Urbanite: Recycled Concrete
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URBANITE: Re-cycled Concrete
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Charlotte's Place
Landscape & Interior Decor
Consultant
"a work in progress"
making home your favorite place to be
"Maybe we can't save the world,
but we can each save a small piece of it!"
Symptoms of Hosta Virus X
Hosta Virus X affects different hosta cultivars in different ways, so it is impossible to give a definitive description of symptoms. The most common visual symptom is blue or green markings on a light colored leaf. These markings usually follow leaf veins and bleed out into surrounding tissue giving the plant a mottled appearance. The tissue often appears lumpy, puckered and of different thickness or texture that normally colored tissue. Less common symptoms include dried, brown spots and twisted, deformed leaves. It may be difficult to detect off colored mottling on dark, solid colored leaves. Some green tissue will show lighter colored mottling along the veins, but it is often not as pronounced as the markings on gold tissue. Some dark colored Hostas appear as if they have had bleach spilled on them, though. To make matters worse, some hosta cultivars don’t seem to show any visible symptoms of being infected with HVX and it may take a year for symptoms to show after a plant has been infected.
How to deal with HVX infected plants
- Spread by sticky sap, by your hands, insanitary clippers, shovels etc, when planting or dividing.
- Sickly looking leaves, ink bleeding like ink that has bled from the leaf veins.
- Leaves can be mottled, appear blistered, very notable change in pattern on individual leaves, deformation of foliage and rippled edges. Keep in mind some of these 'symptoms' may be the healthy leaves of another variety so know what the plant you should looks like before purchasing it.
- May not show up in a plant for more than 4-7 years! In other words... plants that look healthy may be infected.
- Infected plants should be double bagged and discarded, leaving no plant material.
- Whether planting new, or dividing and transplanting apparently healthy plants, use a pail of diluted bleach and disinfect hands, spades, etc. between EACH PLANTING!
- If you are 100% sure you have dug out all the infected roots, an apparently healthy plant can be put in same hole. No plants other than hosta can be infected! Personally, I'd leave that space for a year.
- Check the Internet for sites listing HVX. According to one very helpful hosta nursery, it was explained although some hosta varieties are on a list of less-likely-to-be-infected, this is not a guarantee and more and more resistant varieties are presenting with the disease. If buying hosta, know what to look for before purchasing and beware; it may still carry the virus and not show symptoms. I have already removed 7 plants - I easily have 8 others that are definitely infected. I'm presuming they've infected every other hosta in the same bed so I'll wait it out! What does one replace hosta with????
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Chemicals vs Eco-friendly Home-made Recipes
For insects, inside and out, a couple of drops of phosphate free
liquid detergent, equal parts vegetable oil and a large spray
container of water will kill the bugs. Don't wash it off.
If transplanting from outside in, shake soil loose, soak entire plant in container of water & a few drops of liquid detergent. Again, don't wash it off. For weeds between cracks, etc. either paint on industrial chemicals with a tiny brush (don't spray) or mix 1 qt. vinegar with 2 tbsp. of dish soap in a spray bottle. Spray the mixture on the foliage. Be careful not to spray on desireable plants. Within hours the weeds or grass will start turning brown. Repeat if necessary. Note: full strength vinegar works faster but don't spray your perennials. It will burn them. Slugs
After spring or fall clean up, remove all debris from garden. Mix 3-parts water to 7-parts household ammonia and spray the surface of the ground and the underside of any nearby plant material still in leaf. Spray thoroughly - it's natural and can't do any damage to anything BUT slugs. Repeat process in early spring after ground thaw and again when plants begin to appear above ground. Repeat in late spring and use as necessary during season to control. If done regularly, you can keep the number of slugs in your garden to almost none! Remember a single slug can lay up to 400 eggs which can survive for two years. After fall clean-up spray again to kill some of those eggs that can last up to THREE years and don't presume a single season of spraying will do it. I speak from experience. Use thick layers of newspaper instead of groundcloth to smother grass or weeds. It works just as effectively, you are recycling and it composts while it's killing what you don't want. If reshaping your garden, recycle removed sod to create berms - just cover with newspaper and stomp on it until it appears nature made.
Nature's guarantee: Chaos, but don't let it stop you.
The anti-slug solution is nothing short of miraculous. If we are going to ultimately lose all of them, we should do all we can to keep them healthy as long as possible and why would you want to look at those slime trails and the tell tale holes if you don't have to. Even the pots, far from the garden, were invaded!
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Have you found ants crawling in your garden or creating mini-mountains on your beautiful lawn? There are chemicals but wouldn't you rather they just move away without adding another pollutant to the ground? Buy a cheap no-name brand ground coffee and spread it
around the area where the ants are most abundant. The next day they're gone without leaving behind residual poison; just an ANT-FREE yard!
For other chemical free solutions, email
Broken concrete is officially known as Urbanite. Clients have encouraged me to start a blog to document the sustainable landscape installation in their yards long before it was considered earth friendly or 'chic'! There is no shortage of info on the internet and Canadian Gardening Magazine put an article on it in their March of 08 issue. This berm has been held up by 'Urbanite' for more than 6 years and isn't going anywhere.
Use Urbanite as an option for these reasons:
1) It’s a free material.
2) It’s recycled and we capture all the embodied energy in the original concrete.
3) There’s no mining involved.
4) It’s versatile.
5) It lasts.
6) It's utterly original.
This berm has been holding for six years and it's not going anywhere. Below right, its birth.
Think you don't have slugs? If you see any of this, particularly on your hosta (although they are eating anything this year) you have slugs!!!!
