Black Medic: A Good Day to Die

Sometimes, where I live, we're lucky enough to get a blast of monsoonal moisture. The accompanying temperatures in the low 70s are a gift after days of temperatures nearing 100.  Of course, plants love this reprieve as much as we do, and I'm happy for that. I'm also happy that all the moist soil makes for perfect conditions for some weed murder - a good day to die. Today I went after the usual suspects I've mentioned previously (the creeping bellflowers and the bindweed) but added a new victim to the list. On my last stroll through my beds, I noticed the tell-tale yellow puffballs of black medic. Unlike the bindweed and bellflowers, this enemy doesn't use its roots to wreak havoc, so fortunately, it's easy to pull it out with a digging tool. It's satisfying, too, because pulling one central root often takes out several thin offshoots. Black medic's real danger lies in its seeds; each yellow puffball matures into a head of seeds that will yield more weeds. Go after it as soon as you notice its yellow face popping up in your garden, or you'll be faced with even more of it next year.



Here's a helpful link to educate yourself about this little weed. Gardening Know-How: Getting Rid of Black Medic  The author is certainly optimistic and tries to convince you that finding black medic in your garden is a great thing because it alerts you to the underlying problem: that you have compacted soil. OK... Whatever, the remedy is to pull it, and by pulling it, I've loosened up the soil. Like a boss.

Killing Bindweed

If Christian Grey were a plant, he'd be bindweed. Deeply twisted and into bondage.

And if Fifty Shades of Grey were a plant, it would be...bindweed. Crap and fast-spreading.

I haven't read the whole novel let alone the whole series - a quick skim of several pages was enough for me to make a snap judgment. I wish I had done the same with the Twilight series, but no. I had to do some research on the character. Luckily, there are whole wiki pages devoted to the Christian Grey character.  Of course there are.

Twining up the daisies: "You will be mine!"

Like so many evil plants, bindweed looks innocent enough. A member of the morning glory family, this delicate little vine with white blooms sidles up to any shy nearby plant and twirls daintily around it.  You'd be tempted to let it grow, let it grow. No. Don't do it because you'll soon realize that you can't hold it back any more.

Bindweed, or Convolvulis arvensis, is the enemy. I'll just call him Christian, ok?  Check any gardening message boards for tips on how to get him out of your garden and you'll see helpful hints about the use of "napalm" or suggestions to "just move out" or "go ahead and die; that weed will outlive you." Christian is a survivor. Yank him out of the ground, he'll grow back with double the power. Dig him up, he'll defy you with his roots that can sink over 9 feet (some sources say 40!) into the soil and can lie in subterranean wait for 20 years. No wonder so many people suggest napalm.

Pull me! Pull me again!

Apparently, there are a few things that work to curb Christian's voracious appetite for bondage and domination of other plants, but none are quick fixes. Pulling does apparently work if you are willing to stay vigilant watching for new growth. We're talking pulling it up every three weeks for three years to cut off any nourishment to its roots. I noticed that Christian reacts to pulling in the same way that Christian Grey reacted to his honey Anastasia defying him - he becomes more aroused. For Christian, arousal looks like this - a flush of hundreds of tiny leaves. As a gardener, I feel like this is the plant giving me the finger: "You dare to pull me from the ground? Really? You thought I was bad before? Look at THIS (plant proceeds to shoot up 5,000 new leaves as sign of defiance.)

all up in the club

This clearly rules out the option of tilling. Even a small piece of root can develop into a new plant. Heed my advice here, or you'll soon find that your garden is one big S&M club with all your flowers and vegetables being choked into submission. My neighbors across the alley are promoting this kind of obscenity. Every time I take out the trash, I'm tempted to plan a midnight guerrilla weed-warfare mission.


