Today’s gardening?
Juniper bush. I think it was original to the house, ca 1954. It had spread, from a central trunk about 10″ in diameter, to a woody mass about 5 feet in diameter, and had radiated out branches each as thick as a lady’s wrist, about 8 in number to a radius of 15 to (we’re still not sure if some of those bushes still green are independent or connected) 30 feet.
It had also grown up tall enough (hip-high) the city wanted it removed, because it’s on a corner.
So—two women both over 60, with a bitty Poulan electric chainsaw, a pair of loppers, a pair of hand clippers, and a bottle of Aleve… have, today, reduced this thing to a 15’x10′ patch of dead dust with a knee-high stump we are going to declare a permanent monument….plus a big pile of thick juniper branches we can’t put in the green bin, and a big pile of juniper foliage we CAN put in the green bin. We are going to move in three small junipers from the retaining wall, move two small burning-bush plants from the side garden to the area of the retaining wall where the small junipers were, and we are declaring it a victory. If that stump’s still live, and sends out more branches, at least they’ll be little ones.
And that’s BEFORE we actually get to work today.
You should be able to handle any potential regrowth, but I’d probably use something like stump-remover on it, just to be sure (since nuking from orbit isn’t a good idea in this).
Ah yes, the joys of junipers.
I hate them. Every time I was instructed to trim the juniper at my parents place (as a teen doing her chores) I’d arrive back inside the house after a valiant effort of hacking it back from the driveway, COVERED in a rash of tiny, red itchy bumps, the result of all those prickles! Long sleeves offered no protection. It was evil.
I have “inherited” a juniper tree with this house. I have made some tentative attempts to trim it back, but the fact is that it’s been overgrown for so long, that I can no longer give it the manicured look that the one further down the driveway has (which is maintained by a landscaper who comes a few times a year to tend to the body corporate landscaping).
The only reason it is there is because it’s offering a considerable wind break for my little fig tree. If Tasmania could be known for one thing, it’s the bloody wind! It screams up the driveway when it’s full fury, and stuff gets pretty battered. So it stays for now, but at some point I’m going to have to face it.
Not looking forward to it. It’s much taller than I am, so unless anyone has tips on maintaining those trees, I’ll just have to borrow a pole saw and hack at it till it’s roughly shaped.
Holy frijoles, Cousin Speedy! We have the same issue at our house. Somehow, a ficus started in the hedge at the end of our drive. It has now become an integral sprawl and every so often I have to go in with the heavy loppers and make sure we can still see oncoming traffic. Last week I filled the big 30 gallon trash barrel twice with removed branches, and that was just what I could get to in the last 5 feet. It made mowing quite difficult in that part of the lawn as well.
One thing the pros do for stumps that resist all other efforts at removal is cut a series of notches in the top and girdle what remains of the stump so it can’t sprout from the old wood. Your small chainsaw ought to handle that easily.
They were very cute as babies….
We had them all along the foundation at the front, courtesy of the previous owners. By the time we bit the bullet and lopped them to stumps, they had almost consumed the entire front of the house. That was around eight years ago and we STILL have a couple of stumps we haven’t managed to undermine and remove – too close to the main drain line to the sewer to be comfortable with ‘hook a chain to the truck and pull’ method! Who knows what those roots might be doing?
I can say the electric Poulan chainsaw is pretty good. Has about a 4″ wide ‘blade’ with about 18″ length, which will let you get things of fair size if you know how to use a chainsaw fairly well. The electric is very light, an asset when it comes to using an undersized one to, say, notch a branch larger than some and go at it twice. This one took 2″-ers with no trouble. [For those who haven’t used one, the three big dangers are, besides cutting your own cord—1. kickback, which means the thing bounces back at you dangerously: keep pressure light and never try to force anything, but maintain strength enough in your grip to prevent a buck-back—also beware of knotholes: feather touch is enough. 2. not watching where your own limbs are—as in, use an axe-type stance, feet wide, so that if the blade goes faster than you thought, your foot is not in the way. 3. binding up the blade: don’t try to cut deeper than your blade is wide, or let the piece ‘close’ on your blade and bind it. Notch it and go again. 4. Wear goggles, good shoes, and long pants, because things fly. That’s what me Dad taught me. So we’re careful.
