Cheap is good; free is better.

I’ve been thinking that I should change the name of my blog to “The Frugal Gardener.”  Around the same time that I started this blog, I also became pregnant and our financial priorities really changed. More recently, at the start of this year’s gardening season my husband was laid off from his job.  That’s when money for plants really dried up.  Fortunately, I have found ways to continue to grow my garden without a huge financial investment.  Below is a list of suggestions for gardeners on a budget.

1. Shop for plants out of season.

I have had great success finding fantastic deals in mid to late fall.  When plants are out of season, it usually means they doesn’t look that great and typically that means they get marked down.

Two years ago this November, Justin and I were grabbing some random items at Home Depot and I spotted a Viburnum lantana marked down on clearance to $6.50!  It was pretty late in the season for planting, but for under seven bucks, it was worth the risk and even Justin couldn’t deny it.  I’m pleased to announce that the Viburnum not only survived the season, it also survived another transplant (I didn’t like its original home) and it’s really thriving –  it’s now more than triple its original size!

This year, I found these great Coreopsis plants on clearance for $5 a piece!  They looked a little shaggy from the long hot summer, but they still had a ton of unopened blooms.  Even if they don’t come back next year, I think the price was worth my enjoyment of them just this fall. My only regret is that I didn’t get more!

Big Change, Big Payoff…hopes.

As a formally trained artist and photographer, I’ve learned through experience that if something isn’t working visually, it usually requires a drastic change to get it on the right track again.  Sometimes it can be really difficult to let go of an idea that initially made sense, but just isn’t panning out.  Recently, I decided to apply this theory to my garden.

About a year and a half ago, I planted four neon flash spireas along the border of my then-recently-laid brick patio.  As I placed the plants, I used the recommended planting distance between the spireas as it was listed on the plants’ tags.  After planting, I sat back and waited.  I waited for them to grow wider and blend together filling in the border and creating the beautiful backdrop that I had imagined in my head.  But…it never happened.  With some other type of bush or shrub I might have been more patient and waited longer, however, these spireas have pretty much grown to the size that they are ultimately going to be (I cut them back to their base each year to encourage bushy new growth).  Even at their fullest, there remain large gaps between the shrubs and they still don’t even spread enough to touch each other!

So, I decided to tackle my problem head-on.  My husband thought I lost my mind, but I grabbed the shovel and I dug up two of the spireas and replanted them snug in between the remaining two.  They are planted much closer than the tag recommended, but together they create a mass of mounding shapes, rather than four cylindrical blobs, dotted all in a row.  Now, I wait again.  I’m excited to see the full effect next spring and crossing my fingers (and toes) that they make it through the winter and take root in their new home.

Here’s hoping I won’t have to post a blog update next Spring about learning not to plant shrubs too close together!

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Why do some plants live and others die?

There are the textbook reasons: too much sun, too little sun, too much water, too little water, planting the root ball too high, planting the root ball too low, bad soil, wrong ph soil, over fertilizing…the list goes on. But none of these reasons really answer the question.  In my short gardening experience, I’ve had a few (cough, cough) plants die that I’m convinced I did everything I could reasonably do for them.  So my answer to this question is: some plants—for reasons unknown to mankind—are just destined to fail. I realize that this theory is a little less than scientific and it may sound a lot like I’m just trying to protect my gardening ego, but I’m okay with that. It has taken me some time to get to this point and come to grips with the loss of my plants and I’m in a much happier place since I’ve come to this conclusion. So for those of you still struggling with the loss of a plant, here are the seven stages of grief that I endured to get to this place of acceptance today. I post this in an attempt to help those of you still struggling with this difficult journey.

The seven stages of grief.

1. Denial: “That plant just needs a little more water and it will be fine.”

2. Guilt: “Crap, now look what I did, I must have over watered it.”

3. Anger: “I knew that stupid nursery sold diseased plants.  I’m never going there again.”

4. Bargaining: “If this plant survives, I’ll never forget to water it again.”

5. Depression: “What’s the point of gardening, everything I plant is just going to die someday.”

6. Reconstruction: “Let me just add a few annuals around it for now.”

7. Acceptance: “Where’s the shovel?”

 

Two Delaware Valley White Azaleas that were planted over a year ago on the same day, in the same

location, and received the same amount of water.  (Of course I’m still on stage one with this little guy.)

