Your most indestructible plants?

[gixxerific]

Was thinking about this last night. I am not an expert on flowers and such. But id plant what looks good and does good, I know more about veggies but yet again no expert here.

I was thinking of two of my more hardy (or hard to kill) plants one coming from both fields. Swiss Chard this stuff is very outgoing. I plant VERY early usually by broadcasting and walking away. It will grow all year, I still have some growing. This plant looks good in flower beds just as it will in you veggie garden. Another good on for me is Borage I planted some seed in '09 the first and only time I have planted seed for it. The first year it took over it's area no matter how much I tried to tame it. This year it came back on it's own. Same mission, to take over. It spreads outside my garden and gets mowed regularly yet still comes back. Still growing in the garden at this time.

Another crazy one is marigolds. I started seed inside again in '09 and planted a few here and there. This year I started a few but ended up with probably thousands. both in my flower garden and around my mailbox. The came in like wildflowers. I actually planted a few other flowers around my mailbox that were totally choked out by the marigolds. It was nice not to have to do much work and have so many flowers. In reality I didn't plant hardly anything this year in my flower garden but it was overflowing with life.

Gotta love self seeding.

What do you have that is very hardy? Veggie or flower.

[cynthia_h]

Read "The Legend of the Sorrel Plant." The plant persists through manifold challenges, to this very day!

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

[rainbowgardener]

Agree with you gixx, on the swiss chard. I planted borage one year and ripped it out mid season, before it had a chance to go to seed, because it was too big and weedy looking and taking over the bed it was in.

Another good one for flowering is nicotiana (ornamental tobacco). It's an annual but self seeds readily, so I have some spots in my yard where the nicotiana comes back on its own year after year.

http://plants.usda.gov/java/largeImage? ... 01_avp.jpg

It's pretty, it flowers prolifically all season (still going strong now after a few frosts), hummingbirds like it, it is well behaved - although it self seeds and comes back in the same spots year after year, in my yard it is not aggressive, doesn't take over or spread very much- it is very adaptable re sun, shade etc. I have some on the north side of my house where it is mostly shady and it still grows and blooms! It is sweetly fragrant and the blooms are open in the evening, so it is great to grow someplace where you will sit in the evenings. I always have some in pots on my deck (grows well in containers too!). Very low maintenance, easy care.

Unfortunately it is not a native plant, but since it is so not aggressive, I haven't worried about that too much.

[john gault]

I was going to say marigold, but you already mentioned them. So the other one would be cosmos. I was weeding one day and realized I violently yanked some cosmos out of the ground, I replanted them later that day and couldn't see any ill effects. Also it seems as though once they're planted they keep coming back in greater numbers, I started out with only a few plants, when they stopped flowering I cut them down and placed them under the mulch to give back to the soil and now I got tons and tons of them all over the place. The bees love them.

[gumbo2176]

Okra for me. You plant it, forget about it except to keep harvesting the pods so it stays in production and let nature do its thing. They are extremely drought tolerant and love the heat. One of the easiest things I grow each year.

Chard and Kale also grow so well in my garden it is frightening. I give away buckets full every 10 days or so and still have more than I really need.

[lorax]

Taxo (Passiflora mixta) for me. It's a banana passionfruit that I'm particularly fond of.

I have a volunteer plant in my front yard, which a bird must have left me. I have weed whacked it, pulled it up to try and transplant it (that just got me two vines), it survived our unusually long and cold rainy season, the various hailstorms we've had over the past year, a thick coat of volcanic ash-mud from the rain during the eruption, it grows through powdery mildew, and even though it's a host plant for several rather lovely butterflies, it seems to not mind being eaten by caterpillars (and they periodically defoliate it.)

[rainbowgardener]

Jerusalem artichoke, aka sunchoke. It grows pretty fall blooming sunflowers, 10 feet tall or more and has edible tubers. I have some growing in a flower bed. Every fall I pull out ALL the tubers I can find and every year tons of it comes back from the little ones I didn't find. Without pulling it, it would long since have taken over the flower bed. Doesn't care about soil/ conditions very tough and easy maintenance.

And while the tubers spread to form a big colony, in my yard anyway it doesn't seem to spread from seeds, so it doesn't pop up in other places. So it isn't aggressive/ invasive, because it stays put.

Lemon balm is completely easy too and is lovely in tea mixtures, but it is starting to become a serious pest in my yard. Once well established, it is an aggressive spreader that spreads from roots AND seeds, so pops up all over the place. When I started making my tea blends this year, I found a quart jar of dried lemon balm from LAST year, that I never managed to use (and I did use a lot of it!). That went in the compost since I had plenty of this year's.

[gixxerific]

All great replys, thank you all. I will keep this in mind and hopefully more will be added.

I will stay away from the total invasive stuff, that can be a real nightmare, which I have lived through before.

