Saturday is here again. I took a steamy tour of my garden this morning. The humidity was at 90 percent! I wasn’t sweating, but my skin had condensation on it and so did the windows in my house. The plants continue to thrive and I have a new weed, Rice Paddy Weed.
To join the SOS World Garden Tour – visit Jim at http://gardenruminations.co.uk
The Purple Prince zinnias are gaining strength and size. I am hoping for long stemmed cut flowers. Unfortunately, I usually get short stemmed zinnias.
Hummingbird or cypress vine rambling through white salvia. I am probably going to regret this when all the little seedlings come up – until then I will enjoy the little pops of color.
New flowers on the Medinillia cummingii. So tropical. These grow in tree tops in their native habitat. The green orchid bees love the flowers.
Brown Eyed Girl sunflowers continue to flower. I got these in February and they are still blooming. Oddly, they have lost their brown eye.
Mexican Honeysuckle (Justicia spicigera) is a summer standby.
Another stalwart in the summer garden, Spiderwort, the wildflower is sprinkled around sunny spots in the garden. I love the blue and am not sure which Transcandentia this one is.
Here is the Rice Paddy weed. A new one in my world. I thought it was an old fashioned penta (which would have been great!) so I left it in a pot and came to find out – it is an invasive weed in swamps and rice paddies that can produce 250,000 seeds each flower. As my garden is non-water holding sand I am not feeling afraid but getting rid of it shortly.
I have a question for you gardeners. I have been waiting to try this natural weedkiller, Torched, that is non toxic. It was supposed to be available in smaller quantities than a gallon ($74 gallon plus shipping) but the manufacturer decided against the smaller bottles. Would you pay about $90 US to try this?? Thanks for answering, I am curious. Here is a link:
https://www.southlandorganics.com/products/torched-all-natural-weed-killer?variant=43855976661237
That is it for this Saturday. I wish you Happy Gardening.
The Shrub Queen 
The Medinillia cummingii is very pretty. Does it have a scent? Too bad the Rice Paddy Weed is so invasive. It is interesting how weeds and plants show up. The weed killer does seems expensive. I would want a recommendation from someone who has used it. You first! 🙂
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I like the pink flowers, no scent that I can smell, but the bees love it. Weeds are amazing things. Not trying the weedkiller!
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Rice paddy weed sounds awful, esp. if it gets into Florida’s many waterways. Yikes.
Have you ever tried spraying with white vinegar? Cheap and easy, we use it for crabgrass in our front walk. Certainly cheaper than $90/gal!
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Indeed. going in the trash. I have been using a weird vinegar concoction that works and is probably a few bucks a gallon. Ugh. crabgrass, there are 3 kinds here for year round joy.
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Oh my…250,000 seeds from each flower, now that is one plant I wouldn’t want hanging around my garden.
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yes, scary.
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Beautiful flowers! And Yikes! That’s an expensive weed killer! I read a bit about it – non-selective (so apply on a calm day) originally for farmers, will kill weeds resistant to round up, contains essential ails….I guess it would depend what I was trying to get rid of, and where it was located. If kills bindweed and creeping bellflower without damaging other plants I’d happily pay that much! If it’s just to make the driveway look tidy then I’d use the vinegar routine.
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Thanks, Chris. I agree. Expensive and probably not worth it. It is clove oil and proprietary soap.The gardeners consensus is no thanks and vinegar!
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No! That’s far too expensive for weed killer. Go with vinegar. That Rice Paddy weed sounds dangerous for the waterways in your area.
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I think so. I have been using vinegar home brew as well. I have never seen that weed before which is strange in itself. Going in the trash!
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I didn’t know clove oil was a weed killer. I will try but you have to know that it is expensive… I have this ( high concentration) and I will dilute it to have the right concentration required according to the label (6%). I’ll let you know if you have time to wait a bit. Nice six as always. 👍🏻
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Hi Fred. well, I have just figured out that the last clove oil based weedkiller that worked was taken off the market as there was other bad toxic, non organic stuff in it. Lawsuits, etc. followed from organic growers. I am not sure if wasting your clove oil is worth the effort.
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Just to know and yes I have 1L of 100% clove oil so I can try
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oh! what do you do with the clove oil? I can buy small amounts here, but when I realized what that was I decided to go with my salt and vinegar homebrew, I just use it on walkways and driveways. I found a very odd recipe with arthritis rub in it and it really kills the weeds but I am wondering what it does to the soil?
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I don’t know what it does to the soil but I will google to learn more….
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Your Transcandentia is amazingly blue. I have a very different one.
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Wonderfully colourful selection, even that Rice Paddy weed! I hope that you discovered its identity before it set any seed!
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The rice paddy weed is kind of pretty, but like Star of Bethlehem (an arch nemesis at my last allotment in Seattle), the best approach is to not allow it to set seed in the garden. S.O.B. is insidious, as it has the annoying habit of producing both viable seeds and tiny bulbs in great numbers, which cause erosion that ironically helps spread the plants. I like the blue spiderwort!
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The new weed is rather pretty, but I can only imagine how it must be hated in rice-growing regions. Love the purple zinnia. 😃
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Fabulous Medinillia. But what is the red flower-Humming bird vine??? It looks a bit like Petunia exserta.
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The vine is Ipomoea quamoclit fairly common here as a summer annual vine. Sometimes called Cypress Vine, supposed to attract hummingbirds. It does look like the P. exserta and has nice, ferny foliage. The flowers are smaller, maybe an inch wide. I have enjoyed the Medenillia.
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Spiderwort is supposedly dreaded here. It is supposedly aggressively invasive. I have never experienced it though. A single specimen grew from seed on the farm, and before I could identify it, my colleague noticed it, removed it and disposed of it in the trash, rather than a burn pile. I have no idea where the seed came from, since I have never seen it here. It seems to me that if it were so aggressively invasive, that it would be established somewhere here, like so many other aggressively invasive exoict species are.
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There are some nasty Transcandentias here that I get rid of..though one is loose in the food forest. That one is a native wild flower and well behaved.
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