Flower Gardens

» Cottage_Garden - Gardening on a budget

I dunno, it might be kind of fun to roll out the rug and see it grow right before your eyes like magic.

On the other hand, it might be a bit frustrating if it doesn't work as expected.

But on the other hand, if it did work and the results were encouraging maybe the person would be interested and enthused and try some more things in gardening. Or maybe it would inspire a child to become interested.

We can always hope! lol

-- posted by Cottage_Garden

» Cottage_Garden - Gardening on a budget

I hope nobody minds, I changed the title of this discussion to more accurately reflect the content. I suspect a lot of folks have similar questions and might find this discussion about doing flowers on a quick and dirty (and cheaper) budget interesting.

-- posted by Cottage_Garden

» Joni Rose - Gardening on a budget

I thought I'd give you an update on my West Coast bargain garden...

I enriched the soil with manure and a bit of garden soil mixed, bought and planted the seeds and used 3 bags of gravel around the pond to make paths etc. with bricks I had on hand.

$18 for the 5 bags of soil enhancer + 3 bags of river rock at $3 a bag = $27

SEEDS

Around my pond...
Dwarf sun flowers
Forget-me-nots
Godetia
Dwarf Cherry Nasturtiums
Calendula
Scabiosa
Poppies (Shirley Double and Icelandic)
Chrysanthemums - painted daisy
Royal Carpet Alyssum
Knee high sweet peas

On a small bed by my steps...
Black-eyed Susan
Dwarf Jewel Mix nasurtiums

Seeds $20

I also had a friend help me reconcrete the trail from the upper pond to the lower pond, clean out the large fish pond (3ft deep, 3 ft wide and about 15 feet long) with about 100 gold fish that are very happy and keep breeding (I actually WANT a heron to come fishing now). I am SO pleased to have the ponds circulating again!

Reconcreting and cleaning supplies $20

I bought some assorted plants to fill other spots but kept it to cheap things like herbs and violas

Plants $15

So I am under $100 and mostly used my sweat labour to pretty things up.

Now it's up to the sun, rain, some watering and time. Wish me luck!!

Joni

» Cottage_Garden - a little detour to garden ponds

WOW Fantastic! That sounds like a spring overhaul not just a little seed planting action!

Looking at the list you have a majority of spring bloomers and cool weather loving plants. Are your summer temps that cool? (My geography is not that good -- am not sure of the weather pattern except to know your winters are mild rather than outright cold, but also rainy.) Golly I'll probably have to find a Farenheit/Celsius calculator to translate whatever you tell me, too. LOL

Of all the things I miss after moving and leaving my big garden behind, the ponds are definitely near the top of the list. They are so special. Once I finally tried a pond -- many years ago, it was a mail order kit with a big plastic pool for the patio) -- I always had at least one. I even kept that first one going, moved it cross country and several times after that.

Mine were always small enough that I could reach to the bottom if I needed to without getting into the pond. Did you have to climb in wearing waders? Or did you just skim a little?

Just wondering. If you have 100 goldfish now, will you have 100,000 in a couple of months -- maybe you need some raccoons to help the heron out? Hand them out to neighbor kids?! Take them to the carnival and run a booth for wayward fish and pingpong balls?! Oh my. Now that kind of project could subsidize your gardening budget.

-- posted by Cottage_Garden

» Joni Rose - a little detour to garden ponds

It was quite the overhaul...it sadly needed it.

Yes, they are mostly Spring bloomers and cooler weather seeds as we do have a more mild climate. For example, I tend to plant the majority of my veggie garden closer to our May long weekend (May 24). Summers tend to be average...a few hot days here and there where we see temps in the high 20's C (I think that translates to 70 F??) All I know is that I could go barefoot as a kid when the temps reached 70 F. Rain - yes - lots of rain.

I will plant summer seeds once I start to see the spring flowers fading.

And yes...did have to climb in the pond. I filled a large 177L garbage pail with top pond water and then drained the rest out onto my lawn (fish fertilizer of sorts!) and then caught the fish with a net once the shallow end was drained. There were so many of them! And some are brown so they hid in the sludge. Once I got the fist out and into the pail, I had to scoop up the crud with a dollar store dust pan (was a great tool for the job!). Then we hosed and scrubbed down rocks etc. My friend helped me to secure a couple of plastic baskets (another dollar store find) onto large bricks so that I could put plants in the middle of the pond away from the racoon's reach! They have eaten all my plants!

The pond is too deep for the raccoons to be successful but they like to try...families of them sometimes!

Funny you should mention selling the fish. They are very healthy looking and so my friend may have a buyer. I'll probably give some away on trade for plants if I can find a taker or two.

Speaking of that...it reminds me of another bargain technique - getting the excess perenials when friends with gardens divide them. I have snagged a few free plants that way. I also knew someone who would look for demolition sales and then come with a shovel and pots to take away anything worthwhile. She was able to get an amazing amount of plants that way...sometimes for free...other times for next to nothing! I used to laugh at her with her as she kind of went a little overboard with it!

Ahhhh everyone loves a treasure!

Joni

» Cottage_Garden - a little detour to garden ponds

One gardener's trash is ....another gardener's treasure! So true! And plant swaps either formal or informal can be a great way to expand the collection. Or get started again if you have moved to a new garden. It's a perfect way to find out what does especially well locally, too.

(Just watch out for those "spreaders" -- the ones that spread so nicely they become weedy.)

I am not usually squeamish but emptying a pond is a nasty job. I usually skipped it and let nature do the work. (That meant tolerating a bit of a mess until the temperatures stablized in the spring.)

It's funny how an improvised tool is so often just right for the job. I used to use a "special" butter knife for transplanting seedlings.