I don't know about you, but I don't know if I have the discipline to keep pulling and pulling each time Christian shows his face in my garden. Weeding has helped keep the bindweed under control enough that it hasn't choked out all the other plants, but I really do want it gone. The problem is that it's hard to find the new growth because Christian is one sneaky plant. One day you'll see no sign of him then the next he's party-boying a poor unsuspecting stem in a mosh pit of Shasta daisies. It would be hard to keep up with pulling him repeatedly off his many "girlfriends" or "submissives" when he's so...busy. I do pull the small ones when I see them and try to stay on top of the problem. In my view, though, pulling isn't effective enough on its own.

That is why this summer I chose chemical warfare. I know that I should avoid that. I should do things the organic way, the natural way. Like many of you, I've seen pins on Pinterest about vinegar being a magical natural weed killer. It may work on some lesser opponents, but it won't work on Christian. His roots are too deep and twisted, and according to my research, vinegar would just knock back the top growth and leave the roots alone ready to strike again.

Apparently the best type of herbicide to use on Christian is anything that is glyphosate-based. The most popular brand is Round-Up. The trick is getting the Round-Up onto Christian as he's embracing his girlfriends (neighboring plants.) You can't let any overspray get on more desirable plants, or they'll die too. And they'll likely be knocked out permanently, unlike Christian who will need repeated applications of herbicide to knock him out.

Take that! 

Here's what I've done to try to wipe him out in my flowerbeds. I mix up a bit of Round-Up concentrate with water- following the package directions. OK, not quite according to the directions. I admit that I mix it up stronger because I want those weeds DEAD.  I paint the mixture onto the plant with a small sponge brush that I keep in my garden shed just for this purpose. My goal is to have all the weapons on hand so that I can attack whenever necessary.

There is research online about fall being the best time to kill Christian or that humid days are best or that it's best to wait until he flowers. In my experience, waiting for the perfect conditions for anything is just asking to fail. Waiting for perfection is my main reason for procrastination and is just a recipe for problems getting waaaayyy out of hand. I figure that whatever I do will be better than letting the enemy advance. I know I must do whatever it takes to keep him from flowering and multiplying further.

The "fighter" 2 days after Round-Up

I've made some headway in my fight this summer. I wiped out all the bindweed coming up along the fence between my neighbor's house and my flower beds. I've destroyed all of it in the sections of red landscaping rocks that still plague my existence. And I've decreased it greatly in my flower beds.

As an experiment, I plan to use some wooden skewers to mark a couple that I've pulled and a couple that I've painted with Round-Up. I'll let you know what was more effective over the long haul.

I know I'm not finished and that there will be sequels to this story. I hope I don't have to experience Fifty Shades Darker and that eventually I get to Fifty Shades Freed. Someday, I tell myself, I'll be free of Christian and his control of my flowerbeds. And if there's hope for me, there may be hope for you too. I'll keep you posted, and if you have any tips in fighting this persistent enemy, let me know.

You Gotta Be Cruel to Be Kind

I've decided that annuals (petunias, marigolds, begonias and the like) are the trophy wives of the flower garden. If you want vivacious blooms all summer long, annuals are your best bet. But like a trophy wife, you're going to pay...and pay...and pay as you "trade up" each year.

Perennials, however, are the old reliable. Think of them as a wife (or husband) of 25 years or so. They stay around and are there for you every spring, but you can't count on them to keep looking and behaving their best day in and day out if you're not willing to work a bit on some routine maintenance. Just like a successful marriage, right?

If you're a perennial newbie, you may not realize that, unlike annuals, perennials don't typically bloom all summer long. Even if a plant description says that the plant will produce all summer, don't expect a trouble-free, plant it and forget it kind of situation. 