Update: The salvia returns!

As mentioned in a previous post, this summer I decided to try an experiment with my salvias. Once all of my salvias completed their first spring bloom I cut one of them back completely to its base and then very selectively cut back the others by only deadheading them.

My Conclusion
The salvia that was cut back completely has finally grown back and it looks like new.  It has excellent form and is now re-blooming beautifully.  I absolutely love the way it looks.  However, it took two full months to grow back and to begin blooming again.  During that time there was a bit of a hole in the garden where the plant had been cut down.  In contrast, the salvia that was only deadheaded continued to bloom here and there throughout the entire summer.  In this instance, although the plant remained throughout the summer, the leaves began looking a bit shabby with burned or dried areas by early July and the form of the plant itself became a little overgrown and droopy.

In the future, I plan to use the total cut back method in the areas that I know will fill in and cover up the salvia hole.  In other more noticeable areas, I’ll keep using the deadhead only method. More importantly, this experiment has taught me to begin surrounding my salvias with plants that bloom and thrive in the heat of late June and July.

Salvia growing back after being cut down completely in mid-June.

Salvia that has been deadheaded throughout the summer.

The price of beauty.

Making the Beauty

Repaving the back patio was a project my husband and I took on two summers ago.  The goal of this project was to continue the brick patio from the side yard around to the back of the house and then create a plant bed around that patio.  That summer, I spent hours and hours acquiring old bricks by digging them out of the ivy in our back yard or finding reasonably priced ones on craigslist.  By the fall, we finally had enough—over two thousand!

Because we were using old bricks each one was slightly different in color, shape, and size.  The project took up several full weekends spent on our hands and knees laying and leveling bricks one at a time.  It was exhausting, but in the end extremely satisfying and definitely a vast improvement from that concrete slab.  Many people (including my husband) thought I was crazy to spend all that time laying old worn bricks, but to me the patio’s beauty resulted in it looking timeless, like it had been there since the house was built.

1. We started with a blank, cracked concrete slab.

2. Here is the patio in progress, we added about 15 inches to the depth and extended it to meet the side brick patio.

3. The patio two seasons after completion.

Paying the Price

A blank concrete slab might be ugly, but it doesn’t require maintenance.  A brick patio on the other hand, needs to be tended to—just like a garden.  Although my patio doesn’t require regular watering, it needs weeding, washing, and already in just two years more sand to fill the sinking cracks.  Needless to say, I’m beginning to realize the insanity of replacing a solid slab of concrete containing only one crack with two thousand bricks containing thousands of cracks between them…leaving thousands of opportunities for weeds to grow!

So, after returning from a week away (which was also a week with a lot of rain), I decided to be more proactive about the weeding. This weekend I took a small test spot on the bricks and applied a vinegar & water solution (mostly vinegar).  Vinegar is a well-known natural weed killer.  It is mostly acetic acid, which not only burns vegetation but can effect the pH balance of soil, making it difficult for weeds to grow back.  I tried a test spot before applying it to the entire patio, just to see if the vinegar would make any difference in the prevention of future weeds, so check back in a few weeks for my results.

Patio after my rain-filled vacation last week:

Concluding Thoughts

Ultimately, I still believe the price is worth it.  The maintenance sounds worse than it really is.  This weekend I weeded the entire patio, applied some vinegar to one section, and brushed some fresh sand into the cracks in just over an hour’s time.

The results: a brand new, old looking patio!

To prune or not to prune.

Before I even owned a garden, I knew I wanted hydrangeas there. When my husband and I got married in 2008, we used a lot of cream and lime hydrangeas (both fresh and dried), in the floral arrangements. That day, although I was in madly in love with my husband, I fell head over heels for these beautiful flowers. Before my wedding when I thought of hydrangeas, I pictured the bright pink or electric blue mophead variety, so I was thrilled when our florist talked about using these flowers in gorgeous creamy whites and deep limes, many with small tinges of antique pink.

But of course hydrangeas are usually sun-loving and when I finally got my own garden it was mostly shaded. My yard only has small sections of part shade, some areas you might call part sun, and mostly shade. The only full sun in the entire yard is a tiny bed in the front of the house where I knew I wanted to plant something evergreen.  So for the first year while we worked indoors, I staked out the sun patterns throughout the yard.* To my delight, I found one area in the backyard that received a decent amount of morning sun, most of the year. I was delighted because several varieties of hydrangeas actually favor morning sun.

