Gardening

When the crisp morning air of Fall finally arrives here in the south, it’s hard not to regret the passing of all the summer blooms we love so much. From dahlias to daisies, zinnias, asters, coreopsis, and calendulas, there are so many friends we must bid adieu when the leaves being to fall each year.

Fortunately, the fall season offers gardeners, homeowners, and season decorators of all walks of like one of mother nature’s most beautiful and affordable season varieties, the chrysanthemum. This diva of the Fall, full of blooms in a myriad of hues, makes up for all that summer gardeners can desire.

Best of all, with the mum’s lasting longevity, you’ll have a plant that pulls not only its weight in the garden each year, but for many seasons to come. Maintained well these perennials will leave your landscaping beautiful for seasons to come!

With the Autumn season in full swing, and so many varieties deeply discounted now in-store, here are a few tips for those looking to get started caring for their mums this year to help you make the most of your next mum purchase, before heading out to your local nursery:

Buy beginning in September

Generally speaking, it’s best to buy mums as soon as night temps drop into the fifties, by mid-September. This is, of course, the rule unless you live below the Mason-Dixon line, in which case Back-to-School sales also signal the time to buy mums! Though buying later in the season might mean less brilliant blooms this current year, larger, less expensive plants will yield greater blooms in the seasons to come!

Buy for your zone

So, you may be thinking, which plants to buy? The answer is simple. Buy the colors and varieties best zoned for your area, with the only overall area of caution is to buy plants only as they start to break bud. You’ll maximize bloom time. Another trick, to make sure you are buying the right color and variety, be sure to match the blooms-to-tags, to find the color and type of flower you’re after. Always check plant tags with their handy cross-referenced blooms to avoid stock and shock error; garden centers usually group like selections together, but errors can happen.

Opt for darker shades

You will stretch your saving-saving dollar by choosing darker shades, such as bronze and burgundy as spent. As wilted flowers are less noticeable. The same is true for mums with double, as opposed to single, daisy-like blooms, especially for yellow and white varieties. Meaning, you won’t have to replace pots mid-season in porchscapes or vignettes.

Go large

Just like hair, lattes, homecoming flats, when it comes to mums, bigger is better! Inevitably, what you see in-store, is what you will get for the rest of the growing season. So, to ensure your displays are top-notch, buy the bigger plant.

Look for buds

When it comes to buying mums, buy plants that are already blooming. Some plants, due to the shock of being transported through different climate zones, will not produce any more additional blooms in their current growing season but in the next. However, once buds start to open on mums, you’re pretty-much-guaranteed flowers―no matter where you display them. And once your growing season is done, from December-August, make sure to pluck any premature blooms. Budding blooms left unchecked will signal for the plant to germinate early and you could potentially lose their highly sought after fall color.

Opt for moist soil

Your mum’s soil must stay be moist but never sopping wet. Check daily while the current seasonal weather is warm, especially in the deep south, and then every other day when it’s cooler. If plants dry out, submerge in a bucket of water, or jab a sharp pencil into the soil several times and then water.

Compost is king

Fertilizing is not necessary for mums; though compost can be applied post-growing season, every other year. Looking for tips on what to compost, check out my post on 101 everyday household items you can compost this season!

Pluck before you water

Always remove faded mum blooms and dead leaves before watering. This will encourage more diverse water and nutrient absorption in your mums.

Plant over in December

Right before the winter solstice is the time for mums to go in-ground. Always be sure to cover with mulch or comport over winter and then remove this covering from the tops of plants through summer. Always remembering to place new compost and mulch around the base of the plant each spring to help protect it from the summer’s harsh rays!

Sunshine is key

Chrysanthemums grow best and produce the most vibrant array of flowers if they are planted in full sunshine. P and plant your fall and winter beds accordingly to allow for optimal growth during the Spring and Summer months the following year.

To recap

• There are hundreds of varieties of Chrysanthemums, giving you a multitude of options for height, color, flower size and time of bloom.
• If you live above the Mason-Dixon line, purchase the earlier bloomers.
• Mums can be started as seeds, from cuttings and dividing, or can be purchased at a nursery in sizes from bedding plants up to gallon size and larger plants.
• They should be planted into well-prepared, fertile, sandy soil.
  By Thanksgiving, pluck all of your mum blossoms off of your plants, so that they can start their natural dormancy stage this winter.
• Water mums weekly, fertilize monthly with liquid plant food.
• At the end of the season, generally, post-Thanksgiving, cut back plants to four inches, and re-mulch your beds a second time, to prevent winter frost.

