Hortisexual Plant fetishists...

26 May '07 6:21 pm

Mark,

I've been too busy with my stocks and shares daytime job lately and haven't been in the moosey forums enough Sad

Congratulations on your 100th Moosey forum post! Now choose a forum title and I'll sort it for you Smile

27 May '07 4:06 am

how about "Home gardener & plant fetishist"?

27 May '07 6:47 pm

"Home gardener & plant fetishist"?

mark Smile

Hmmmm.... I'm cool with "home gardener" - Moosey will have to make the call on "plant fetishist"!!!

28 May '07 6:24 am

Just "Home gardener" is fine. By fetishist I mean to indicate how obsessive I get about pursuing new plants. The sexual undertones are just for fun. A local nursery, The Dry Garden, sells tee shirts which proclaim "I'm a Hortisexual". I blame any residue of bad taste in my garden humor on their influence.

6 Jun '07 4:18 pm

Well, I got a great chuckle from this little discussion! Just checking around the site and came across your discussion. I guess I could be called a "plant fetishist", being such a collector! My friends talk about my going to my "dealer" when I say that I've been to a nursery!

Actually, though, Eggy, having my own page with all of my pictures in one place would be grand (but I'm a patient person . . usually)!

Cheers, guys,

gordonf

14 Jun '07 10:41 am

I lost track of this one until I started going through each forum just now. I think we have the same condition alright. Even if there were a 12 step program that can help with this addiction I'm sure I don't want the cure. This weekend there is a show and sale at the San Francisco Botanical Garden put on by the local cactus and bromeliad clubs. There will be a huge variety of each, both well established specimens in the shows and starts of those and many more at the combined sale. I've been to this one before and am not bankrupt yet. I'm going in again Saturday. I'll try to remember to bring my camera and if enough pictures look good I'll post some for you under the Garden Tours forum.

14 Jun '07 5:06 pm

Hi, Mark;

It's a pretty great addiction, isn't it? Very Happy

I just discovered an Echeveria with YELLOW flowers (any that I've seen before had pink ones) at one of the local garden centers today, and it was all I could do to NOT buy it! Shocked

I'll look forward to seeing your pictures of the show in San Francisco!

I just discovered that my black bamboo (Phylostachus nigra) has begun to run around a bit in my garden; not a good thing! Now I'll have to begin taming it with a spade! And just when it finally is beginning to get higher than the roof! Also, the fleeceflower (some kind of Persicaria, I think) that was supposed to be 3 feet high and was placed accordingly, has now reached 4 feet and it still heading for the sky, thus blocking the purple Euphorbia and Lilium "Muscadet" completely from view for this year! Evil or Very Mad

So that little section of the garden will be getting a major upheaval late in the summer! I'll bet that that #@* fleeceflower will get to 6 feet before it stops!!

Enjoy the rest of the week!

Cheers,

gordonf

15 Jun '07 3:16 am

I also have P. nigra in the garden. People tried to warn me but I thought I could contain it. That sucker sent runners in all directions for more than 12 feet. It even went under the fence to my neighbor's yard where I've gone to remove it several times. To tear it out, my son made a tripod of 2by4's with a chain hanging down to which a winch was attached. Then he dug around and under each runner, attached a length of climbing webbing and lifted it up. He did this twice. I had to lift and move good sized plants and patiently extract everybit of bamboo root from between its roots. That stuff is tough, tougher even than its stems I think. After that was done, I had to dig around every place where a missed piece of root sprouted, poison it repeatedly and then, when it shriveled up and died, dig it out. This all took more than a year during which my Gunnera pouted, my brugmansias were stunted from lifting and replanting them. It definitely took all my gardening time for a while. In the end I kept two clumps but I planted each within a two foot widtj band of PVC. Beware, Gordon. If you can still dig it up and put it in a container of some kind that might be best.

15 Jun '07 2:43 pm

Oh, boy, Mark, now you've REALLY got me nervous!! I bought that bamboo as my research was pretty evenly split between saying that it was a runner and a clumper. I figured that it's not all that warm here in winter, so it should be all right. I had to pamper it for 3 years before it even put up a new culm. And Now!!! Tsk, tsk, tsk! I really don't want to remove it from that particular place, so I think I'll try chopping off runners every year for a while and see what happens. It seems only to grow in the spring and early summer, then just sits there and slowly unfurls the new leaves for the rest of the season, so with luck I should be able to keep up with it. You think??

Hopefully,

gordonf

15 Jun '07 4:36 pm

You know, Gordon, I had thought about your climate possibly keeping it in check for you but after my experience I wouldn't trust it. My clump didn't do much above ground for a couple years but then it really put on height and filled in. I suspect it first needed to spread below ground enough to brace the 15+ foot high canes. I think the canes are beautiful when they darken up. I've read about a way to stop it by digging a foot and a half deep trench the width of a spade all around it. The corms rarely grow deeper than that. Then when one bolts you'll know and can cut it out. I naively hoped that my big gunnera plant could hold its own against the bamboo. It never had a chance. Those corms are like armored lances knifing through any living thing in its path. Luckily after a year of pouting my gunnera is back to being its big bad self again. So far my bamboo has remained contained and is right now putting up some good sized canes after recuperating from my surgery last year.

Best of luck with this Gordon. I sure don't want you to have to go through what I did with mine.

Hortisexual Plant fetishists...

Thanks Eggy,

Either way.

Plantfetishist. . . Wow!

Hi Gordon,

Garden Shows and Other Things

Beware that running bamboo!

P. nigra

I hope you're right about the climate making the difference.