Tag: planting

Tis the season to start gardening

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Tis the season to start gardening. Not sure whether to put an exclamation point there or a sad period. I’m pretty far behind being that I bought seeds to start and haven’t got them started yet. I also need to clean up and repot the sad-looking ferns I overwintered. Was it worth overwintering them? Probably not. We’ll see how they fill out after I divide and repot them.

I did get some life in my sails today on the gardening front. You see, I’ve been looking for a bird bath ever since I cleaned up the pumpkin patch earlier this year. I knew I didn’t want to do the pumpkin patch this year. I mean all those pests! Let that shit lie for at least a year. So when I cleaned up the vines and mesh layer, I drug the pots over to the fence. Seeing this, I thought “hmm, I could just put plants there.”

Watering my plants is usually such a pain. Especially mid summer when it’s upper 90’s every day. However, last year I set up automatic watering for the pumpkins on that side. So I could use that again. I thought some butterfly bushes might be nice. We have butterflies and dragonflies so I’d love to encourage more. Dragonflies eat mosquitos after, all.

Last year I wanted a birdbath but didn’t grab one. The thought of setting up auto-watering made me want one even more! I can run a line to the birdbath and it will stay nice and full. So I preemptively grabbed a solar fountain off Amazon Vine and have been looking for a bird bath on Marketplace ever since. But people want crazy money for their birdbaths. So last weekend, I went to Home Depot, and two fancy plant nurseries in search of a birdbath.

Home Depot had not ONE SINGLE BIRDBATH. WTF? I had looked on line, but they’re all “free delivery to store.” I should have looked harder at that. So we hopped over to the Enchanted Garden: A very overpriced plant store. Disastrous experience. They didn’t know any prices and wanted to get my number to get back with me. The prices they did know were outrageous. Also, some unknown bugs ate my feet up in there. Like I’d think it was poison ivy rash if I didn’t know it was bugs. Cat Bird Seat is on my way home so I stopped in there. Nothing deep enough to have a fountain in. Both places had their butterfly bushes for about $35, though Cat Bird Seat had much larger ones and they guarantee their plants for a year. I fucking love that place anyway.

So yesterday, I went looking online. I saw Ace Hardware had some birdbaths from Athens Stoneworks. I assumed this was Athens Alabama, but it was Athens Georgia. Not important. On the manufacturer site, I saw that I wanted the “tulip” top. It’s deep enough for a fountain. So I messaged about six nurseries asking if they had anything like that plus the Stoneworks asking for who I could locally order through (since they’re wholesale only). Welp, only one person got back to me this morning. Unique Outdoors in Hartselle – A 40 minutes interstate drive.

They didn’t have the larger version, but they had the medium and small and even took pictures with a tape measurer. Good customer service! But 40 minutes one way? How much is it? $100? Fuck me, OK. People on marketplace are selling their old ones for more than that! And the rains not coming ’till 2pm! I’ll go now!

I did go and I chose my bird bath. Then I looked at their butterfly bushes. They varied from $11.99 – $13.99. Why did I only buy two? Because I’m a dumbass. I got the Cranberry and the Bicolor. Yes, the bicolor I saw online when researching them and had to google if it was real or AI bullshit. It’s real and I got one! So then I take my wagon over to grab the bird bath I want. It starts to sprinkle — “Fuck I better hurry.” It’s getting worse and this shit is heavy. Then god opened the heavens and just dumped all the water out. Awesome. While I’m trying to carry very heavy concrete with my weak arms. In flip flops.

That’s cool. At least someone loaded it to my car for me. He was very strong and made it look weightless. I’m sad that place is so far away because their prices were crazy good.

So I paid half of what I expected for a brand new birdbath. Do you know what that means? Gargoyle.

See, in my quest last weekend, I saw the most adorable stone-cast gargoyle. And I said “NO.” I want a birdbath and some bushes. No gargoyle. But all week, I thought about that gargoyle. I had taken photos and found him all over online — for over twice the price! Ugh. So after the bird bath was so cheap — fuck yeah, let’s go get Gregory! (Yes, I had named him already in my head before I decided to buy him). Then when I got there, he wasn’t exactly where I thought I remembered him being. My heart sank. SOMEONE BOUGHT GREGORY! And that’s when I knew I had really wanted that damn Gargoyle. But wait! THERE HE IS!

Isn’t he amazing! He’s 62 pounds and I love him so much I’m not sure I want to even put him outside. It was pouring rain so I had to get him hosed off and it was totally worth it. I love himb. <3

I thought about naming him Grinderwald, but that’s Harry Potter. Then Gareth, but then people would think I was a big Labyrinth and David Bowie fan which I am not. And so Gregory. They put him in my car and asked if I knew my towing capacity cause that’s a lot of weight in there. It’s fine. Give me Gregory.

