"mleblanca" wrote:

Wow, a "neighbor" .....Hello neighbor in NorCal..I'll have to watch what I
say Ha ha
--Nah... you're safe! 8-]

No the last time I went to the PB to look around, it was closed for
vacation and I didn't get a thing. These plants were from a visit to
Mendon's!!
--Ah, Mendon's! It is dangerously close (within a mile) to my house, and I
have to pass it *and* Paradise Nursery in order to get to ACE hardware and
other fun places in town. =8-o Both nurseries have acquired many of my
plant $$ over the years.... I just discovered the PB this past spring, and
have been going a bit nuts over their stock of Euphorbias -- love those
plants!

It is in the ground and is swallowing the sprinkler, the mini roses and
the blue fescue and is headed for the weigela! Sw Pot don't make it thru
the winter here either. We get down to 20 here usually, too.So rather than
try to dig up this monster I'm going to root a few stems and pot them up.
--The pot my Blackie is in is about 24" high, and it has cascaded over the
side and is making a break for the courtyard -- so far, it hasn't over-run
any other plants on the way, though it is *seriously* crowding the other
plants in the pot. Good point about the size of the beast -- I may try
leaving it in the pot over winter, and hope we have a mild one. Taking
cuttings is an excellent idea -- I plan to do that with the scented Geranium
and Coleus that are in the pot with it. I've never worked with a sweet
potato plant before -- do you just break off one of the growing stems and
pop it into water? Do I need a few leaf-nodes, or will just one do? Don't
mean to be a pest, but the Spousal Unit informs me I must have had a
deprived grade-school experience -- we never grew sweet potatoes! ;-]

Speaking of our ACE hardware -- you mentioned in another post having a
problem with gophers. We had a serious infestation of them a few years ago,
which necessitated emptying three 4x4', one foot deep raised beds and
re-lining the bottoms with triple-layers of hardware cloth. 8-[ Not a fun
job! In desperation to protect the plants in nearby ground-level beds, I
checked ACE and found a gadget called Gopher-It. It is a metal tube that
holds 4 large (D, I think) batteries -- you just insert it into the ground
and turn it on. It beeps about every 30 seconds -- which is apparently
pretty annoying to gophers -- and much to my surprise, it really works!
They run about $25 each, and cover a radius of about 30' -- we have one up
near the raised beds and one in the courtyard bed, and haven't suffered any
gopher damage to those areas since. (The little hoovers tunneled *under*
the driveway and pavers to get to the courtyard bed!) We often have
evidence of gophers on the perimeter of the areas, and in other parts of the
yard, but the gardens are safe! I figure my $50 investment is amortizing
out nicely -- both beepers are still going strong, and over the 3 years have
saved me far more than that in the cost of replacement plants. The
instructions say to replace the batteries every 6 months, but they've always
lasted more like 10-12 for us. We just change them when the beep gets
really weak. I thought I'd find the beeps annoying, but I don't -- when I
first go out, I listen for it to make sure it's working, and then I don't
hear it anymore -- it truly isn't an intrusive sound (to my ear, anyway).
Just a thought, in case you're still having problems with gophers!

Still waiting for those temps in the 80s they keep promising us....

Sue
Beautiful Butte County, CA
(which *finally* has a Master Gardener Program!!)
USDA Zone 8 - Sunset Zone 7