For one, you have to deadhead. No, I'm not referring to fans of Jerry Garcia and the Dead of the Grateful Variety. I'm talking about removing spent or dried-up blossoms from a plant. Why is this necessary? Flowers are meant to ensure the survival of the plant. If a flowering plant has several blooms and the blooms dry up in order to drop seeds, the plant is done blooming. Think of it as a woman entering menopause or maybe a woman in heavy labor. It's DONE. If it could speak, it would say, "I've DONE my job. I REPRODUCED! Is that not ENOUGH for you? By deadheading, you trick the plant into producing more and more flowers because it thinks it must produce more offspring to carry on the family name, so to speak. Let's take a moment and bow our heads in thanks that no one deadheads us to keep us popping out offspring. Two blooms were enough for me. 

Check out this scabiosa (ugly name for a beautiful plant - you can call her a pincushion flower if you want to be common.) 

This bloom is DONE.

She's a prolific bloomer, but she won't keep pumping out these lovely lavender blooms if you don't remove the dead ones. You just need to observe the plant to figure out which are the spent blossoms and which are the buds about to explode into fabulousness. You could just pinch off the head. (You're probably pretty good at this if you used to deadhead dandelions in this fashion: Grasp dandelion stem and put thumb right below the flower. Chant "Momma had a baby and its HEAD popped off!" popping your thumb up on the word HEAD to behead the poor thing. Childhood's a brutal time, innit? ) Back to the scabiosa, though. I don't like to just pop off the bloom because then you have this sad stem with no flower. Pretty ugly. I think it's better to run your fingers down to the bottom of the stem above the first leaf and then snip it there with your pruners. These Fiskars pruners are just the thing for the job.  If you just take a few minutes once a week or so, you'll be able to maintain this plant and prolong her bloom. 

Catmint (Nepeta Walker's Low)
in all her glory

Catmint is a great plant for my growing zone (zone 4/5) up here in the high country with very little rain. Bees adore this plant because there are billions of blooms on all her lavender spikes. Though she gets fairly big (this is only year two for mine), Catmint is a well-behaved plant that stays in a clump and is fairly trouble-free. 

Catmint in need of a haircut

 However, you can see that now that it's early July, she's kind of looking tired. I did some research online to check to see whether cutting it back would help. Yep. Simply cut off the tired old flowers with some garden shears. 

I'll be back...

It's not looking so hot here, and I'm sure the bees hate me, but give it a few weeks and it will be back in the baby business. 

poor, faded salvia

The same method applies for perennial salvia. Mine is Salvia May Night. She's a gorgeous dark purple while in full bloom but starts getting pretty ratty and faded in early or mid-July - kind of like me when it's time to head to the salon to get my hair color redone. I cut back salvia by running my fingers down to the base of the stem with the blooms then cutting. The added bonus for pruning salvia is that she's less likely to get gangly and flop from the center, which can be a problem in mid-summer. 

Dianthus are bustin' out all ohhhver!

With some flowers, you're not deadheading to extend their bloom but rather to tidy up your garden. One example is this beautiful wave of dianthus. They're tiny carnations and have that same wonderful spicy smell. Amazing. 

Girl, you look better in pink. Just sayin'

What's not so amazing is that they only bloom for a few weeks then are done.  Once they're done blooming, you're left with dried up brown blooms. I like fall colors but not so much in my summer garden.

The best way to deadhead dianthus is to go after them with some sharp garden shears then lift out what you've cut off. Sure, you could use a weedeater, but that's like doing surgery with a chainsaw. Not only will you risk murdering some innocent plant bystanders but you'll also end up with chewed up stems that will turn brown, leaving you back at square one. Dianthus are not bad-looking once they're cleaned up. These have spread beyond their boundaries, so I may have to tear some of them out to leave room for the Autumn Joy sedum that it's crowding out. You gotta be cruel to be kind!  The sedum will bloom late summer, and there are some coneflowers behind those that will be starting their show any day. 

a few blooms had to die for the greater good

If you've got some pent-up frustration (maybe from that trophy wife issue), you can really go to town while deadheading a plant that holds its blooms out on longer stems. The flower stems on these Johnson's Blue geraniums stand out far from the base plant like nasty spider legs, so just grab on and give the stems a good yank. I've had good luck with these blooming later in the summer, and even if they don't, they have a nice mounded shape while you wait for more color. 

