Hello fellow gardening people.

To those of you who love them and pamper and feed them...... Sorry.

Yes, they do have got nice blue flowers.

BUT I have got several beds infested with thousands of them and they are
trying to take over the whole garden. Digging them up is nigh impossible as
the bulbs are 1 - 5 inches into a fairly heavy soil. Even though I stop them
seeding each bulb has oodles of bulblets clustered round it which each forms
a new plant when they drop off ....... which they do ..... a lot..

Does Roundup go off? I tried spraying them with it the other year with no
effect. I have a bottle of the concentrated Roundup that is a few years old.

Please, please, please does anybody know what will kill them?

Can you let me in on the secret before I go mad.

--
Derby, England.

Don't try to email me using "REPLY" as the email address is NoSpam. Our
email address is "thewoodies2 at ntlworld dot com"

Stanley wrote:
Hello fellow gardening people.

To those of you who love them and pamper and feed them...... Sorry.

Yes, they do have got nice blue flowers.

BUT I have got several beds infested with thousands of them and they
are trying to take over the whole garden. Digging them up is nigh
impossible as the bulbs are 1 - 5 inches into a fairly heavy soil.
Even though I stop them seeding each bulb has oodles of bulblets
clustered round it which each forms a new plant when they drop off
....... which they do ..... a lot..
Does Roundup go off? I tried spraying them with it the other year
with no effect. I have a bottle of the concentrated Roundup that is a
few years old.
Please, please, please does anybody know what will kill them?

Can you let me in on the secret before I go mad.

They self seed too, I've got them growing through cracks in the concrete,
almost ten feet away from where they are (fairly) contained under a conifer
hedge.
When the flower dries up in a few weeks time, lift one off and give it a
shake, there will be a hundred round black seeds and they grow! - my advice
is to chop their heads off, they don't like it.

In message , Stanley
writes

I have got several beds infested with thousands of them and they are
trying to take over the

universe. Tell me about it.


Does Roundup go off? I tried spraying them with it the other year with no
effect. I have a bottle of the concentrated Roundup that is a few years old.


Roundup won't work unless the leaves stay wet long enough for the
chemical to be absorbed by the plant. Muscari have shiny waxy leaves
that are hard to wet so the spray probably just ran off.
You could try adding a squirt of washing up liquid just before you
spray: then check whether the leaves are actually wet with the mixture.

Please, please, please does anybody know what will kill them?

Overcropping will kill anything if you keep it up long enough.
So if you pull up all the leaves every year for a few years the bulbs
will starve. Unfortunately the tiny leaves of the little bulbils are so
small and numerous that it'd take you all your time to get them all.

Shading them out with yew or cypress will eventually do it; and they die
out surprisingly fast if you flood the land for a few weeks each year.

Weekly use of a flamethrower during their growing season will kill them
in three to five years, and you can grow bedding or vegetables in late
summer and autumn.


Can you let me in on the secret before I go mad.

If you can get weedkiller formulated as a gel or thick liquid that you
wipe onto the leaves with a sponge or special glove, it's worth trying.
Otherwise, buy a hoe and use it. Don't allow any green leaves to come
up. If you're fairly anal about this the bastar^h^h^h bulbs will die
out.
You'll need to move any plants you want to keep but can't hoe round,
such as other bulbs. Isolate them in pots until you're sure they're
muscari-free.
As above, you can grow seasonal crops outside the muscari season.

Good luck, you'll need it.
--
Sue ]

MadCow wrote:
snip
If you can get weedkiller formulated as a gel or thick liquid that you
wipe onto the leaves with a sponge or special glove, it's worth
trying. Otherwise, buy a hoe and use it.

You can mix roundup with water at it's normal strength, then add a packet of
solvite wallpaper paste to make it into a gel.

In message , Phil L
writes
MadCow wrote:
snip
If you can get weedkiller formulated as a gel or thick liquid that you
wipe onto the leaves with a sponge or special glove, it's worth
trying. Otherwise, buy a hoe and use it.

You can mix roundup with water at it's normal strength, then add a packet of
solvite wallpaper paste to make it into a gel.


At the garden centre today I saw a gel formulation called "Deep Root" or
something, with a brush built into the cap. You'd need yer Marigold on
the other hand to hold the Muscari leaves while you brushed them and
it'd still be a really tedious job.
I'd try it on a half-metre square first, and if the foliage dies off I'd
dig the bulbs up to make sure they're dead not just dormant.
Only then would I take the trouble of applying it to a larger area.

--
Sue

Old cynical gardener in Reading town