We were done in a couple of hours. If we’d tried to use any type of hand saw on that thing we’d still be out there.
when I use my chainsaw, I have a set of teeth at the base of the bar on the body of the saw. I put them up against the log I’m cutting, and instead of pressing down, I use those teeth as a fulcrum and gently lift up on the saw as the chain cuts through the log. That way, I’m not overtaxing the saw, and if it does slip, the bar doesn’t come down very far after it cuts through. And yes, I watch where my feet, legs, and hands are when I’m using one of those things. Power tools are great inventions, but they’re also very unforgiving against mere mortal flesh.
On #3, be aware of which direction the weight is balanced toward. Cut to that side, not from that side!
Good description! My husband fought wildland fires as an engine captain for 30 years and is very, very good with a chainsaw. And just yesterday I oversaw two sawyers and three swappers (guys who move all the cut stuff out of the way) cut dense manzanita brush about 5 feet high and a bit of scrub oak in about a 90 x 25 foot area in just over a 30 minutes. It’s just amazing watching these guys. Just be sure to add earplugs when you use chainsaws. They can be very damaging to your hearing.
The burning bushes quickly turn in to equal horrors -at least they do here on the east coast! And they seed all over -have become a major invasive pest in the local ecosystem Be Warned.
CJ, can you put the branches into a fire pit and use them for those evenings on the patio by the pond? I don’t know what Spokane’s ordinances are with regards to fire pits, but usually, most municipalities allow them (unless during extreme fire threat), especially if the burner has a screen over the top to catch the larger ashes.
Burning juniper is how the ancient Greeks used to kill household vermin…Smoke up the rooms with juniper, then open the windows.
Alas, we don’t have a fire pit. We’ve thought of having one. But then we’d have to empty the ashes. A neighbor has offered to help us get the limbs to the dump, where I suppose they’ll compost down. The frondy tops go definitely to city composting.
I would be very surprised if the landfill doesn’t have a chipper to handle branches and such. The one where I worked in Texas did – and the resulting ‘mulch’ was free to the public. It was good for groundcover.
We limb them up to a nice tame fringe atop branches. Never have gotten seed out of ours. Hmmm.
And they get very tall. So the city won’t like them either.
They won’t, however, be on the corner, but on the front. They’ll be ok there.
If you decide you want to kill off the juniper completely, mix up a bit of Roundup in a mason jar and use a paintbrush to wet the sprouts. This works on poison ivy.
Somewhere, a grove of Triffids lurches in horror!
This mix needs to be applied very carefully, so it doesn’t contaminate the ground around it. Dab it ONLY on the fresh cut sections of the stump.
Actually, the Roundup needs go to on the growing green sprouts, not on the cut stump. It only works by being absorbed by the green bits, then taken down to the roots of the plant. If there is nothing growing on the ground under/around the sprouts, there will not be any damage, because Roundup decays in the soil very quickly. Like within a week.
Normally I’d say stay the hell away from it, because I don’t think glyphosate is good for anything or anyone, but sometimes extreme measures are required.
I would just leave it rot, and knock back shoots as they appear. Eventually it’ll die on its own, as there’s nothing to sustain it. Patience is the real killer.
Some warning on our typical western type junipers. It’s very common for the wretched things to bush out and have numerous limbs rather than one with branches. In fact, silvicultralists measure the diameter from the root collar (near the base) rather than at breast height (about 4 feet up) like they do pines. Junipers can and will sprout from the stump, usually somewhat close to the ground (that root collar). So you may have some extra trimmings to do in a year or so. Stuff is tenacious as hell. They also come in male and female. No idea what versions are local to you, but if you’ve never seen seeds you might be much happier next spring when this thing isn’t pollinating. I know I would be — damn things give me fits.
