{"id":7377,"date":"2016-05-18T12:00:14","date_gmt":"2016-05-18T16:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/?p=7377"},"modified":"2015-11-18T23:08:39","modified_gmt":"2015-11-19T04:08:39","slug":"hold-in-confinement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/2016\/05\/18\/hold-in-confinement\/","title":{"rendered":"Hold In Confinement"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Purple<\/a>

Purple flowering form of Ruellia at UT Gardens in Knoxville, TN<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Oenothera<\/a>

Oenothera speciosa held in check at gas station island<\/p>\n

<\/p><\/div>\n

Some plants are incredibly aggressive. Herbicides like Roundup\u2122 won\u2019t phase them. They\u00a0often escape and take over other areas of your garden or neighborhood.<\/p>\n

Four notorious examples are ditch lilies (Hemerocallus fulva<\/em>), swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata<\/em>), Mexican petunia (Ruellia brittoniana<\/em>), and pink evening primrose (Oenothera speciosa<\/em>). You can\u00a0grow these four weedy offenders in confinement.\u00a0All will survive on totally inhospitable sites and their spectacular flower show lasts a month or more.<\/p>\n

Ditch lilies grow in absolute worst conditions. They bloom for 2-3 weeks starting in late June (USDA zones 6 -8).\u00a0Each bloom lasts one day, but the\u00a0large\u00a0floral scape holds\u00a0many flowers. Orange is the\u00a0common color, although other colors are found. Flowers are mostly sterile, but their\u00a0rootsystems are aggressive.<\/p>\n

Leaves of swamp milkweeds\u00a0are favorite food source of monarch butterfly caterpillars (larvae). Their rootsystem spreads aggressively and\u00a0they also\u00a0seed in. Plants form clumps that survive over many years in wetland areas. Swamp milkweeds grow 3-5 feet tall on erect branched stems. Small, fragrant, pink to mauve flowers (1\/4 inches wide) are common and a white flowering form is occasionally seen.\u00a0Orange butterfly milkweed (A. tuberosa<\/em>), also native, is far less aggressive.<\/p>\n

Mexican petunia, aka Texas ruellia, is three-foot-tall evergreen shrub that bears many tubular, blue or purple, petunia-like flowers on dark stems\u00a0through the summer.\u00a0This fast grower\u00a0may self-seed and roots are prolific. It is grown as an annual in cooler zones and\u00a0will perennialize in zones 6-b where I live.<\/p>\n

Pink evening primrose is another nightmarish perennial that blooms\u00a0almost one month. It spreads aggressively by rhizomes.\u00a0Plants die back after flowering in the summer heat.<\/p>\n

All four are\u00a0great choices for planting in confined spaces such as in parking lot islands or median strips along busy highways. Plant them in containers and keep blooms deadheaded to\u00a0prevent seed formation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some plants are incredibly aggressive. Herbicides like Roundup\u2122 won\u2019t phase them. They\u00a0often escape and take over other areas of your garden or neighborhood. Four notorious examples are ditch lilies (Hemerocallus fulva), swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), Mexican petunia (Ruellia brittoniana), and pink evening primrose (Oenothera speciosa). You can\u00a0grow these four weedy offenders in confinement.\u00a0All will survive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[444,772,398,1218,747,749,1037,735,645,674,806,1115,1024,774,720,1097,627,625,843,1060,812,1059,1283,630,705,706,905,455],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7377"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7377"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8369,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7377\/revisions\/8369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}