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Chores in the garden


FrankJ

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Now that I have completed my latest build I think I need to put off buying another kit for about 2 or 3 weeks. 

Got a garden shed, bike shed, a small lean too shed and 2 long fences front and rear in dire need of painting. Her indoors likes gardening so I can leave her to do the weeding and cutting the grass. 😂

 

I'll spend the evenings deciding which kit to get next. Quicker I get these chores done sooner I can get back to building the next kit with a clean conscious. 😁😁

If I buy a kit just now the chores will be on the back burner again. 🙄😏

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Well I've recently removed gravel from the entire garden and put down a turf lawn, 

 

I put new felt on the shed roof. Planted lots of flowers and bushes, put in a garden arch and more. I don't even like gardening! So my conscience is clear. 

 

The shed does need painting and the grass cutting but as I have two idle teenagers open to bribery. That issue is resolved 

 

Now I just sit out here in the sunshine and admire my handiwork instead of working on that Hurricane and Beaufort I started. 

 

Maybe when it starts raining again? 

Edited by noelh
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Well, it's precipitating quite seriously here at the moment - we've had about 150mm so far this month, a good deal more than usual - so I suppose I've just got to sit down and fiddle with plastic ...

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I neeed to put down a selective whatever on my lawn as there is the yearly outbreak on bindii weed starts starting to become a nuisance underfoot.

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1 hour ago, Mick4350 said:

I neeed to put down a selective whatever on my lawn as there is the yearly outbreak on bindii weed starts starting to become a nuisance underfoot.

Nuisance is an understatement. It's painful! We call it Onehunga or Prickleweed over the ditch.

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20 hours ago, Mick4350 said:

I neeed to put down a selective whatever on my lawn as there is the yearly outbreak on bindii weed starts starting to become a nuisance underfoot.

Mongrel stuff! Even my late wife, who was a landscape architect by profession and a dab hand with herbicides (her specialty being bushland regeneration), couldn't eliminate it entirely from the lawn in our Sydney place. The problem was that the most effective killers of bindii are also most effective against just about everything else. She wasn't inclined to kill off the Sir Walter buffalo that we'd paid so much for just to get rid of the bindii.

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Paspalum is straightforward but hard work - just keep digging it out until it's all gone. It doesn't spread by runners (I think the technical term for it is "rosette-shaped" or "tussocky"), so eventually it will go, as long as you make sure you don't leave any behind - it will bounce back from even the smallest scrap. This I know from painful experience - SWMBO had all the answers, but muggins was the one who broke his back ...

 

Kikuyu is bloody near impossible. It's stoloniferous and rhizomatous, i.e. it spreads runners both above and below ground, so it's doubly hard to knock. It can be eradicated by CAREFUL hand-painting with herbicide (glyphosate, the landscaper's friend - it's safe enough as long as you don't spray it) or, once again, just keep digging ...

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On 7/24/2021 at 6:23 PM, Jo NZ said:

Nuisance is an understatement. It's painful! We call it Onehunga or Prickleweed over the ditch.

Nothing happening this Friday Afternoon, so I pulled my finger out and put the Bindii and Clover herbicide ( Dicamba ) on my back yard with the stuff going into a watering can and then onto the lawn.

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There was me thinking a bit of moss was a pain to remove from the lawn. Not to mention the odd dandelion. Those down under weeds sound ferocious. The only thing that we have to watch out for is Japanese knotweed. That's extremely difficult to remove. But still quite unusual to find in gardens. 

 

My only problem at the moment moment is a couple of yellow patches on the lawn. Not sure what the problem is. It might be a couple of large rocks just under the ground. I actually dug out a few football sized rocks possibly left over from when this was a classic West of Ireland field surrounded by dry stone walls. Either that or it's the roots of the Scotch pines that overlook the garden. They must be at least 40 metres tall. 

 

A bit of probing might be in order, like a a sapper in a minefield. 

Edited by noelh
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10 hours ago, noelh said:

Those down under weeds sound ferocious.