I’m gonna be honest, I think he was probably at Cat Bird Seat so long that they lowered his price. Everywhere online (even if it’s a garden center you pick up at) he’s well over twice the price. A lady in the store (customer, not employee) said she has one and it was based on a gargoyle at Notre Dame. I looked him up online again and find nothing to back that up. I think someone lied to her to sell it.

So now I’ve started my 2025 planting! After the storms, I set up the bird bath and planted the bushes. I also moved some solar light spheres over to this fence:

I know, it looks crappy right now, but it will look awesome. I’m going to do flowers in the other bags. I have some small red sunflowers, red poppies, purple asters, and big fancy marigolds I got all in seeds. And I’ll spray the weeds. And of course, you won’t see the plastic bags like that. They’re just like that because last weekend I pulled out all the dead lemon grass and prepped the dirt and wanted to cover it so the squirrels didn’t fuck around with it. Those same bags are in the big 20 gallon ones and tucked in.

Now to get my seed trays out and start some seeds!

UPDATE: Five seed trays seeded. I only have 5. Two with purple Asters, one with Red Poppies, one with giant Marigolds, and the last with “Red Fire” Sunflowers. I set them by the front door. It gets first morning sun and is an noticeably extremely warm every morning. Should be good to get them going.

It Keeps Spiraling

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The BABIES!

If I turn into a crazy plant lady propagating shit to hoard and sell online, this is where it started. Right here.

Look at these little adorable babies. I made these. Free plants. They’re cuttings from my other plants. LITTLE BABIES! On the left, you’ve seen my Fishbone Cactus scrap cuttings. They’re doing well. And on the right we have K’s prayer plant. She requested a cutting of mine. I didn’t want to cut it, but she did cut her Christmas Cactus for me so…

It actually worked out for the better. I had three vines just growing all lopsided and sloppy. I snipped off one vine and made 5 cuttings. Then, I actually staked the other two vines. So my original plant actually looks better than ever! It’s all spread out and just popped out three new leaves! And LOOK AT THIS ADORABLE BABY! So adorable! I love it. I wants to keep it. I don’t need it and I don’t do unglazed terracotta. It’s just adorable. It’s also the only 2 cuttings that rooted. Yeah, this one didn’t take well. I used rooting hormone and everything. 40% survival rating. So I put the two survivors together here.

My little babies!

I actually rooted some of the Christmas Cactus of Friendship for K2 earlier. Now it’s on to the third friend in the chain! All three of those cuttings grew great roots. I watered them last weekend while K2 was on vacation and all three cuttings had baby leaves already! So fun! Baby plants! Free plants!

PUMPKINS!

Also, right on time, Publix has their pumpkins out! So normally I would have bought a few. But I already have my own pumpkin display!

These are the guys that survived the Great Pumpkin Massacre. Obviously squash bugs kicked my ass this year. And there was a huge learning curve. So my harvest wasn’t huge. And then…well, the massacre. That’s why there are so many super teeny tiny white pumpkins. The massacre halted their growth and they tiny. But adorable.

However, three of the vines have started putting out again so I think I’ll get a few more pumpkins! I will do a post at the end of the season and show all of them and everything I got from each vine. Believe me, I’ve taken tons of photos. I love pumpkins (have you seen my tattoo? There’s two main pumpkins, a Jack-O-Lantern lid on my shoulder and a big pumpkin vine on my back)! Lots of lessons learned this year. But to think — this is from SIX PLANTS. Six tiny little seeds. Six seeds made all this! Did it cost more than the Publix pumpkins? Yes. Was it hard? Yes. Did I cry? Yes. Am I so proud? Hell yes. My pumpkin babies! It’s like magic. Like six tiny little seeds in some dirt made all these. Like how? MAGIC IS HOW.

Composting

What else? Oh, I’m going to start composting now. I’ve been toying with the idea this season. Mainly just because of dirt storage. I usually over winter my summer plant dirt in pots or a bag in the garage. But you have to keep that shit watered or it becomes hydrophobic. So you literally have to water dirt. Last year was the first year I’ve ever overwintered plants. I’ll be overwintering my ferns this year and maybe the front porch plants. But I’ll still have a ton of dirt. Those pumpkins are in six 20lb grow bags. And I’m overwintering the lemon grass as rooted cuttings in water. So there’s all the dirt from them too. Dirt is expensive.

(NOTE: On second reading, yall might not know why I store dirt! Ha! Well, dirt is different all over the world. I happen to live where it’s all red clay. Like my outside dirt is red clay. It’s hard and it stains fucking everything. Red clay mud is the devil. So we have to buy our gardening dirt. When we plant flower beds, we buy all that dirt. Like the first time I traveled and saw a bunch of black dirt just on the ground, I was like “that’s a lot of money wasted.” So yeah, we have solid as fuck foundation dirt — but not good for the pretty plants dirt. We buy that shit. And it’s expensive.)

