About This Episode
A reader has a weed dilemma. Plus, the gripe of the month.
Question Of The Week
“How can I get rid of Japanese stiltgrass? It is taking over my woods.” – Mary
Grumpy Gardener: I’m getting more and more questions about this, and, um, Japanese stiltgrass is a very aggressive grassy weed that we brought from overseas accidentally, and it favors shady places and moist soil. So if you have a wooded area or a shady area in your yard, this can take over very quickly. Now, Japanese stiltgrass is an annual weed, but it’s hard to control because each plant produces an incredible number of seeds that germinate the following year. So even if you use something like Roundup to kill existing plants this year, you still have to deal with hundreds of seedlings that are gonna sprout the next year. So the easiest course to control is to keep the seeds from sprouting in the first place by applying a pre-emergence herbicide such as Preen. You can get that at home and garden centers. follow label directions and do this in early spring. And what happens is, um, this product creates a chemical barrier on the soil surface that kills seeds if they try to germinate. So that’s very helpful, but do any necessary weeding before you put down this herbicide though, because disturbing the soil afterwards will destroy the barrier, and your efforts will have been in vain.
Gripe Of The Week
I love birds. But there are things that go wrong with feeding the birds, and I discovered one of them. I buy my bird seed from Costco, and I get this, gosh, it’s gotta be like a 40-pound bag of Audubon seed, gourmet seed. And I get that from Costco. So I take it, and I use that, and I fill up my feeders, and I just keep the bag in my garage downstairs. So a couple of weeks ago, I go down there to get some more bird seed. And I opened up the container that I keep it in. I have this sealed plastic container that used to have kitty litter in it. And I opened it up, and all these moths fly out. And then I looked to get this bird seed to put it in the feeder, and all the bird seed is all, like, stuck together and all. It’s all webbed together, and it looks disgusting. And there’s these little worms crawling around. They go by the name of “grain moths” or “pantry moths.”
So what happens is you know, I had it down in my garage, and the garage doors stay open every once in a while for an extended period, depending on what we’re doing. And the moths detected that there were seeds down in there, and they got in there, and they laid eggs in there. And pretty soon, I’ve got a moth zoo inside my bird seed container. So what do you do? Well, I threw out all the contaminated seed. Threw it out on the ground and figured if there were any worms in there, the birds would take care of that. I got some new bird seed. And just to make sure that I don’t get it infested again, what I do is I put the bird seed in this big plastic container that I can seal, but as a, second measure of protection, I store it in the refrigerator. Because the refrigerator keeps the temperature of all that seed at about 35 degrees. So if you find yourself, with lots of moths flying around in your house after you’ve been filling all those bird feeders, now you know why. And, uh, take a look at your bird seed. And when you first open it when you get home from the store, make sure that moths don’t fly out.
About Ask Grumpy
Ask Grumpy is a podcast featuring Steve Bender, also known as Southern Living’s Grumpy Gardener. For more than 20 years, Grumpy has been sharing advice on what to grow, when to plant, and how to manage just about anything in your garden. Tune in for short episodes every Wednesday and Saturday as Grumpy answers reader questions, solves seasonal conundrums, and provides need-to-know advice for gardeners with his very Grumpy sense of humor. Be sure to follow Ask Grumpy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen so you don’t miss an episode.
Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors.
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