The really irritating part is that they are both imports - paspalum from South America, kikuyu from South Africa. Both were brought in originally as pasture grasses, but without any native predators here they spread like weeds (boom, tish!). They're not the only ones - there are many varieties originally imported because they were "useful" or "pretty", or because their importers were homesick - think Scotch thistle, saffron thistle, broom, oleander, mistletoe - that became garden escapees because they thrived here with nothing to keep them suppressed. Sydney's railway track reservations have vast infestations of morning glory because home gardeners, unable to contain it properly when it began to take over, ripped it out and dumped it on railway land.  Our native grasses are actually quite benign, but the invaders are very good at choking them out.

 

And don't get me started on cane toads, rabbits or foxes ...

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14 hours ago, noelh said:

There was me thinking a bit of moss was a pain to remove from the lawn. Not to mention the odd dandelion. Those down under weeds sound ferocious. The only thing that we have to watch out for is Japanese knotweed. That's extremely difficult to remove. But still quite unusual to find in gardens. 

 

My only problem at the moment moment is a couple of yellow patches on the lawn. Not sure what the problem is. It might be a couple of large rocks just under the ground. I actually dug out a few football sized rocks possibly left over from when this was a classic West of Ireland field surrounded by dry stone walls. Either that or it's the roots of the Scotch pines that overlook the garden. They must be at least 40 metres tall. 

 

A bit of probing might be in order like a a sapper in a minefield. 

Talking of foxes if you have any in the area this can be them leaving their mark.

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4 hours ago, Stef N. said:

Talking of foxes if you have any in the area this can be them leaving their mark.

Didn't consider that. I haven't seen any yet but there's bound to be foxes locally. Some of the neighbours have gardens that are more like country estates!

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On 24/07/2021 at 07:47, Stef N. said:

The rain is coming over down here too. Hope Frank did his garden chores because,as it's the start of the holiday season, the weather is turning for the worse. May need a new kit.😀

Err! Not quite Stef, 😁 still fences and shed to paint. Luckily it rained here for a wee while. 😁😁

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21 hours ago, Admiral Puff said:

The really irritating part is that they are both imports - paspalum from South America, kikuyu from South Africa. Both were brought in originally as pasture grasses, but without any native predators here they spread like weeds (boom, tish!). They're not the only ones - there are many varieties originally imported because they were "useful" or "pretty", or because their importers were homesick - think Scotch thistle, saffron thistle, broom, oleander, mistletoe - that became garden escapees because they thrived here with nothing to keep them suppressed. Sydney's railway track reservations have vast infestations of morning glory because home gardeners, unable to contain it properly when it began to take over, ripped it out and dumped it on railway land.  Our native grasses are actually quite benign, but the invaders are very good at choking them out.

 

And don't get me started on cane toads, rabbits or foxes ...

...or europeans in general...

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I remember years ago clearing a patch of land in Australia for some bloke. He had some weed called Lantana that he was trying to get rid of. A real pest. Lo and behold I saw it in an English garden centre a couple of years later being sold as an exotic garden plant.

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Flag Officer Home Fleet requested a couple of more manky trees on the grounds be dealt with.

Yesterday and today spent with some epic chainsaw fun and a touch of Landrover stump removal.

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5 minutes ago, NAVY870 said:

Flag Officer Home Fleet requested a couple of more manky trees on the grounds be dealt with.

Yesterday and today spent with some epic chainsaw fun and a touch of Landrover stump removal.

I hate gardening but that sounds fun!

 

Trevor

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10 hours ago, Admiral Puff said:

And I forgot what is probably the most invasive and noxious of the lot - Rubus fruticosus, the infernal blackberry!

You forgot Tiger-Pear cactus ( Opuntia aurantiaca ), that's truely a pest around the state. The spines on this cactus are up to 5cm long that have a barb near its tip and thus breaks off very easily. It causes injuries to humans, livestock, working dogs and pets. It has many stem segments that break off and are moved around the area by livestock and the barbs are so sharp that they will even pierce through leather footwear. I used to help my neighbour on his farm near Cooby Dam on weekends to clear the stuff from a 200 acre paddock, usually by digging out with a shovel as you can't pull it out with your hands, as the plant has hundreds of sharp barbs all over it.

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