And that is how two limelight hydrangeas became the first plants I ever planted in my garden.

My new hydrangea dilemna.
Below is a photo of my limelight hydrangeas last May, only 9 months after we planted them.  Below that is a photo one year later, 22 months after we planted them. Now before I found the photograph from a year ago, I was thinking they hadn’t grow much over the last year, so I was pleasantly surprised to see how much they’ve actually grown! In the last two years they’ve also bloomed very well. I’ve only deadheaded them in late fall or early spring (limelight hydrangeas produce blooms on new stems not old wood), and left them alone otherwise. I’m quite happy with the flower production and I realize they still have a lot of growth left in them, but I’m becoming concerned about the shape they are taking. Specifically, towards the top of the shrub there are several new stems shooting upward with no forks on them. Perhaps I’m being picky here, but they are looking a little bit leggy to me. As a result, I started doing some research about pruning limelight hydrangeas and found that there are a variety of methods. I actually found so many different opinions that I’m almost more confused now than when I began. I discovered that some gardeners suggest only cutting spent blooms, others suggest pruning back to leave only two buds on each stem, others recommend only cutting back new stems every year to leave the thicker stronger stems, and then there are even others who say don’t prune it at all, just let it be.

So, who should a newbie gardener listen to? Well, here’s what I decided. First of all since it’s already June, I’m going to leave the hydrangeas alone this season and see how they look when they bloom. Then, depending on their shape with blooms present, I’ll decide if I should take action. If I do decide to prune, my plan is to take a thorough series of photographs of the hydrangeas in full bloom, then use these photographs to determine where to prune in order to encourage the fullness I’m seeking. I will probably use a variety of the suggestions above but ulitmately follow my instincts and respond to my specific plants.

Make sure to check back in late August for an update to see how they look in full bloom!

*Note: I absolutely recommend taking a full year to study and record the light patterns in your garden. I was amazed by the dramatic changes in light that I found each season. Don’t assume that a spot with full sun all afternoon in the fall will have full sun all afternoon in the spring or summer. Also, it’s good to keep in mind that full sun in the summer is much more intense than it is in the spring or fall.

The casualties of vacation.

Summer is almost here! And with summer comes summer vacations (usually). This year, I’m planning a trip with my extended family to some cabins on Trout Lake, which is near Lake George in upstate New York. It should be a great time for a little hiking, grilling and a lot of relaxation. So, why am I looking towards this vacation with a bit of anxiety? It’s my plants, of course.

Last summer when I returned from my vacation, I discovered that several plants, including one of four recently planted spireas, were on the verge of death due to insufficient watering. Although I left detailed watering instructions for a friend of ours, it just wasn’t enough with an unexpected five-day heat wave. This year, I’m trying to figure out ways to prevent a repeat of this misfortune, but it’s not easy.

The first thing that will have changed this year is that I just had a baby. Seems unrelated, right? Well, because my focus has been elsewhere, I haven’t put in any new plants this spring and new plants are at the greatest risk because they just don’t have the root structure of more established plants. However, I do have some transplants from a friend’s garden that I planted last fall and a few of those are still struggling to thrive.

The second thing I’m going to implement is a heat wave back up plan. While it doesn’t seem too inconvenient to ask a friend to stop by a couple times to water a few of the more fragile plants, coming by everyday to water all of the plants is a burden for anyone. So my new plan is simple: ask a few different friends. I’ll have one friend plan to come at least twice to water the plants that are in the most danger of failing, but ask another friend (or two) with a second set of instructions to be my back up in case of extreme weather.

Now, I know what your thinking. This plan is dangerously close to breaking my grandfather’s gardening philosophy that gardening should be fun and enjoyable; stress relieving never stress creating. But I’m adapting the attitude that a little planning and precaution is better than disappointment and regret. Though most of those plants from last summer just completely died, watching that poor little spirea struggling to get back to the size of it’s sister shrubs is my motivation.

Both Spireas were originally the same size and planted at the same time:

Should it stay or should it go?

When my husband and I first saw our house, one of the biggest draws was the yard.  I immediately fell in love with the space and knew that with a lot of elbow grease that yard could become quite beautiful.   In the price range we were looking, many of the houses we saw had small yards or larger yards with chain link fences and no trees for privacy.  The house on Haddon not only had a nice size yard, but an old stable backing up to the property and several large trees surrounding it (only one actually on our own property).

