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The 6th Annual SNE Lawn Thread - 2015


Damage In Tolland

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Not bad for no watering really. The rain we had earlier in the month helped prevent a disaster. I did water parts of the backyard where I am trying to grow grass. Couple of spots burned, but not bad.

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Landscaping looking good
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Do you guys grow/have Crape Myrtles up there? I hade a real nice fully established 3 year old dynamite cultivar in my front yard. Key being had, as the winter killed it even down here less then a mile from the water on Long Island.

That's the problem with trying to bring southern plants north

 

I would highly doubt those would survive in NE.  Maybe like you said, right near the water in Coastal CT, RI, MA might a have a chance, but inland I doubt it.

 

There were actually a good amount around where I grew up in SePA (Most garden centers sold them too) but that is probably on the northern edge of their hardiness.

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vines are taking over my dad's yard. it started several years ago with a couple small ones, and now they have expanded the area they are in. we have tried to control with Brush B gone ivy killer, which works but with so many new plants it is hard to keep up. i don't want to pull them all up by hand, but man they are everywhere now.

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yup, my bad. Plus we're on a hill and don't radiate much below zero in the winter. thanks.

 

Your microclimate might actually be more like zone 6, though I wouldn't try any zone 6 plantings there, or at least a 5B.  Zone 5 is something like, temps drop below -10 in half of the winters, with 5A having a -15 threshold, 5B at -10.  My median for bottom of winter is -25, putting my frost pocket in 4A.

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vines are taking over my dad's yard. it started several years ago with a couple small ones, and now they have expanded the area they are in. we have tried to control with Brush B gone ivy killer, which works but with so many new plants it is hard to keep up. i don't want to pull them all up by hand, but man they are everywhere now.

 

Any idea what they are?  Maybe the local extension office could tell you.  I had bindweed take over the back yard when I lived in Gardiner, Maine, but one application of a glyphosate product took it out nicely.  Oriental bittersweet is a tougher kill, and it also climbs and suffocates/shades tall trees if allowed to run wild.  Exotic plants are an ever increasing problem, both for landscaping and in forest management.

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Any idea what they are?  Maybe the local extension office could tell you.  I had bindweed take over the back yard when I lived in Gardiner, Maine, but one application of a glyphosate product took it out nicely.  Oriental bittersweet is a tougher kill, and it also climbs and suffocates/shades tall trees if allowed to run wild.  Exotic plants are an ever increasing problem, both for landscaping and in forest management.

definately not bindweed. might be oriental bittersweet. I'll have to get a picture next time I am up there

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definately not bindweed. might be oriental bittersweet. I'll have to get a picture next time I am up there

 

You might try entering "oriental bittersweet" into your favorite search engine.  Whe I used Google, the top two hits were a bunch of pics, and a detailed Wiki article.

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Maybe it's Kudzu? But probably bittersweet. 

kudzu1.jpg

 

I don't know if kudzu has made it as far north as SNE, but even if it's showed up there, I doubt it's done its "cover the earth" act like farther south.  While driving home from SNJ Monday, I looked for invasives along the roadsides.  Determining exact species at 60-70 mph is dicey, but the amount of tree-swallowing vines was certainly impressive, in a bad way, and while I think most were invasives (grapevines and poison ivy also represented, but easy to ID), none had the color/texture of kudzu.

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I don't know if kudzu has made it as far north as SNE, but even if it's showed up there, I doubt it's done its "cover the earth" act like farther south.  While driving home from SNJ Monday, I looked for invasives along the roadsides.  Determining exact species at 60-70 mph is dicey, but the amount of tree-swallowing vines was certainly impressive, in a bad way, and while I think most were invasives (grapevines and poison ivy also represented, but easy to ID), none had the color/texture of kudzu.

Yeah, you're probably right.  Highways are always a great spot to ID invasive plants, I was always particularly impressed with the amount of bittersweet growing along I-91 in Western MA, it literally covers the banks along the whole stretch of the road. Not as bad as the kudzu invasion in the south I've seen, but still impressive, and sad in a way. 

 

Check out this tidbit: 

 

Kudzu, a leafy vine native to Japan and southeastern China, produces the chemicals isoprene and nitric oxide, which, when combined with nitrogen in the air, form ozone, an air pollutant that causes significant health problems for humans. Ozone also hinders the growth of many kinds of plants, including crop vegetation.

"We found that this chemical reaction caused by kudzu leads to about a 50 percent increase in the number of days each year in which ozone levels exceed what the Environmental Protection Agency deems as unhealthy," said study co-author Manuel Lerdau, a University of Virginia professor of environmental sciences and biology. "This increase in ozone completely overcomes the reductions in ozone realized from automobile pollution control legislation."

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You might try entering "oriental bittersweet" into your favorite search engine.  Whe I used Google, the top two hits were a bunch of pics, and a detailed Wiki article.

I think that is what it is. disgusting

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Caterpillars or whatever the hell they are destroyed some trees in my hood.

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yep Top of oaks here too from Gypsy moths. Things are crawling up the house too. Lots of shredded leaves. Hope it's not a 83 repeat. You could hear them crunching all night long, acres of oaks were bare. Piles of dead ones everywhere. It got so bad in Ashaway where I lived I had to hose them off the house. Seeing lots of little ones too and the little dots of their poop is everywhere
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Gypsies bad here as well. Falling off trees, shredded leaves everywhere. Me coming into the house with them on my back and daughters shrieking etc.

My then 1 year old daughter in 83 ate one, instant pukage. I made a mistake of pouring gas on a huge pile of them and burning them, grossest smell ever.
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My then 1 year old daughter in 83 ate one, instant pukage. I made a mistake of pouring gas on a huge pile of them and burning them, grossest smell ever.

 

That early '80s outbreak was incredible - at one point the drive down I-93 south of CON, then 495 toward Milford, MA where my brother lived, was totally defoliated - oaks, maples, birches, white pine, hemlock, everything but white ash.  One full defoliation would kill a hemlock; other trees would usually survive 2-3 years' feeding.

 

In northern Maine the nemesis was the forest tent caterpillar, aka army worm, which preferred aspen but would eat any broadleaf foliage.  Folks were abandoning their homes and going to friends' homes away from the woods, as opening the front door would reveal hundreds of the critters crawling over the threshold, and some houses would have exterior walls totally covered.  There were so many on the rails that trains could not make grades due to slippery bug guts.  We were helping a neighbor put a peaked roof on his trailer and the caterpillars were swarming the residence, climbing the foundation but unable to get past the metal flashing between the concrete and the floor plates.  The worms would deflect sideways and pile up a foot deep against the Bilko door, and the homeowner would use a snow shovel (worms pouring over the edges) to load the burn barrel, and yes, the burning smell was puke-worthy.  So was hearing the machinegun-like splats as cars unavoidably crushed hundreds as they drove past.

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