Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
Bulbs => Ian Young's Bulb Log - Feedback Forum => Topic started by: shelagh on August 15, 2012, 02:23:33 PM
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Hi Ian, nice to see your purple Linaria. I also notice that you take your pinking shears to you Rhodo leaves or is that a sign of the dreaded Vine Weevil?
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Oh yes Shelagh, I could write a lot about pests including the vine weevil.
I collected hundreds of snails yesterday and expect a similar haul today they are enjoying the haar.
To non Scots speakers a haar is a sea mist that comes in - it is like walking in cloud no rain falls but you get wet as you walk through it and drips constantly fall from the trees.
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what's happened to the ragweed? It's everywhere these days yet when I was wee there were posters everywhere tellings farmers to get rid of it
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There is ragwort/ragweed everywhere here nowadays. Drives me crazy since in my youth I spent a lot of time digging the damn stuff up. My own opinion is that there are far too many landowners/"farmers" now who have no real knowledge of the land and the dangers of such weeds to livestock and so they grow unchecked. Farms that are run at distance by folk who are not there often enough to care about the day to day health of their animals, never mind what dangers might be growing in their fields. There have been terrible instances of neglect in that respect around the country, my own aunt has witnessed it first hand, and had the devil of a job to get action to counter it and bring the culprits to book.
It's not just in lanes, like Ian showed, any field round here has got them in - "wouldn't have happened in my young day!"
I'll bet Roma has no ragwort in her pastures!
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I do keep a little bit going in our wild area, - Ragwort that is. :-[ :-[ :-[ :-[ But only for the beautiful Cinnabar Moths, Tyria jacobaeae.
So I too am guilty, but ............ a lovely thing that deserves to survive. Sorry. ;D
It's in its early stages here during early August.
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I'll bet Roma has no ragwort in her pastures!
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I do have some but am digging it out. It's very difficult to get all the roots out and it grows from 'root cuttings' so it comes up again next year. I did a barrowfull yesterday but there's still some to do. Sometimes it seems a waste of time when neighbours and local authority or Bear Scotland or whoever is responsible for roadside verges do not remove it. No Cinnabar Moths around here so I am not depriving them of their food.
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I have been enjoying your bulb log for some time now...very nice job and I have learned a great deal from it. I just wanted to add that in the discussion about weeds vs. flowers...Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that " a weed is a flower whose virtues have yet to be discovered"... Keep up the great work. Ross.
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Welcome to the forum Ross, and thank you for your kind comments. I am very pleased that you enjoy the bulb log and you will get lots of fun from the forum as well.
I do like the quote you give about weeds/flowers I have always been interested in wild flowers and have never seen them as weeds.
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To non Scots speakers a haar is a sea mist that comes in - it is like walking in cloud no rain falls but you get wet as you walk through it and drips constantly fall from the trees.
We are having a lot of those lately, the mist drifting over the hill from the sea, interspersed over the last days with heavy rain which has mercifully stopped now but more expected by Sunday.
Last night as I drove home from our OAGG meeting, the haar was so thick I had the wipers on all the way and on our hill road, totally missed the turn-off to our small road, not seeing the entrance to it at all or the signpost up the power pole. I've never driven in mist so thick and it was a bit scary. Great talk though from a Bot Gardens member, about an international Camellia convention in China. Many plants including from the Jade Mountain and it was surprising - but pleasing - to hear that the Chinese govt had financially supported this convention. Wouldn't happen here.