Also, this year I got a real eye opener in good dirt vs bad dirt. I got some super cheap dirt at first so I have a few pots with it. Then I bought two car loads of good dirt for the pumpkins and front porch. So at the plant swap, I picked up 3 miniature sunflowers. I put two on the front porch (in the good dirt pots) and one on the back stoop (in the poor dirt pot where the coleus hasn’t even done well). Holy shit. The sun is about the same. The water is about the same. But DAMN. The ones in the front have had like twenty blooms each. The back — maybe five? And that dirt won’t hold water to save its life. Even the coleus is sad in it.

So I’ve been tossing around the idea of composting. K2 jumped on it like a spider monkey because she wants to stop throwing away her food scraps. So if I compost, she can dump them here. And we have a lot of food scrap too. Come fall, I’m going to have a lot of plant scarp as well. And dirt to store. So… why not compost it? It’s not like I don’t have the ROOM.

So I’ve been learning. I learned it actually required effort, one. I mean I thought shit just rotted in a pile but no, it’s more complex than that. I learned about ratios and that it actually might require watering. Well, I had planned to chunk it in the back of our lot. But if I gotta turn this shit weekly (more like daily if I hot compost)…

In the beginning, I probably will actually hot compost when I clean up the pumpkin vines. Maybe get the yard guy to bag the clippings next cut to get started. And I’m already storing up all the brown packing paper I get for the browns. (Simplest dumb way to hot compost is apparently 50% greens to 50% browns. Stir to aerate daily or you get the sludge of death from too much anaerobic greens). And the browns need enough water to break down because brown cardboard and paper is kinda dry.

So weekly and sometimes daily effort plus water hauling? That’s not going in the back of the lot. I’m not walking all the way back there every day to do manual labor. There’s poison ivy in that grass, on all the trees, and I can’t get near the over growth. So no. It needs to be closer to the house. So I need bins. I need affordable and something husband won’t despise. (Do yall know he’s trying to say I don’t need my fancy pendant grow light for the Great Monstera? Um I do, and I will buy it anyway). So I try not to push him all the time. When it was going in the back of the lot I was gonna throw up some metal panels or something, but closer to the house I don’t want it to look like shit. So I’m doing something like this. I have this drawn up in Photoshop because I was querying local wood makers on prices:

So that design is from a kit I found, and a bunch of ideas from various youtube videos. I think the lids will actually be metal siding/roofing to keep most of the rain out, but obviously it won’t keep all of it out. Or I might still do mesh — not sure. I could even just use an old tarp and stretch it over the wood frame of the lid like a canvas. I have a clever solution for holding and closing the lids that I’ll totally show you. I’ll document my build. The sides will be the wood slats, but I bought 1/4 inch metal hardware cloth to staple all the inside edges. This will help keep the finer bits of compost in while allowing plenty of air. And I’ll do mesh on both sides of the center divider framing so there will be a good 1 inch pocket there — more air.

I really thought I could get someone local to do something cheaper than the kits online. But wood prices have skyrocketed so damn much, it’s just not gonna happen. It’s such a simple design too! The kit has all precut pieces and is expandable I figured local build wouldn’t have to do all those cuts. Wouldn’t need the dividers. Could just screw everything together on site. Nope. No one could come close to matching the kit prices.

So I’m going with the three foot composter from Cedar Wood. Did you know you need at least a 1 meter x 1 meter pile to hot compost? You do. So I’m going to buy two of these kits and bastardize it. I calculated all sorts of ways to do this. One composter plus spare parts (you can buy individual bits on the site). Two composters. A composter plus an HVAC cover. I’ve been mathing. I settled on two composter kits which I will use to create my three bin system with exactly six three-foot lengths of cedar leftover (plus a lot of spacers I won’t need). Those will probably be involved in the lids.

You can buy these kits at Home Depot so I did think to look around the internet for coupons and prices. They’re actually cheaper on almost every other site, including Lowes. But look at you, Wayfair, with the deep cut! I see you! Order placed. It will be here tomorrow.

So tomorrow I will have the kits, my plan, and the mesh. I’m sure that will take me longer than this weekend to get the sides up and the mesh in. The mesh is going to take a long time. The kit should go together nicely. Though I have a few things I want to pick up from Home Depot before I build them. Mainly some over priced prowood to cut squares to sit under the posts. I also need wood to repair the fence that blew down in the storm today anyway…

So I’m, for once, not doing it all at once. I’m going to get the frame up and contemplate the fronts and lids. I’m thinking siding (vinyl or metal?), some sort of plastic? Not sure what I want to use. I’m going to try to use the dovetail cuts in the posts for the fronts but I fear they will be too thin and I’ll need to resort to my diagram of how I would have made them if I didn’t have precut trench in the posts. So I’m gonna build it and see what I’m working with. I’m also going to see what Home Depot has and how much it costs. Because cost matters.

So yeah. I thought I was a farmer growing pumpkins! Now I’m getting into fucking composting. Good lord. Bring your food scraps over, I’ll dump them in my compost. But not yet because like, it’s not done and I don’t have freezer space. I know. I’m sad too. I’m gonna have to toss these rotten bananas. Next time, though, the rotten bananas are compost food!