we have European slugs that eat live plant material, and two different native slugs that eat dead plant material. I only kill the European ones (another invasive species, like blackberries and starling, that I wish we hadn’t imported!).</p>
<p>Ducks will also eat slugs.</p>
<p>Okay…did anyone see this??</p>
<p>Just watch the TLC show “This House Must Go”…and one of the cases covered was a house practically destroyed by the roots of a Sweet Gum tree originally located in the neighbor’s yard 80 feet away. It was frightening! The tree roots had heaved the foundation causing cracks where roots as big as my arms were growing around in-slab plumbing and electrical. Walls and bath fixtures were cracked…and it seems as though everywhere in and around the house they excavated they uncovered huge roots. Where the roots had surfaced sucker trees 5 feet tall were growing. And all of this was 2.5 year AFTER the neighbors had removed the tree!</p>
<p>Final bill to repair the house, including removal of the slab …$750,000!</p>
<p>Never knew how important it was to consider the location of trees when purchasing a house!</p>
<p>Along those lines- howcum so many places don’t put in basements like we do in Wis? I can see not doing it if the water table is too high or the bedrock too close, but otherwise, what is the logic, especially in Tornado Alley? On hot days the dehumidifier and underground location make it much cooler.</p>