Re: Glechoma was: Progress on the garden wall

Marge: This stuff is everywhere on my property...I'm not sure I can get
rid of it by now...it is even in the turfgrass. Fortunately, I don't
have any low growing plants that it smothers, so at this point I think
I'm just going to content myself with calling it a groundcover...picking
my battles in this case means devoting myself to ridding the property of
the dreaded field bindweed, which has a bad habit of climbing all over
my taller plants and making a mess. Compared to that rascal of a plant,
the ground ivy problem is bearable. :-)



Melody, IA (Z 5/4)

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."    
--Albert Einstein

 --- On Wed 01/07, Marge Talt < mtalt@hort.net > wrote:
From: Marge Talt [mailto: mtalt@hort.net]
To: gardenchat@hort.net
Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 03:16:12 -0500
Subject: Re: [CHAT] Glechoma was: Progress on the garden wall

:-) Melody...thought it just might be that child.<br><br>Oddly enough,
the old Time-Life Gardening Encyclopedia I have has one<br>very nice
image where someone used that as a groundcover - so it has<br>been done.
Other plants will grow through it, as well, so if you pick<br>your
plants, you could use it as a groundcover, but you'd have to<br>watch it
as it would not be satisfied to stay where you want it.<br><br>it's
actually a fairly handsome plant if it just did not have such
a<br>desire for world domination. I must pull bushels of it every year.
<br>Problem is that it not only spreads over ground, it seeds around and
<br>it will come back from roots left in the soil as well. It
takes<br>incredible persistence to rid an area of it, but it can be done
a bit<br>at a time.<br><br>You can cover it with black plastic, which
will kill it off in a<br>season, but you have to keep an eye on it so it
doesn't sneak out the<br> edges on you. And even after you've killed off
a huge swath of it,<br>the seed still persists so you have to keep after
the area and make<br>sure to pull all seedlings the moment they
germinate. After 2 or 3<br>years of this, you can pretty well win the
battle.<br><br>There is a variegated form on the market; a really pretty
thing, but<br>like the marvelous variegated form of poke weed, I would
not have it<br>in the garden no matter how lovely it is....let alone pay
money for<br>it!<br><br>It does make good compost if you get it in the
middle of the heap so<br>the heat kills it; on the edges of the heap, it
just flourishes!<br><br>Marge Talt, zone 7
Maryland<br>mtalt@hort.net<br>Editor: Gardening in
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101.com/topics.cfm/635<br><br>----------<br>> From: Melody
<mhobertm@excite.com><br>> <br>> Marge: Bingo!! That's the
one...persistence thy name is Glechoma<br>> hederacea! This is the most
stubborn plant...after five years I've<br>made<br>> absolutely no
inroads in getting rid of this thing. Anybody out<br>there<br>> ever
seen this plant used successfully as part of an
overall<br>landscaping<br>> plan because I think I'm really tired of
trying to get rid of<br>it...you<br>> know, sometimes if you can't beat
'em...you may as well figure out<br>how<br>> to make it
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