Looking at the yard, it was clear that at one time someone put a lot of work into it, but for the last several years it was allowed to grow wild with weeds and vines.  I wondered then if just getting a house with a flat empty lot might be a lot easier! And I’ll admit, since we purchased the house I’ve often thought to myself, “bulldoze it all and start from scratch.”  But we haven’t…yet.

Rather than try and tackle it all at once, when we finally began to start working on the yard and garden I decided we needed to take it in sections, otherwise, it would just be too overwhelming.  First, we dealt with the side yard, then the front beds, then the bed next to the garage and so on.  But in each case, before we begin a new section we have to answer the question: what stays and what goes?  It’s really the hardest gardening decision to make.  I hate taking any plants out at all.  Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Although you can always plant something in it’s place, the thing you replace it with is undoubtedly smaller and will take a few to several years to reach a more desirable size.*

To my surprise, we have ended up taking out many more trees and shrubs than I originally planned. Taking out a tree or a shrub is a little like plucking your eyebrows.  Pluck a few hairs out on one side, then the other brow looks wrong, so you pluck a few more, then realize that the side you started on still isn’t quite right, so you take a few more and keep going until your eyebrows are gone.  Well, hopefully you don’t take it that far, but you catch my drift.  After removing some of the overgrowth, we discovered that the plants we wanted to keep had gaping holes or other damage that was previously hidden, so we kept going.

Here are plants currently on my should it stay or should it go list.

over-pruned rhododendron

This poor rhodie reminds me of Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree.  I can’t bear to take it down, so I’m trying to nurture it back to life. But for now, it’s still on my watch list. Rhododedrons usually don’t do well with hard pruning and I’m not sure how this one ended up looking like a bonsai, but I’m really glad I took a photograph of it when I started.  Without a before shot, I might have thought it wasn’t making any progress at all.  But looking at it now, it might be filling back in…a little? Hope.

 

holly trees (back top left)

It’s great that these two holly trees are helping shade the patio and lend a little help with privacy (kinda) until we can afford to put in a new fence, but they are more of a nuisance than they appear.  Hollies are evergreen, great!  But wait…they still drop their prickly leaves all year long and in the spring drop pollen all over my table, chairs, and patio.  For now, I planted a small rhododendron between them hoping that in a few years when it begins to fill in and we get that fence up the hollies can go.

 

*This comment is specific to my own garden.  It is possible to plant much larger specimens, however, the larger the plant, the more expensive it is.  For a gardener on a budget like myself, this is not financially sustainable.

Last year’s photographs.

Here are some photographs of my grandfather’s garden from my trip to Maine last June.  My husband and I planned the trip before I knew I was pregnant, and decided to go nonetheless.  Unfortunately, I spent most of the trip exhausted, starving, and nauseated all at the same time, but I fought through it to capture these images of the garden in late June. Happily for the photographs, we arrived just in time to catch the last blooms of the rhododendrons, which dominate throughout his gardens.

Although I had just found out I was pregnant, it was still very early on and I was hesitant to announce the news publicly.  We decided on the drive up that I had better tell my grandfather since I wouldn’t be able to partake in either happy hour or hot tubs, which are two of the main attractions at his camp on Great Wass besides of course the garden, the ocean view, and my grandfather’s company.  What I didn’t expect was what I learned by telling him:  my grandfather can not keep a secret!  By the end of the trip, I’m fairly certain everyone on the island, including Beals and adjoining Jonesport, knew I was pregnant.  Furthermore, as he told it, “and she didn’t even tell her mother yet!”  We’re still not sure if he was happier that I was pregnant or that I gave him such huge news before I told my own mother.  I’m pretty sure it was the later.  Either way, it was a great trip, but I came right home and told my parents before the news kept spreading south.

 

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Trimming the tree.

I’m happy my husband survived the weekend!  There’s a tree in front of our house, which has been slowly dying for quite some time.  This year it didn’t foliate at all. Instead of paying a professional, my husband decided to cut it down himself.  While the neighbors’ kids had a blast watching the process, I was inside nauseous with my finger on the speed dial number for 911.  Luckily, the process was a success.  No fatalities.