If anyone has seed to trade I have a lot of stuff mainly veggies (mainly tomatoes) but a small collection of flower seeds as well pm me.

[gumbo2176]

I posted earlier about my Okra being a tough plant, but the toughest one in my yard is my fig tree. It survived being underwater for almost 3 weeks following Hurricane Katrina. Not only underwater, but under saltwater for that length of time.

After a serious pruning when I could give it some attention, it once again flourished and by the summer of 07, almost 2 years after the storm, I had a bumper crop of beautiful figs.

[!potatoes!]

agreed on sunchokes.

we had a couple of second-year kale plants this past year that refused to flower, just turned into giant multiple-branched greens-trees.

cowpeas should make it to the list, i think. drought-tolerant, and i always get a decent amount of beans (i grow them for dry beans)..

got a number of potted trees that seem relatively unconcerned about weather, hail injuries, etc - like my old bay tree (20-something and still going strong), fig, che...

...and then there's the comfrey. cut to about an inch tall at least six times this past year, keeps on rolling. one of the best plants i know for compost and mulching.

[digitS']

I was wondering what I could contribute here but after giving it some thought, there's some agreeing and disagreeing I can do.

First off, yes, cosmos are an easy addition to the flower garden. They self-sow and transplant easily when they are young. And, I don't feel that the lilies in my front yard require much to show up each year and make a show. They are sometimes burned by a late frost, tho'. I also need to travel around and pull the stamens out of the flowers when they open. Otherwise, they make kind of a mess out of themselves and aren't pretty for very long.

I have to think about bug threats with chard. Earwigs, slugs and leaf-miners like that one. So, can't really vote for one that I have to spray to keep the bugs off. No vote for the mints either -- even tho' I have a number in the yard, I don't really care to make any use of them . . . sorry, not really a mint person.

!potatoes! made me think of chives. I use the harvest-to-the-ground technique with that one, also.

The chives grow in absolutely the shadiest part of my yard! They really only have sun during the early morning hours of the summer. During a bad snow winter, the snow will slide off my carport and bury them for months.

It takes forever for the ground to thaw around them early in the new season. Still, they are a very early onion crop for me! I very much like them in omelets & scrambled eggs. They can be cut back about the time they flower and be ready for use in sour cream with the potatoes when those are ready for harvest.

Not only do the chives do everything I could hope for in their difficult location -- they also spread. Maybe they are trying to get out where there is more sun .

Steve

[rainbowgardener]

Interesting about the chard... almost nothing bothers mine. Most of the leaves I pick are totally perfect. Occasionally one has a little hole, but very minimal. And I don't spray or do anything. On the other hand slugs usually like my green peppers and I have seen other people say that slugs won't touch them. All gardening is local!

[Green Mantis]

rainbowgardener.............Definately agree with you on Jerusalum Artichokes, they grow like crazy!!!!

Also comfrey and Marigolds. None of the above seem to give up very easy. Which is great. Oh another one is Hops, they just keep coming too. Love that style of gardening. [/img]

[digitS']

. . . On the other hand slugs usually like my green peppers and I have seen other people say that slugs won't touch them. All gardening is local!

Yes, I've seen a little slug damage to the peppers. Usually, it is minimal.

Some folks don't have any problem with earwigs . . . Cripes! In the company of their slug buddies, I've got 'em chewing up the lettuce and, by themselves, destroying the dahlias!

Steve

[john gault]

An observation of "invasive/indestructible" plants.

The other day I posted a pic of a "weed" I wanted ID'ed and was identified as Nut Grass http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyperus_rotundus

I noticed that the ref says this:

"Cyperus rotundus is one of the most invasive weeds known, having spread out to a worldwide distribution in tropical and temperate regions. It has been called "the world's worst weed"[4] as it is known as a weed in over 90 countries, and infests over 50 crops worldwide.[citation needed] In the United States it occurs from Florida north to New York and Minnesota and west to California and most of the states in between."

I'm not saying that statement is not true, but it is somewhat misleading based on my own observations (albeit very limited).

My observation is that it does not grow within any area except my mulched area where it has full-sun conditions. It does NOT grow with the Bermuda grass, so apparently Bermuda grass chokes it out.

Also, within my mulched areas it seems to grow everywhere, but so does Cosmos and I think the Cosmos wins. However, since Cosmos does not spread via rhizomes it can't travel as fast, but where it has established itself, it does overwhelm the Nut Grass.

Just one example of why it's so difficult to learn about gardening from simple reading; I have many more examples of things I've read about, but experience has shown me my impressions from what I've read were so wrong.

I guess some would consider Cosmos a weed, mine just keep reproducing..., but I like it, it's pretty and it is a major attractor of pollinators and since it does not spread via rhizomes it's easy to kill off if I wanted to. Bermuda Grass is still, in my opinion, "the world's worst weed".