Trees

Honey locust or black locust? Gleditsia or Robinia?Gleditsia Triacanthos I have grown from seed. I found it best to chip the seed coat and soak for a few hours first, before sowing.

Thats interesting, we returned to the U.K. 5 years ago. We were living in Eire for 10 years and we had a small holding, behind the house was a small orchard with very old apple trees , They were quite tasty but we did notice we had a good crop every other year, so your tree could be similar

Quick, easy but pricey: Stumpgrinder. You'll be done in an hour and have a nice fine tilth left instead.Long, hard but cheaper: Pickaxe, digging bar, handsaw and a bucket of elbow grease. Get diggin'

As the lower leaves turn brown you can cut them off to keep the plant tidy The flowers will produce seeds which you can plant to grow more little cordylines

Good point

Thanks - That sounds reasonable. I'm not too worried about it being a crab apple tree TBH, as we never did anything with the apples that did grow on it and they just made mowing the lawn a bit of a pain. Today I cut away all but 1 of the growths and trimmed off the side shoots from the remaining...

Spray the lot with a glyphosate based weedkiller like Round-Up. Wait for it to die, maybe a a month (with weekly sprayings while you're waiting). Then dig it all over and remove as much weed roots as you can. For the tree stumps, you can hire stump grinders from the likes of HSS, but I've never...

:gnthb: Thanks folks and yes this is posted on the Tree forum Thanks Andy

I rekon they should be ok.Remember that these sorts of repeated high winds arent exactly seasonal!

Wow!! That was bad. Oh well I got it wrong :o. But I have learn't alot with researching & what damage hail stones can do!! :D

Hi FleabagI think a ceanothus might struggle around the base of your tree. But if you want a ground cover type of plant that will colonise a difficult bit of terrain, how about one of the periwinckles? It has a pretty blue flower but needs careful watching because it can be too...

Hi PinkFingerIt's so good to actually come across someone who actively seeks out advice on choosing the correct tree for their garden first, instead of someone who plants any old tree anywhere then has to deal with the consequences of their poor decision. I'm sure you'll get a few good replies...

Hope you have better luck than me samuelcat

It's in a smallish pot now-about 3" diameter 5" deep ( guessing there but near enough), I will keep in the pot till the roots starts to show through the base and just pot on and on until it's big enough-if all goes well. Cheers for your help guys.

yes i will have to keep on top of any re-growth i am still picking out the seedlings from last year - bloody weedy things they are prolific anyway i have made a small logpile with some of the leftover chunks of wood to provide shelter for the resident amphibians in the nearby ponds and other...

They are called "fungus gnats" here is a link to tell you all about them,

Thanks for the answer Strongy & Marley, cann't help thinking the "greenies" will develope variegation at some time as they grow as they contain the same genetic material,it's as well to remove the cream leaves as they are totally reliant on the parent plan for nourishment,too many on the plant...

Its a bit hard to visualise without pictures / a plan.In my opinion they are a "parks" tree, and if they overhang a relatively small garden (e.g. a garden behind a terrace house), and they are mature specimens, I would think they could easily be a menace. The honeydew is a nuisance for...

Thanks for the help.I spent ages looking around the nurseries this afternoon for something that'd suit and ended up getting a Laurus Mobilis. Although it's capable of silly heights! It's meant to be a relatively slow grower.Regards the Leylandii hedge; I'm well aware of the horrific...

Time will tell because if it is the Aphid it will get worse.Here's a Leylandii I bought in 2007 and this picture was taken in Spring 2008. There was an identical pair to it, about 10' away, which was undamaged (so unlikely to be wind etc.). They were trimmed to shape every few weeks, so no...