Now about that stump — recently saw something about turning the stump in one’s yard into a nifty planter for flowers. Can’t remember how to do it. Something is done to help get the center out and then mulch I think. Could be very pretty on the corner!
I have managed to kill a resurgent stump by cross hatching it top down wit a chainsaw, getting it wet and laying ripe bracket fungus fruiting bodies on it. I also kept it wet.
Hallooooo!
Please welcome Robby’s Adventures to the Toy Box Tales at ShinyFiction.com.
Robby’s Adventures keep growing, and I’m outlining, so this first installment is just a taste. There will be more excitement (and plot! and a mystery or two, and lots of pretending) to come.
There will also be separate informational pages as I get to them.
The Toy Box Tales crew (Augie and friends) will be returning later in the year with new adventures; maybe with their first real adventure.
One or two “Someone Else”-es will appear later this year too.
In some good space news, the Philae comet lander has just woken up. It went into hibernation in November, after bouncing and coming to rest in the shade of a cliff. It’s presumably getting more sunlight now as the comet nears the sun.
From the European Space Agency’s blog:
Rosetta’s lander Philae wakes up from hibernation
Coincidence? You sacrifice a juniper and Philea wakes ups?
It was a big juniper. 😉
And yay for the lander!
If you take an auger to the juniper stump, can you then claim you’re practicing augury?
Might this be auspicious for the comet lander, and maybe for the Kepler satellite?
Well, it’s worth a try.
Juniper. Ju-ni-per. Ju-pi-ter. Hmm, just coincidence. Hera, also goddess of hearths, juniper, for smoke….
Juniper. Jumper. Lander. Yeah, so it’s a reacher. (Hey, three -er’s and a fourth!)
Could nt resist a little silly word-play.
Pot of pinto beans simmering on the stove. Gotta consider that good for something too. 😀
Have you got enough stump for someone to do a nice carving from it? I see them around here quite a bit. Otherwise, I’ld go for the planter.
I believe Wiishu now believes it’s a ‘fairy house.’
A fairy house with its own fire hydrant, but hey, you can never be too safe. I think trolls may live in the fire hydrant. They’re a bit fond of water.
Kappas probably, rather than trolls; the trolls would be under your bridge. Maybe nixies?
Should I wonder if the trolls are ordering takeout BBQ a lot, for that three goat a day habit?
Or was that all a weird misunderstanding, much like that thing with Goldilocks and the three bears? ‘Cause, y’know, if Goldie and “Baby-Face” Bear got along that well, or that troll and Billy and his two goat bros all got along that well…who am I to judge?
Heck, if he’s a particularly nice troll-boy hanging out under that bridge…perhaps this is an option I had not heretofore considered!
Hmm, one has no quarrel with the wee/faerie folk, nor does one eish to. Continued good relations with the wee, faerie folk seem to be amenable to all concerned. So…happily ever after?
Some while back, the city moved a fire hydrant that had been in my side yard, some number of feet into my front yard. They went to a great amount of trouble to do this on their own, and they were (surprisingly) nice enough to replace the soil disturbed in both places.
One did not think of the possibility of displaced or irritable faerie folk in the process. Perhaps that was the origin of the move to begin with? Some few feet from the prior location? Hmm.
Why does a banshee scream and weep?
Have you ever tried to get bloodstains out of whites?
Lol. WE are careful with chainsaws. I surrendered two manicured nails to the dratted line trimmer this morning—cord keeps breaking in heavy growth, which makes me have to take the spool out… I’m trimming beside the driveway and garage next to the alley. And getting our neighbor’s alley line as well. Lady lost her husband this last fall, elderly, and weed-trimming would be a bit much for her. So it’s pretty easy for me, and I can get those—but I’ve broken this task into 2 parts, another go at it tomorrow, while it’s cool. I also intend to take a rose clipper out for those heavy stemmed weeds and take a screwdriver to uncap that spool when I have to. Tired of this hiking back and forth.