Your fish must be able to hide from the raccoons -- maybe in under those plants out in the middle of the pond. Guess that must thwart the heron, too. Oh well.

Selling your baby fish! How could you! LOL Trading for plants, now that's my kind of commerce!

OK I checked and your top summer high's are about where we just barely begin to count summer heat days. So I guess you have a true cool summer climate. No wonder you can grow some of the things you can grow that would utterly languish in, say, Virginia where winter might be equally mild but summer is so stinkin' hot and HUMID for SO long.

Golly. Gardening in a cool summer place is a whole different game. I was in Nova Scotia in midsummer a few years ago and nearly froze to death -- and the weather was GORGEOUS. And there were lupines everywhere and many delightful gardens. A bit like winter in Los Angeles, come to think of it. LOL

-- posted by Cottage_Garden

» Joni Rose - a little detour to garden ponds

Have you ever been to Seattle? Seattle is very close to me and so our weather tends to be similar. I love the summers here. We do get some hot days but just enough and the humidity is bareable. I don't have air conditioning in my car or house - I just open windows and doors to get a cross breeze going and use fans when we have our hot days.

So yes, I would call our summers mild and our winters mild. The hard part for some is the rain and grey skys. I love it! When it rains I find I am really productive on tasks that requires thinking like writing!

Yes, there are large slabs of rock in the pond that the fish can hide behind. I like to give them some places to hide.

The great news is, I am seeing two leaf seedlings everywhere!! Whooo Hooo! It is so exciting!!

Plant swap? Never heard of it. Is it all for free or is there selling going on? I'll have to try and find out if it happens around here too.

Nova Scotia is at the other side of Canada from me (East Coast, I'm on the West) so the climate is very different. My sisters live in Toronto so they see lots of snow and cold in the winter and brutally humid summers. It will be interesting to see how the roll and grow works in their climate.

Joni

» Cottage_Garden - weather and plant swaps

Now that I am on the west coast I definitely hope to get up to Seattle and British Columbia, that whole area is an absolute gardeners' delight.

Nova Scotia has milder winters than I expected; due to the proximity to the ocean it is not as out and out cold as I would have thought for being so far north; although snow, yes. And snow is a superb insulator for plants! And the summers are cool, delightfully cool if you hail from the hot&humid belt. Here's a more exacting description of the climate in Nova Scotia.

Toronto seems more like parts of the inland midAtlantic eg western PA, southwestern NY, with full fledged cold winters and yes, sometimes really nasty hot and humid spells in summer.

New York city can be brutal in summer, but nonstop hot and humid really gets going round about the latitude of Washington DC or Baltimore MD and stretches across the mid-west. (85 degrees plus with humidity of 65 percent and up is swamp-like.) And along the coast especially the growing season (consecutive frost free days) is much longer, though, and that partly makes up for the heat.

The summer heat zone map shows zones based on the number of days over 85 degrees -- that's where plants notice that it's HOT and tend to stop growing. The humidity also intensifies disease problems that thrive in damp conditions. So many plants that grow well in your summer would fail in the southeastern US due to summer heat/humidity issues. But they may be able to grow them as cool season, fall or spring plants.

But if you want a truly extreme and trying climate for gardeners, try Kansas City. If a plant grows there, it should grow almost anywhere! LOL

Plant swap. Many ways to do this. Some are just some friends informally or maybe a garden club get together and bring their extras to share. It's fun and nicer than tossing them on the compost heap. It also imposes a deadline or goal to help you get all your dividing and transplanting done by a certain time.

Some are organized and open to the community. Some imnpose quality control requirements and require even swaps, one common perennial for one common perennial or maybe 3 little common plants for one nicer rare plant. (They use plant tokens or tickets to tally it all up -- one green one for three blue ones.) This can get really crazy unless the quality evaluators are beyond reproach.

Some are done as fundraisers. They might charge an entry fee and sell plant tickets so that those who arrive plant-less may participate..... lots of ways to do this.

ps Don;t forget to thin those seedlings!!

-- posted by Cottage_Garden

» Joni Rose - weather and plant swaps

Okay, you brought up something I don't know much about. Thinning the seedlings. Is there a rule of thumb on this or do I just take out side by side seedlings?

I bought a little plastic seeder this time to help with all the seeding. It is a plastic cup with a long spout and a clear cover. You open the cover and put the seeds in the cup part and then dial a seed size which allows the seeds to come out the spout. I found it was quite usefull as it spaced out the seeds even when I was scattering the smaller ones.

Plant swaps sound really interesting! I'll have to check out gardening clubs in the area!

Joni

» Cottage_Garden - thinning seedlings

If you have too many seedlings too close together they will crowd and become stunted. Usually the first ones up are the best plants, so remove their close neighbors. You can take out the closest, then come back in a bit and thin again once they are growing well and you can really see the forest for the trees.

Rule of Thumb:

If the plant ultimately grows to be six inches wide across, thin to four to six inches apart. If it grows to be a foot wide, thin to maybe 8 to 12 inches apart. (Depends how you like the final look, well spaced or really full.)

You can also transplant seedlings, using the tip of your trowel -- just pop them out (roots and all!) and pop them in where you want them. This can be helpful if you get bad germination in one area or need to fill in thin spots or want to rearrange for some reason.

Don't wait too long to thin -- once you have a forest of tightly spaced seedlings it becomes difficult to preserve the "keepers" without damaging them when removing the others.

To remove, you can clip them off or pull them up or disturb with a garden claw or swivel hoe. Sounds like weeding, doesn't it! Whatever works. Just don't damage the keepers.

hth

-- posted by Cottage_Garden