Re: Re: CULT: mulch/alfalfa and weed preventer

Chuck  --  I use granular Preen and a hand spreader that lets me approximate
the recommended density of coverage.  I think a common element among our
hard lessons learned is the importance of 1) reading the directions
thoroughly and frequently, and 2) following them  -- especially as regards
recommended rate/amount of application/coverage. --  Griff

zone 7 in Virginia


----- Original Message -----
From: "Chuck B" <whozher@mintel.net>
To: <iris@hort.net>
Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2004 8:15 PM
Subject: Re: [iris] Re: CULT: mulch/alfalfa and weed preventer


> Grif,
> I learned a herbicide lesson the hard way this year.  Last fall I sprayed
> Treflan (active ingredient trifluralin, the same as Preen) in some new
beds
> to help with grass primarily.  To my delight--no grass or much of anything
> else.   Also to my surprise and dismay the newly planted iris I purchased
> did not grow at all in the virgin soil.  This summer I dug some of the
most
> pathetic up and found no roots!  An overdose of trifluralin will inhibit
new
> root growth.  I translplanted the worse-off plants and they have responded
> nicely.  My application rate with a hose end sprayer involved some
> calculation which I thought was close but apparently not close enough.  I
> gues I should have spent more time reading directions and cautions--as
much
> as I dislike doing it.
> Lesson learned.
> Chuck Bunnell
> Lafayette, IN
> Region 6
> Zone 5a-5b
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "J. Griffin Crump" <jgcrump@erols.com>
> To: <iris@hort.net>
> Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2004 5:41 PM
> Subject: [iris] Re: CULT: mulch/alfalfa and weed preventer
>
>
> | Several years ago, after being fed up with having to mix my own 6-24-24
> | fertilizer because the ready-mixed can't be obtained in the Washington
> area
> | (like so many things), I took the advice of Nancy Szmuriga, who had been
> using
> | Rabbit Chow as a top dressing on her seldom-turned urban beds in New
> Jersey.
> |
> | Apply some in the fall, and again in the late winter/early spring.  It
> worked
> | very nicely.  I decided to incorporate it as a tilled-in mix in
preparing
> new
> | beds, and again it worked very well.
> |
> | Then, 2 years ago, my newly set-out seedling sprouts suddenly went
> owhere  --
> | just sat there for months looking like they did when they were first set
> out,
> | and only one of the few hundred bloomed the following spring.
Subsequent
> to
> | that, somone of our list correspondents praised alfalfa but warned
against
> the
> | use of Rabbit Chow, saying  --  if I remember correctly  -- that it
> contains
> | salt, which inhibits growth.  Looking at my seedlings, I wondered if
that
> | explained the no-growth of a year's crop  --  that perhaps some kind of
> toxic
> | salt had been added to the Rabbit Chow recently, since it had been
working
> | nicely up till that crop.  There was, however, another possibility  --
> that
> | the pre-germinant weed controller I had used on the beds, "Snapshot",
was
> the
> | culprit.  Again, however, I had been using it for some years without a
> | problem.  That year, however, my supplier had sent me a product with a
new
> | name, "TG2" or something like that, the packaging and contents looking
so
> | otherwise identical that I thought it was just a product name change.
So,
> I
> | pulled the left-over bag out of the shed and read the accompanying
> information
> | very, very carefully.  Sure enough, there was a warning to the effect:
> Don't
> | use on seedling beds.  I talked to my supplier and he apologized for
> sending
> | the wrong product  --  "Snapshot" was indeed still available  --
however,
> the
> | price had gone up from $135 for 50lbs to $189.  I decided to resume
using
> | Preen.
> |
> | This year I was scheduled to create several new beds and dig and renew
> some
> | old ones, so I decided to bite the bullet and pay the king's ransom for
> one
> | sack of the Snapshot.  (The area where I raise some of my seedlings is
> rife
> | with morning glorys, and Preen doesn't prevent them, but Snapshot does.)
> | Just in case, I read the Snapshot instructions very carefully, as I had,
> in
> | fact, when I first began using it.  And a good thing I did!  Here was a
> whole
> | new paragraph not only warning not to use Snapshot on seedling beds, but
> to
> | avoid using it on beds into which adult plants were to be set until the
> soil
> | had "cured" for some time (my word, not theirs).  In the past, I had
used
> this
> | product in both situations for several seasons with no adverse
> consequences.
> | Apparently, whatever bad thing is in "TG2" has also now been put into
> | Snapshot.  So the wrapup on the pregerminant weedkillers is this:  I put
> the
> | Preen on the new seedling beds and the new transplant beds, and used the
> | Snapshot on the established beds.  Everything is working fine in both
> | situations, and when the morning glorys pop up in the beds awaiting the
> | transplants, they get a shot of Roundup.
> |
> | So, now, what about the Rabbit Chow?  Even though I had by now concluded
> that
> | it had gotten a bum rap in Iris-talk and Iris-photos and had almost
taken
> the
> | fall here for the real culprit, "TG2", I decided to experiment.  I mixed
> | alfalfa pellets into the soil of half of the new seedling beds and
Rabbit
> Chow
> | into the other half.  Result?  They're both growing like gangbusters and
I
> | can't see any difference between them.  What Rabbit Chow has that
alfalfa
> | doesn't is antibiotics, so I'll be sticking with it.  --  Griff
> |
> | zone 7 in Virginia
> |
> | ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> | To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@hort.net with the
> | message text UNSUBSCRIBE IRIS
> |
> |
> |
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@hort.net with the
> message text UNSUBSCRIBE IRIS

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@hort.net with the
message text UNSUBSCRIBE IRIS
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index