Hi all,
I planted 50 Vinca Minor about 2 month ago. They look dark green, and alive. However, they do not grow at all, I am in zone 6. I thought this is a very fast growing plant. Any Ideas why is not growing?
Thanks Oscar
The message from troya snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com contains these words:
Stand well back..and start eating your hat...
Janet
Patience is a virtue. Wait a year or so and it'll take off. Carolyn
Thanks Carolyn,
I don't mind wait but I was concern.
oscar
I'll second that - and perhaps advise standing well back with machete in hand! Gary
After having a large retaining wall erected, I put in 100, 1 gal. containers of vincas to cover a slope disrupted during the construction. I'm in zone 6 also. Nothing much happened for about three years. When I though things were progressing, it turned out that I had an invasion of wild honeysuckle growing amidst the vinca. After battling that, the thistles came, then the wild strawberries, and finally the persacaria. I decided that the vinca wasn't going to give much cover, so I planted a perennial garden on the slope. After about 8 years, the vinca has really taken off, and is choking out the perennials. I think than my area was too dry for the plants to get established quickly. The vinca is growing best at the base of the wall where it gets more moisture and more shade. My neighbor also planted vinca on a slope without the desired effect. Again, the vinca only established in the more shady and damp areas around our creek. I have had similar disappointment with English Ivy. Although it is invasive for some people, it is quite unimpressive in my yard. I had another steep slope that needed some ground cover for erosion control so I propagated some ivy and planted it there. The ivy tends to die back in the winter, only growing well in the more damp and shady areas. The deer also eat the ivy which doesn't help. Now I am on to on to ajuga, hoping that it will cover the area.
I had an area on a slope around a flat iris bed that had a tendency to wash until I noticed how well the day lilies (a.k.a. ditch lilies) around old, deserted houses did around here with absolutely no care. I planted some where the wash from the rain caused the most erosion. Since I didn't have enough ditch lilies, I added some very short, cheap day lilies from Wal-Mart into the mix. They certainly did their job in stopping erosion. As a bonus, some years they put on a decent display of color in the spring and some years they have no flowers when they are munched down by the deer or get no rain water. That doesn't bother me all that much because they stay green and prevent erosion.
I've tried ajugas in the same area, but ajugas need some water and some care, which the ditch lilies don't get, and all the ajugas I originally planted died. As for vinca minor, no one could pay me enough to plant that invasive stuff.
JPS
if you'd like something that doesn't care if it's hot, dry, moist, damp, sunny, shady, sandy, clay, etc........I have Vinca MAJOR and honey, it stays green all year (I brought it from Nashville where the growing zone is 6), and it's taken over everywhere. and added bonus, it has a beautiful blue morning glory like flower. how much you want? I'm finally digging all of mine up completely and disposing of it. not one plant will I leave in the beds, paths and under things.
It sounds tempting but is also seems like the kind of plant that needs to be planted in an area where it is contained. I would hate to unleash it into my woods, and that is the area where I need some cover. It's funny how some plants are terribly invasive for one person and hardly survive for others.
Vox, I would never send you this plant to unleash into woods. And yes, you would have to watch it and contain it. I was stupid (and I mean that......STUPID......and uneducated when it came to planting some of the perennials that I brought over here to Eastern Tennessee with me. Of all the ones I brought, the Vinca Major, "Nashville cast iron walking fern" (I really don't know what kind of fern it is, but it doesn't care if it's in shade or direct sun so I named it myself....one day I will identify it correctly and still call it my NCIW fern ) some stray Horsetail that insists on popping up. there there is the plants that I wish I had NEVER planted.....like Mary Emma's gift of two Wayside Gardens trumpet vines in that lovely orange sherbet color. It's evil. and I suspect it will be almost impossible to eliminate completely.
