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14.08.2024 - 14:15 / balconygardenweb.com / Editorial Team
It is indeed painful to find unwanted plants taking over your carefully curated vegetation. While not all weeds are garden enemies, the ones on this list surely are! Learn to recognize the most common and persistent weeds found in the states, and save your garden from invasion now.
Botanical Name: Cirsium arvense
USDA Zones: 2-8
This North American weed is highly invasive, forming dense colonies that disrupt biodiversity and displace native species. Canada thistle starts as a low-growing rosette whose leaves gradually mature and lengthen with their spines, producing lavender flower heads.
It spreads by rhizomes and is difficult to control, as it quickly takes over large areas. It cannot tolerate shade, so it loves to spread on sunny grasslands, pastures, stream banks, and wet meadows.
Botanical Name: Vincetoxicum nigrum
USDA Zones: 4-8
This pretty herbaceous vine with twining stems and star-shaped velvety purple blooms is actually super toxic! Native to Europe, it was brought to the USA sometime in the 1800s and cultivated to be naturalized. However, it quickly escaped the botanical gardens and took over the entire region.
This milkweed family member is toxic to monarch butterflies. Legally, you must destroy all of its parts before it spreads!
Botanical Name: Alliaria petiolata
USDA Zones: 5-8
With rosettes of heart-shaped, edible leaves and delicate white bloom clusters, garlic mustard is again a European native brought to North America for its medicinal properties. But this highly invasive weed quickly outcompetes native species and even releases allelochemicals into the soil that suppress the growth of other plants.
This weed can release hundreds of seeds that remain viable in the soil for up to five years. It easily attaches to
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Header image: A suited astronaut uses a touch panel in the Dragon capsule. Image credit: SpaceX
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Florida’s climate is one of its most important assets. Nicknamed the “Sunshine State,” Florida boasts a humid subtropical climate in the north and central sections along with a tropical climate throughout a majority of the south. The state's native plants are already well suited for its climate and soil conditions, so they can usually thrive without additional irrigation or fertilization.
There is no way to sugarcoat the challenges many of us in the Mid-Atlantic region have faced this summer. The inconsistency of rainfall and the extreme high temperatures have greatly impacted our efforts to garden successfully. Even with valiant efforts to apply supplemental irrigation, I have witnessed a wide range of plant material showing signs of drought stress that I have rarely witnessed in my 15-plus years of gardening in this region. To say it is cause for concern would be an understatement. As a result, in the last few months I have been repeatedly asked how we can prepare our beloved gardens to reduce heat and moisture stress for future growing seasons. One answer to this conundrum is to add organic matter to the soil in the form of compost.
If you're craving a pop of color in your home, Behr is here to help with their 2025 Color of the Year, Rumors.
We like it when anything and everything around us reminds us to rush to the garden and love up the flora in our space—even letters of the alphabet! Today, we’re focusing on trees that start with the letter R.
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Espresso martinis have dominated drink menus for several years now, but a new coffee cocktail might be challenging their spot at the top of the happy hour list. Carajillos have arrived on the scene, and they’re a simpler, smaller-sized cousin of espresso martinis (tiny cocktails, anyone?). Made with just two ingredients, this espresso-based cocktail is just as tasty as an espresso martini, but much easier to recreate at home.
“Impossibly unaffordable” are two words that Californians are probably less than thrilled to hear. In a recent report from Chapman University in Orange, California, and the Frontier Centre of Public Policy (FCPP) in Canada, that’s exactly how four California metros are described. The 2024 edition of Demographia International Housing Affordability shows San Jose, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego listed among the top 10 least affordable housing markets—not just in the United States, but worldwide.