Aliens in my garden

Posted on | July 31, 2009 | 10 Comments

I started out writing this post about mysteries and how sometimes I’m disgustingly incurious, and sometimes I really need to solve the puzzle. The post was smarmy and boring and full of cliches about weaving threads together to make a blanket, and the blanket is a story, and the story is my life. It was all reflective and inward-looking and totally front-loaded in order to try to make this post into something more than it really is. I deleted all of that.

You’re welcome.

BUT DUDES!

What in the everloving fark of all that is holy is this stuff that’s strangling my Chard plants?

aliens2

There was a little bit of this thread-like vine stuff (see threads/blankets/cliches above) growing in this cold frame before I left for vaca, and I forgot to take a photo before I pulled it all out. And when I say “pulled it all out” I don’t mean out of the soil. This stuff just grows in midair and wraps itself around and around the plants. There is no root system in the ground.

I have aliens in my cold frame.

When it first appeared, I thought it was part of the new Chard variety I planted, called Orange Ruffles. Made a little bit of sense because the tendrils are orange. But they’re all over the Basil. And in my absence, they have just about choked the entire bed to death.

aliens

So, garden people. I’ve exhausted my Google skills on this one.

Is this some cruel Monsanto trick? The newest terminator gene, that doesn’t just kill the seed from the plant, but then moves on to wrap the entire world in a web of thin vines until it disappears?

ETA: A helpful gardener in CA sent me a link identifying this parasitic plant as Dodder. Time to yank it out, Chard and all.

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Comments

10 Responses to “Aliens in my garden”

Lisa RM
July 31st, 2009 @ 2:42 pm

Can I get a sample for analysis?

[Reply]
debra
July 31st, 2009 @ 4:20 pm

So glad I didn’t plant the plants you gave me in the big garden…

[Reply]
flutter
July 31st, 2009 @ 7:14 pm

Oh that sucks!

[Reply]
Cat B
July 31st, 2009 @ 8:13 pm

Yank, yank! Yuck! Must be all this rain…

[Reply]
Catherine
August 1st, 2009 @ 7:40 pm

I just read about this on another blog. It’s called Dodder. http://www.mobot.org/gardeninghelp/plantfinder/IPM.asp?code=276&group=71&level=s

See? Blog reading can be good for something!

[Reply]
Jen
August 2nd, 2009 @ 9:02 pm

yuck. i wish i could send you some of my chard to replace your struggling ones. that looks like some crazy shinola. we are just sitting in wait and praying that the tomato blight passes us by. a single eggplant is dangling today, usually i’m up to my earlobes….and it is cool and soggy once again here in new england….

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Aliens in my garden

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