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Plants that go pop!


doublecee
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Thanks Mick for setting up this new section. Hopefully we can all share some green tips. I know for a fact that I will benefit greatly because my fingers are more accustomed to a keyboard than a flower pot.

So, its been bugging me for weeks, I would be in the garden having a smoke and cuppa, and suddenly I would hear what sounded like a small pebble being dropped at height.

Living on the beach, I just assumed it was the Gulls, doing their thing. Then yesterday, I found out the real cause. We have a couple of plants that look like they bud raw coffee beans... and these beans literally explode and send their shell flying a good ten feet or so. Its amazing.

Now I just want to know if its a good plant (looks like it may be) or just a rather pretty and clever weed.

Also, Mrs C and I had a chat about deadheading the plants when they wither. Shes adamant that you just pull the heads off. Im more in favor of a clean snip. Any thoughts on whats best?

Would also be great to see some threads here with recent finds at the garden centre that you might want to share

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I'm no gardener, but I deadhead with secateurs.

Is it a plant or a weed? I once read that a weed is only a plant that a gardener doesn't want in his garden. So make your own mind up does for me.

My own garden this year has run riot. (Plant's not weeds) I really haven't had any time at all for the railway (sorry) and it has been overtaken with the growth of hydrangeas etc that grow below it. The secateurs will be busy later on!

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I would agree with the you get to decide what is a weed concept.

My example is lawns. Out here water is not easy to come by. Now that the population has exceeded a certain level we are in drought conditions most of the time. Yet people insist on keeping lawns that are covered by grasses that do not grow in low water conditions. It means that people are watering the crap out of their lawns and wasting water, when they could be using less water and growing more grasses. I do not grow a lawn and the damn grass seeds come in and plant themselves everywhere, so to me Grass is a weed.

I actually like some of the local breeds of flowers. We have a wild sunflower that grows wild in fields. I gathered some seeds and have planted those.

Datura grow in the desert and make these beautiful flowers the size of your open hand. They take almost zero water to grow.

datura3x.jpg

We also have Yucca that grows anywhere over here.

Flowering-Yucca-Plant.jpg

Our local invasive weed is this gigantic thing called Mullein. I see more people in my neighborhood cultivating them now.

6133855321_d15be53bf1.jpg

A shot of the tall stalks of the mullein plant in the Chaos Garden several years ago. One of the big advantages of indigenous plants is that it brings visitors to your garden. We get downy woodpeckers on ours along with gold finches.

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In my fervor about weeds I ignored the original questions.

First off, I want a picture of this plant that goes pop!

As far as dead heading is concerned, I do both the cut and the ripping a flower off. It all depends on whether or not I had planned to be out there dead heading or not. I can't see a difference aside from the fact that cutting is quicker/cleaner/easier.

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  • 5 months later...

Plants that go pop? We have seeds here from trees that only germinate in the intense heat of a bushfire. The heat of the fire cracks the seed pod. It makes me giggle every time we have a bushfire where I live the local greens come out of the wood work complaining about the destruction of the trees and how much it's going to cost to replace them. Whilst they're arguing about it mother nature just gets on with the job and does it herself. A few weeks to a couple of months after the fire there is new growth coming out of the ground everywhere.

Roy.

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  • 1 month later...

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