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I have a sansevieria (snake plant)which is top heavy. It grows and grows. I simply found something not too obvious to tie it together with and then propped it in a corner by the window as it is still not quite stable. I have another plant on a little table in front of it so the tie doesn't show. Get creative! I was thinking of dyeing some panty hose dark green to use as a tie!!! I read that these plants can last 20-25 years. This one is 18 years old at least and thriving. I may need to repot it yet.

I think the stake and ties would work. I recently also tied up an umbrella plant that is growing all over the place and it is more manageable now.

Lvnsm1826 - that's cute!
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Sweet lady in her garden
https://youtu.be/_s0LX1xdDyQ
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Irish Spring bar soap....critters be gone!
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OK, what about a single tall bamboo stake and some discrete green ties?
The thing I like best about cacti and succulents is they thrive on neglect, maybe stretch out the time between watering to slow growth down.

(I've looked this plant up, people on line seem to be very comfortable lopping them off and restarting babies 😱)
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It's leaning over itself, the stems aren't bearing the weight. I can try a wider pot and stones to give it some balance at the bottom. I've never seen this. You see top-heavy with trees or other thin stem plants. This guy is solid all the way up, just very tall and skinny. It's a beautiful plant. Chopping off the tallest parts would be a shame.

I found this advice after some more reading. "If you don’t allow your plant to go into a dormancy phase every year, after a few years of uninterrupted growth they will become very weak." I've only had it two years but it's grown like a weed, doubling in height.
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Is it the the plant tipping out of the pot or is the whole pot and plant tipping over Ali? If it's the plant and roots tipping out of the pot what about arranging some heavy stones on top of the soil? If its pot and all then you need a wider, heavier pot (although the stones might help with that too).

PS - I love succulents, I'm feeling a little jealous 😂
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Random: I have a too-tall succulent plant, an African Milk Tree. It's a beautiful plant and has been very easy care and fast growing. I moved it today to do some cleaning and now it's falling over. It's too top heavy. It's already in a deep pot and I could repot a little deeper and add soil up to where it branches, but that's not the issue. It's too tall to bear its own weight. I could try to dry it out some by not watering and see if it it shrinks and lightens up any. It's 48 inches tall. I could use support stakes but the way it grows, I would have to use many of them, and tie them off in between leaves/spines.

Any suggestions? I'm not against lopping it off but never done that to a succulent before. Thanks, AC green thumbs!
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I was dead heading my herbs,,, now I smell wonderful and very,,, spicy... LOL
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SendHelp, thanks for resurrecting that information.    I knew that I copied it when you posted it, but don't remember how I categorized it and where it's stored.

I ask b/c the squirrels are back again, having once again chewed through the wall.   I did hire an animal removal contractor a few years ago, and after inspections, trapping and more, the only squirrel he caught wasn't one of the colonizers.   A few years later, they're back, and they even have an obnoxious Paulonia tree growing right next to where their walnut tree freeway was. 

I've never seen a tree grow so rapidly.  In just one summer it grew to over 6' tall.  I hacked it down, but it's back again.   I did learn that it produces good wood, so this time I'll bark strip the base as well as the trunk and learn how to cure it, then make something out of it.

As to the squirrels, I'm probably also cutting down the walnut trees in another area of the yard.   A massive branch broke off and fell on the lawn and the street after a storm last week, so I'm reassessing all the safe and unsafe trees, and the latter are going to have a scalping visit from my favorite tree removal service.
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Very cool CWillie!
I think we have an Irish Spring plant growing in summer!
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I found what appears to be a peanut plant growing beside my container tomato, I think it must have been the squirrels way of paying for all the other stuff they dug up!
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For Garden Artist:

Sendhelp
Nov 15, 2020
GardenArtist,
White pepper, Cayenne, garlic, coffee grounds-all disliked by squirrels.

Squirrels can be one of the trickiest garden pests to deal with. They chomp on flower bulbs and other leaves, dig up your favorite plants, and otherwise love to wreck your garden. Protect it by grating some Irish Spring soap around your plants. Squirrels can't stand the smell of it and will stay away.

While I was looking up how to deter squirrels, I found this on Gophers:

 Repel the gopher by placing castor oil pellets, peppermint oil, and fabric softener sheets in the burrows nearest your home.
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Great topic! I love to garden to attract pollinators, birds and lizards. I like to plant the host plants so the butterflies and moths can lay their eggs on them. Sometimes, I'll even put the plant with eggs / caterpillars in a butterfly cage to give them protection from predators and a better chance of survival. I love growing indoor plants too. I also love to propagate and give my plants away to friends and fellow gardeners. Propagating is super easy... most plants and trees can be propagated.

I have 4 indoor only cats. They love to watch the birds, lizards and squirrels. There are several windows in the house set up so they can comfortably watch.
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Very happy that I mowed and trimmed yesterday! Was going to kill and pull weeds today. But, alas, at least for now, it is much too windy! Dang!😉🌺🌺🌺
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Gophers, Gophers, Gophers.

The neighbor has them, now we do too, in the most visible places, deep, big holes freshly dug.