Hopefully, you won't give up on those perennials that seduced you in the Home Depot garden section. With a little tough love you'll probably coax them into performing for you before you trade them in for new in-bloom models.   

If you want to know more about how to care for and love your plants over the years, this gem of a book is a great resource: 

The Well-Tended Perennial Garden

"Well, I'm a cement mixer, a churning urn of burning funk"

Blame it all on Pinterest. I went a little cement crazy the other day. I've been wanting some new garden art to funk up my flower beds, and I wasn't about to resort to buying it - especially when this is typical of the offerings at the local garden centers:

I see enough of that action on the streets of Casper on any given summer Saturday, so I don't need it in my garden. Side note: before I did the image search for the biker garden gnome that I had seen in the Sutherlands ad,  I had no idea that biker gnomes were such a big thing. I have missed out on a major trend and the possibility for a theme garden. How about these little beauties:

Pretty sure I saw this couple rolling through town last summer before the Sturgis Rally.

Let me further expand your options with another genre of garden gnomes: "rude garden gnomes." If you were so inclined, you could search for this on Google and be presented with pages of possibilities. Luckily for you, I've done the dirty work and narrowed it down to a few priceless picks. 

I might actually need a couple of these to keep my dogs out of my strawberries.

for your pole beans? 

Some gardeners swear by planting according to phases of the moon, so...

But I digress...a lot. Back to the cement. I pinned several projects involving cement, so on a recent day too hot to do anything strenuous in my yard, I decided to give one a try, and one thing led to another. 

I started out with a cement garden ball. I saw this idea and had been saving the globe light from an outdated ceiling fan to use as the mold. This site has great instructions: DIY Concrete Garden Globes I especially liked how the author presented a few different recipes, each with a different texture, and how the site included photos of globes created with each recipe. I used the recipe using potting soil because that's what I had on hand. I wasn't about to use the peat moss recipe because there is no such thing as buying a little peat moss. They come in a huge brick that, once opened, expands like one of those little magic pellets your kids throw into the bathtub to create a big sponge toy.  

before - Goodbye early 90's decor

The directions were easy to follow. I mixed the cement and potting soil in a bucket. A great free source of buckets for projects like these is your local supermarket's bakery. They get frosting in these big plastic buckets that they are happy to give away. My husband had a stockpile because he uses them to store grain for brewing beer. The directions said equal parts of the cement and potting soil. It's important to have fancy professional measuring tools. I used 5 red Solo cups of each and added one Solo cup of water. That was about right to achieve the consistency of cake batter.

Red Solo cup. I fill you up. Let's...make some concrete. Hush, I had to say that. 

 I sprayed the inside of the globe with cooking spray as directed; there was a little grime and maybe some mold inside it from where it had sat outside for a few weeks, but I was feeling too lazy to wash and dry the inside. I just hoped for the best. I found that the volume decreased a LOT once I added water, so I kept making and adding batches to the globe. I worried a little that the color of the mix would vary a lot as I kept adding layers, but oh well. It might look like a parfait, and...wait for it...errbody loves a parfait! As directed, I filled the globe up to the top of the round part, leaving off the lip, so that the final product would be mostly round. Then I left it to cure for three days. It cracked a bit right away, maybe from expansion, but luckily it stayed intact.

The last step was to crack the glass off. I put the whole project in a plastic garbage bags, got out a wood mallet, donned my work gloves and safety glasses (ok, they were actually just sunglasses) and got cracking. The glass stuck more than I had expected - probably my earlier laziness coming back to bite me - but it did come off.

 Et voila! A cement bowling ball worthy of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble! 

