Q: We moved into a home with a wooded lot and found out that most of the small trees and shrubs in the woods are invasive buckthorn and honeysuckle plants. We have been cutting them down and have lined up a company to come and chip the branches and trunks. They will charge more to haul away the trimmings, or we can keep them. Can we use the chips as mulch in the other parts of our landscape?
A: Use the chips to make paths in the wooded area of the landscape but not for mulch in the prettier landscape beds.
This time of year, all of the tree trimming companies and power line trimming companies have truckloads of chipped wood that they would love to unload on anyone who wants it. They have composting centers that they deliver to, but it can shorten the delivery time and save the crew money if they can just give them to you.
The problem is that at this time of year, the chipped material has a lot of green leaves. The green material looks bad as it decays and dries out. Summer tree clippings make ugly mulch. It can be used in flowerbeds that are not very visible and, as in your case, as a material for the path through the woods.
Another problem with the green material in mulch is that it will decay quickly. The decaying organisms will need other nutrients from the soil. As they use the nutrients, the good plants in the flowerbed can suffer.
Q: My Yukon Gold potato plant has developed fruit. It is green and golf ball-sized, and it looks like tomatoes. I have grown potatoes for years but never seen anything like this before. What is going on?
A: Potatoes are in the same family of plants as the tomato, and so, the fruit looks similar.
Most people grow new potatoes by using pieces of the tuber, which is part of the stem that is growing underground. These pieces are often called seed potatoes, but they are not related to the seeds at all.
If you want to grow a new hybrid potato, you have to cross the pollen from one kind with the flower of another kind, and you have to grow new plants from the real seeds produced in those fruits. If you are not trying to create hybrids, it is not worth the bother to grow potatoes from seeds.
Just cut off any new fruits and toss them in the compost pile. Yukon Gold is one of the newer yellow-tinted potato varieties that have a moister flesh than the older white varieties. You may not have grown Yukon before, and the old varieties you did grow may not have been prolific fruit producers.
Email questions to Jeff Rugg at info@greenerview.com. To find out more about Jeff Rugg and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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