Maybe a sinkhole will form and swallow up my car.....
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Today I harvested all of my carrots. Tomorrow a friend from high school will be coming for dinner and we will enjoy them.
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I take my Maine coon kitties, Jaxy & Sissy outside with me as they love to catch lizards and bring them in the house for some playtime at night. I took out all of my landscaping early this year. Left the big palms and designed some new beds on each side of the house. I'm just about finish with the front of the house and working on the sides. Under my huge reclinata I planted some bromeliads. They're just starting to grow all over the base of the tree and looking wonderful! I found some gorgeous fuchsia dish hibiscus' and mixed them with some sea grapes. They went from tiny sticks to big, blooming bushes in no time. Just got my hands on some black diamond crape myrtles too. It's super hot here but I just love being outside working in my landscaping. I have two extra large fiddle leaf figs on my front porch that have grown to over 13 ft. We also put in some shelves on the back porch for my orchids. And some large driftwood pieces to house my all shade plants. Weeding goes on every week in this weather. Still searching for more goodies to finish my projects. My hubby has put in landscaping lights as well. When things get tough it's the best therapy there is. Not to mention all the exercise. No problem getting in 12k steps a day.
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Looks like I have the goatheads pretty well taken care of. SUCCESS! New challenge? Cheat grass and thistle! ARGH!
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I'm imagining a nice row of two or three lollipop trees like the ones at the town park as a divider between me and my neighbours, with bonus fruit!... I have a feeling my imagination is where they will remain.


I can remember my grandmother talking about chokecherry jelly Golden. They also used to gather beechnuts - I'd never have the patience needed to open those.
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cw though I have never seen one I googled saskatoon tree and there is such a thing. I would suspect it suckers. I have a Shubert chokecherry which is a tree with white flowers and leaves that turn red/purple later on. I don't like chokecherries but some do. The birds love them.
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Whilst gardening is most definitely therapy for me, it's also quite therapeutic to read everyone's posts from different places, noting the challenges people face, and reading about plants I've never heard of. Cwillie, I've no idea what a service berry tree is! My English garden is just about getting to its perfect moment in the year: the roses have started to bloom, my perennials are just coming out and the trees and shrubs still have that fresh vibrant new green before the summer heat starts to dull them. At last the weather has warmed up after the coldest Spring in decades, and sitting in the evening garden reminds me how I cope with our horrible winters: it is all about looking forward to NOW. I would be out there 24/7 if I could, but DH drags me in when the fading light makes it impossible to do any more.
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My town has some type of service berry trees in a park that have delicious big fruit.... I'd like to find the same trees but everybody seems to just sell "service berries" without differentiating the variety and I don't want a bushy ornamental shrub with useless fruits. One named variety I can find is the saskatoon berry - do any of you prairie folks know whether it's possible to train saskatoon berries as a single stemmed tree form or would I be constantly fighting against it's nature?
(I'm also considering liberating a few stems from the park trees and attempting to root them 🤔)
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Not going to get as much weeding done as I wanted. There is tomorrow yet. It is raining here, chilly, great for weed pulling but too wet.

I might have to turn up the heat, I just turned it down a few days ago. It has been so wet and chilly. The good part is more desirable weeds are crowding out the undesirables!

When I bought this home three years ago, I really wanted a patio home, or even a smaller lot. All the smaller lots were primarily homes of the 50's through the 80's that have never been updated. It is too much for me!
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glad - that's a lot of work. Good for you.

need - I have to pay people to do most of it. DD and sil, and R, when he is here, will do some. Got the dandelions sprayed and some fertilizing done - only do what I can manage.

I am waiting for estimates for cleaning up the beds in the back and creating a patio area in one corner of the lawn. I have realized that nothing survives in one part of that bed so I will probably have it paved over too and do something creative there.. I have two benches for seating that need a coat of paint but are fine otherwise. I will buy a fire pit and may move the BBQ there too so it will be a nice cookout/relaxation area. The two loungers I put on the back deck look great. It rained heavily today and they seem to have survived well.

I think I will get some barrel planters - one for the rhubarb and one for strawberries at least. Container gardening is workable for me, I think.
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cwlle,

🤣 LOL, Quite a visual! Underwear and smoking weed. At least listen to good music! Hahaha

Oh my gosh, I am such a music snob! I am so spoiled. New Orleans has fantastic music! You’re right, playing crappy music would drive me away!
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Glad,

You have your work cut out for you! I can’t imagine doing all of that. I love a beautiful yard but I can’t do it myself anymore. I got tired of dealing with my allergies and my husband has had two shoulder surgeries so we have to pay a gardener.
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Got home from work, cut the lawn and the back weedy half acre. We have had so much rain, unusual for here, everything is so green. Now with the cutting done, I have three days that I can weed, ahh memorial day weekend. Weather is supposed to be cool and wet, limits weeding, but three days should make some good progress.
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Thanks for the smile CWillie, I have a great vision of you in your undies, smoking weed on the patio! We’ve been adding a row of horizontal boards on the side of our patio that’s in common with our new neighbors (a boyfriend and girlfriend in their 20’s with all the answers to everything in life, but without the ability to even basically care for their yard🙄) We’re all about adding privacy. On another note, I almost ran over a snake while mowing. I fear snakes, always have, and this seems to be a banner year for them. So much trepidation on my part while gardening right now. Plus it’s gotten hot as hades so not much fun outdoors for now
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Now that my little redbud is leafing out I can see that part of the reason there were so few blooms is that half of the limbs are dead. My neighbours are busy cutting down trees and hedges and my efforts to add my own privacy trees seem destined to fail.😥
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Now the hedge along the back of my neighbour's property is being cut back from 30' to 5'. I now have an unobstructed view of my backyard neighbour, and they have an unobstructed view of my patio door and deck. Don't these people value privacy? I feel like becoming one of those people who likes to hang out on the deck in their underwear smoking weed and playing offensive music - perhaps hymns or opera....
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