I had some cement left over, so the fun continued. I decided to make a cement rhubarb leaf birdbathy thingy that I had also seen on Pinterest. I've been wanting to use rhubarb and cement for years. About 17 years ago when we added a sidewalk behind a master bedroom addition, I wanted to ask the concrete guys to press rhubarb leaves into the freshly poured sidewalk, but I chickened out. I figured they would think I was a freak. I still wish I had gone for it. Anyhow, the idea has been stuck in my mind all that time like something stuck in...concrete. So, the cement was there, and the rhubarb leaves were there, and another project was born. The big leaves were a little ratty with holes from either bugs or hail, so I picked a smaller leaf. Even though I remembered that the directions I had seen earlier said to mound up sand to drape the leaf over to help it be a cupped shape rather than flat, I wanted to make it right then and I didn't have sand. I just mounded up some dirt in a spot where I had ripped up some unwanted mint. I put the leaf face down with the ribbed part up then patted the concrete onto the leaf and kind of shaped it with my hands (rubber gloves on, of course, since cement is caustic) to follow the contours of the leaf.  Then I just left it alone for a while.  

Real bloggers probably try to keep their iPhones out of the shot :/

doesn't look like much, does it?

I didn't look up the directions on any of this because, really, what was I out if it didn't work? Leftover cement and a leaf. Big whoop. And failure can be fun! Turns out it wasn't much of a fail. 

first finished version

This batch of cement resulted in a smooth, beautiful leaf, but it turns out it wasn't very strong. It later snapped in half.   

I added a bit more potting soil to the mix for the next few I tried so that the fiber would add strength. My goal was to make enough leaves of varying size so that I could use them in the waterfall part of my goldfish pond, so I went a little hog wild. I ran out of space in the dirt, so I mounded up some gravel in another part of the yard. Again, what the heck. Cheap supplies. Turns out the gravel wasn't such a good idea because the large leaf had a few holes in it and the gravel stuck into the project some. No big deal. It would give it some texture, right? I do think sand covered with plastic wrap would have resulted in a better finished project. My leaves' edges are really rough because they picked up the texture of the dirt. When all else fails, read directions before you go off making things all willy-nilly. That's what I'm here for, though, to provide you with a model of what NOT to do. I'm helpful like that. 

The hardest part of the project was digging the rhubarb ribs out of the cement once it was hardened. Some peeled right out - so satisfying...like peeling a scab (don't judge me) - but others required more work. I ended up using an orange stick for cuticles as a tool. That worked well, and I scrubbed the rest out with a dish brush and some dish soap. 

Here are the final results for one leaf in the waterfall. Purty! 

I went back later and routed the water under the leaves because my husband said the cement caused the water to foam a little and get murky. I didn't want to kill the fish. Dang it. I was looking forward to my new leaves getting covered in green algae and being organic works of awesomeness. Oh well, at least they cover the black plastic that showed too much and heated the water. Here's what it looks like now. Not what I had planned, but still good. Still good. 

All right, now for the big finale. Cue jazz hands. No actually, cue cement hands. This is definitely a Pinterest project that you'll either love or hate. The jury's still out for me.

Creepy or cool? You decide.

I sprayed cooking spray into a pair of thin latex gloves from my husband's shop then filled em up.  The hardest part was "milking" cement down into the fingers. I think it might work to use a pin to poke little air holes in the end of each finger so that there wouldn't be air pockets in each finger. I'm not happy with that little dent on the one finger. It's bad enough that they're disembodied ghostly white hands; they don't need to be mutant disembodied ghostly white hands.

These pink gloves will probably be my next victim for draft 2.

