It pains me to see customers spending hundreds of dollars on new plants and simultaneously refusing to spend a few more on a bag or two of compost and a box of starter fertilizer. These two items are not unnecessary “add-ons” that the retailer is just trying to add to the sale, they are critical components of a successful transplanting process - or as I like to refer to them as “plant insurance”. Unless you have phenomenal soil, you should always add compost and starter fertilizers when you are planting new plants. Here is why…
If your garden is anything like mine, then you are probably busy watering, staking, checking for bugs and diseases, harvesting veggies and fruits and bouquets of flowers, and planting - at least those are the things that we all should be doing in August if we want to call ourselves gardeners. I don’t think anyone ever manages to accomplish all the gardening chores they set out to do, but we should at least give it the old college try. Just for fun, here are some of the things I have been doing in my garden…
We are moving into the later part of summer when all of the spring and early summer perennials have finished up and it is time for those mid to late summer bloomers to take front stage. Keeping the show going in our gardens can be tricky, especially if we are prone to only do our shopping in the spring months and focus on what is in color at that time…
The Golfing Gardener
Trevor Cameron
I often refer to myself as a “plant enabler”, a sort of legal dealer that tries his best to hook his customers up with the best plants for their landscapes. Plants are easy to get addicted to, believe me, and running a garden center means you are surrounded on a daily basis by treasures that beckon you to take them home, plant them, and watch them flourish - even if you are out of room, just ask my poor wife. If I jump in a time machine to some 30 years ago, I can see…