Better Luck This Year

I might have talked about this before…I am not sure…so if I have please pardon me for repeating.  I have a problem and it is killing me.  My inner child is a gardener but the real me?  A serial plant murderer!  I don’t do it on purpose, I swear I don’t, and I don’t know why.  At one house I spent so much time and money on my garden….and it was only  36 square feet.

I planted and I killed several plants and what did not die usually withered away.  But that wasn’t always the case.  Once upon a time I had a decent yard

 

 

Anyway that was the past so lets  fast forward to last year…2012… rrrrp  rrrrrp.  I hired a landscape designer to plan out my yard around the house.  He gave me a beautiful plan and I hired a guy to cut out all my flower beds.

I also had a tree guy trim some of my trees and cut a few down because I need more sunshine.  The guys who cut the trees down messed up my new gravel driveway so lesson learned…don’t get the gravel until everything else is finished…it’s the last step.

For my plants in my design I went to a nursery called Broadwells Nursery in Angier, NC.  That is about 2 hours from here.  I went because  I heard they were super cheap and when I went I found they were super cheap just as I heard.  A friend and I loaded her SUV up with plants.  Now I must also note that these were gallon size plants and they cost practically nothing.  I got about 40+ plants.  After I planted them I  purchased about 50 bags of mulch, which was not nearly enough so then I purchased 2 truckloads of mulch and then I used the mulch left over from some of the trees I had cut down….and believe it or not I still did not have enough.  I had to stop there though because I had no more money.  It was getting crazy.  Only a couple of plants died and they were the ones from Home Depot.  To be fair though I have to disclose that  we had a heat wave and one day I came home and some of my poor plants looked like someone set them on fire.

Okay so this year I planted a few rose bushes in place of the ones that died last year.  I didn’t wait until they were on clearance this time.  Maybe planting them fresh and when they are supposed to be planted will be better… ya think? I also used my mothers trick of digging a huge hole and filling it back up with Miracle Grow soil.  She said that was her trick to huge beautiful plants and she certainly had the best garden in the subdivision…if not the whole neighborhood.

I decided I want more Gardenias to line my front walkway so I was thinking about going back out to Broadwells since the ones I got from him were growing so well but I decided to try to propagate from one of the bushes I already have.

 

I watched a video on Youtube and now I have 12 cuttings from my Gardenia.

I also cut four pieces from the fig tree.I figure if I feed the deer they might leave my good stuff alone (??)  Or will that back fire and they will eat the stuff I put out there for them as well as the stuff I don’t want them to eat?  Its a gamble..

I also planted some seeds because I want Zinnia Benary’s Giant flowers.

I purchased the mixed colors, even though almost everything else is pink or white or red.  I also planted six Carolina Allspice Shrub seeds

The only plants I purchased was Sensation French Lilac and Mountain Valley Lily of the Valley Shrub (Japanese).

I am thinking really hard about buying some Live Beneficial Nematodes, 1550 lady bugs and 2 egg cases of Praying Mantis.  Oh yeah and I am going to also buy some more composting worms as I am using my compost bin this year.  I am getting good about it to my shock.  Have any of you used them for natural pest control?
 

I hope I have better luck in 2013!!