 If I do a second draft of this (and I probably will) I will use more substantial Playtex gloves because the hands turned out a little wonky even though I tried my best to shape them to look realistic. I'll also follow the directions more closely and use little rocks to separate the fingers a bit more and prop up the fingers to cup the hands better as it showed in the directions. I just used dirt clods because, as I am wont to do, I was just winging it. Better preparation would have paid off; when I peeled off the gloves, I broke off a finger because there wasn't enough space between to let it peel off smoothly. It was fun peeling off the latex - reminded me of the glue skin we'd always make in elementary school. You know how you'd paint Elmer's glue onto your skin then peel it off once it dried? You didn't do that? You missed out. You were probably in the corner eating paste. Here's the original project page with directions so easy a former paste eater can follow them:  Garden Hands

I've been thinking that maybe I should make a cement clawed hand to bury so that it would look like that last scene from Carrie when she reaches up from the grave. Ha! Or maybe I should make one flipping the bird. There's clearly a market for that with the rude biker gnome crowd. 

The Bell Tolls for Thee

I never planted the purple flowers in my yard; they infiltrated the flower beds on the west side of my yard by crawling stealthily under the fence and its concrete footer and growing in the horrid red rock that made up most of that side of the yard when we moved into our house. I noticed that they didn’t seem to care that they had to grow on top of heavy black plastic in the tiniest bits of soil that had blown into the rock. They spread happily through the rock with their hanging purple bell-shaped flowers.  “Those are kind of pretty,” I thought. Love leads so often to weakness and letting down our guard, and that is exactly what happened in this case. I was Michael Douglas in Fatal Attraction, and the bellflower was Glenn Close.  It wasn’t long before its green spikes spread. They infiltrated from the red rock area, across a garden path and into one of my larger perennial beds. Soon, I noticed that once the flowers quit blooming, the remaining foliage tended to turn yellow then develop white powdered mildew. Unacceptable behavior. The bellflower was no longer a flower; it was a weed.  The battle was on. I couldn’t allow these invaders to conduct their own version of biological warfare in that bed.

the enemy returns

My first plan of attack was to pull them. I spent hours yanking them out - very satisfying because they seemed easy to pull. I filled at least one wheelbarrow with their limp green carcasses before standing back to admire my work. My satisfaction was short-lived because unfortunately the little heart-shaped leaves emerged again.

Fine, I thought, I’ll just go deeper. I had to get the roots. That’s when I fell victim to a classic blunder. No, I didn’t get involved in a land war in Asia nor did I go in against a Sicilian when death was on the line. Worse. I broke out my little garden tiller and attempted to chop them into bits. “Mwahahahaha! Die! Die! Die!” I muttered under the roar of the tiller. I had underestimated the power of my enemy. The next summer they were back...in greater force. I clearly needed to arm myself with more information. (I know; that probably should have been my first step, but alas...) I learned that my enemies were called "creeping bellflowers" and had a huge taproot with side-shooting rhizomes. My classic blunder was that I had unknowingly used my tiller to help the enemy multiply. Each root was like the Hydra of Greek mythology: cut off one head and two spring up in its place. It was time for hand to hand combat.

the alien life form breaking through plastic

I broke out my digging fork and turned the soil one chunk at a time. I pulled apart each clod by hand, peeling out the root. If necessary, I’d take another stab to go even deeper. Usually, the deeper dig yielded still more roots. Some of them were huge. This one was a mutant albino carrot powerful enough to break through thick landscaping plastic like the creature tearing out of John Hurt's chest in Alien. Was it tedious? Yes. Was it satisfying? YES. I added more and more to the mass grave of roots that I placed on black plastic. The plastic hadn’t been effective as a mulch, but, I reasoned with glee, its heat-absorbing capabilities would help it bake the roots to a faster death. 

I'm not a cold-blooded plant killer; I'm just hell-bent on protecting my more well-behaved flowers like the Johnson's Blue geranium behind the mass grave. I'm sure I'll be forced to continue preventative strikes so that they don't return. The area I cleaned out before still has baby leaves popping up here and there, but I'm controlling them with pulling and chemical warfare (using a sponge brush to paint on a toxic cocktail of castile soap and Roundup...more on that later in a post the battle of the bindweed...)

the killing fields