I also despise to a small degree the 4'oclocks,but the common spurge is bad as well. What was I thinking? And my front neighbor has the white variegated spurge called "Snow on the Mountain" planted in her yard. I see that it's walking my way..........................last year it was deliberately planted in her front yard, along the side of the driveway and behind her house near the electric barbwire fence that keeps in her brother in law's cows. This year the original huge patch is lesser, there is a new patch beside her house facing the driveway, but a rather impressive patch jumped the electric barbwire about three foot and I suspect that next year it will move another two feet towards me..........
I detest the Summac tree that I find seedlings of that lives in the narrow hell strip next to my shared driveway that I wish to goodness I could just quietly kill. (wonder if drilling holes into the tree would weaken it to fall? My luck it would crush the front plantings of my western gardens...........)
another newly detested plant. My pawlonia tree. As much as I adore the shade on the southwestern side of the yard, and as much as I love the flowers, this year the pods broke so many major limbs and almost destroyed the Vitex tree I've nurtured, not to mention the electric wires to my house............and possible damage to the west foundation wall to my basement because if it's roots, that now, I just want to "knuckle" it and lop off any reaccuring limbs. And remove the daughter tree before it gets any larger.
I still hate honeysuckle only because I have it trying to reach thru the chain link fence and strangle the Diablo ninebark, my Lorepedilum, "Pizzazz", and trys to grab my beloved Oak Leaf Hydrangea. I love it somewhere else. And it's trying to carpet my woods along with the poison ivy, Virginia creeper (which I don't mind, but that hides the poison ivy)poison oak, and wild blackberries.
But I have to say my challange will be to TOTALLY remove the Vinca Major. I've had it since 1974!!!! I had it originally at my first house in Nashville in Inglewood on the north side of the house. I dug a hunk of it up, planted it at the farm house in White Pine in 1992, moved it and all the plants to Dandridge in 1995, and have been cursed with it ever since introducing it to my front ridge. It loves clay. It adores and flourishes in deep, loose, rich worm casting raised soil, it roots in GRAVEL, it has survived in a coconut fibre basket that I forgot I'd planted some clumps of for a hanging basket and now I have to rip it out where it's trying to compete with the variegated ivy that sits in Silver;s pot and is embracing the Pawlonia trunk. (it's still neat looking, and when the arms are cut off, I think I'll give the Climbing Hydrangea the chance to compete with the ivy for climbing space. so far I haven't planted the Hydrangea because I want it in the perfect spot.)
I have to say that unless you are very diligent with watching Vinca Major, you may not want to plant it in your woods. I surely wouldn't. Better something like Epimedium, or moss, or walking ferns, or something else. I can't walk sometimes for the elastic like vines. They've almost thrown me several times!
sorry about the ramble. first time in ages that I felt like chatting............healing takes time. I almost feel well enough to get out and start doing fall damage! I've gotten tired of hearing myself talk about some of these gardening problems. I have given myself a vow to do some of the stuff I've talked about here on the newsgroup but never gotten around to it or have gotten terribly distracted. Just reclaiming the ground where all that vinca is, will be a HUGE task. I will let ya'll know how it goes only when I have pulled the last shoot of it out (I know I will miss a few but I am going to completely erradicate this from my gardens.) The love hate relationship is over. it's time to grow things that don't try to throw me down literally to the ground when I try to walk the paths. just because it's evergreen, has a beautiful flower and would cover this whole ridge is no reason I should have planted it in the first place. Just removing it will take lot of doing. And no composting this stuff. It will be dried out and burnt. (I've never really seen vinca major much. only vinca minor) madgardener
madgardener wrote: [...]
[...]Up here, where we get -20C regularly in winter, and have two to four weeks without rain at a time in the summer, vinca survives, and spreads only in shady, humid places, of which there aren't that many. It won't grow that well where I want it to grow, but it looks noicve all the same. I guess vinca just loves your warmer, wetter climate.
yep, that's a possibility. but right now with the drought we've had, the clay soil is rock hard and the vinca looks lush and beautiful...................(and that still won't make me not dig it up once the cooler weather comes) madgardener
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