Friends, those are my tips for helping you to grow and maintain your best-blooming mums this season at home. If you have any mum care tips, pictures, or advice, shoot me an email or leave me a message and I’d love to feature you next week on my weekly gardening post. Now if you have any mum growing tips or tricks on finding the best pricing on mums in your neck of the woods, I’d love to hear about it below!

Miracle. That’s the best way I know how to describe gardening. And if you’re anything like me, the moment the winter subsides I can’t wait to start gardening! I love filling my yard each warm-weather season with beautiful plants, shrubs, trees, and start cultivating an immaculately groomed lawn. But as we also know, even the best of gardeners need a little help now and then to keep their yards their beautiful best. Which is why when I need to give my plants a big boost of natural TLC, my go to is my own organic Homemade Miracle Grow.

There are lots of reasons that you may want to make your own fertilizer. For me, I wanted to prevent unnecessary chemicals from being added to my yard each season as part of my pledge to run a more minimalist, zero-waste home. I’ve often felt the fertilizer industry added an egregious amount of toxins to their products and I’m not alone.  

In fact, in 2008 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a Stop sale, use or removal order against Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. & Affiliates for illegal, unregistered and misbranded weed and fertilizer which promoted the sale of products with cancer-causing and endocrine disrupting pesticide ingredients. The EPA also issued a stop-sale order to Scotts Lawn Care Service, for which Scotts subsequently agreed to recall two products from all retail locations across the United States and to set up a process for consumers to safely return any unregistered products they may have purchased and to stop selling and distributing products containing trifluralin, an herbicide that is a known carcinogen and to label its remaining products containing toxins to the public. 

In 2010, Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. pleaded guilty to numerous charges of misleading consumers with unapproved labels, falsifying insecticide registrations, including using toxic chemicals in wild bird food, and in 2012 was ordered by the Department of Justice to pay $12.5 million in criminal fines, the largest penalty ever set under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) Civil Case. And in 2014, the EPA released to the public a list of moe than 100 products produced or sold by Scotts Miracle-Gro that violated the federal pesticide laws over the past decade. In addition, numerous other commercial brands contain chlorpyrifos-methyl, an organophosphate insecticide, and neurotoxin that affects humans and wildlife alike. Facts that are simply hard to ignore as both a consumer and ecological advocate.

 Then there’s the matter of cost. Many commercial fertilizer products cost in excess of $20.00 per container. While my DIY version will set you back pennies on the dollar instead. A savings of over 98% off retail pricing nationally. Making this DIY version a no-brainer for gardening enthusiasts this season! 

Now if you’d like to see how you can make your own all-natural Homemade Miracle Grow for pennies on the dollar, check out my recipe below:

Ingredients:

• 1 gallon of water
• 1 tbsp Epsom’s Salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp of Household Ammonia
• 1 tbsp of powdered milk
• 1 tbsp of molasses

Directions:

1. Simply mix all the ingredients together, except the powdered milk in a reusable, sealable, food-safe container (to prevent chemical leaching).
2. When ready to use, add 1/4 gallon of your Homemade Miracle Grow Blend to a watering pitcher and then add the powdered milk and molasses only when ready to be applied to your garden areas. Stir thoroughly to combine.
3. Dispose of any unused portions containing powdered milk, to prevent spoilage.
4. Use this Homemade Miracle grow only once per month.
5. Safe for gardens, hanging plants, house plants, flower beds, shrubs, and lawns.
6. Can also be added to hose sprayer attachments or used with a watering can.
7. You can also mix into the soil around plants in the Spring and Fall each year. The rate should be 1 tablespoon for every 1-2 feet in height of plant. Be sure that you blend into your soil well with each application.

Quick Tip:

Each ingredient in this blend is necessary to ensure proper plant growth and have bee included in my Homemade Miracle Grow for the following reasons:

• Water: Necessary agent for plant germination, photosynthesis, nutrient transference, and soil transpiration
• Epsom’s Salt: Epsom salt helps improve flower blooming and enhances a plant’s green color. It can even help plants grow bushier. Epsom salt is made up of hydrated magnesium sulfate (magnesium and sulfur), which is important to healthy plant growth. An added bonus? Slugs hate Epsom’s Salts!
• Baking soda: Baking soda on plants helps prevent the bloom of fungal spores and minimize diseases such as powdery mildew and other foliar diseases.
• Ammonia: Ammonia is present in the soil, water, & air. Ammonia also contains Nitrogen, an essential for plant growth and improves fruit and seed production, resulting in a greater yield.
• Powdered milk: It contains beneficial proteins, vitamin B, and sugars that are good for plants, improving their overall health and crop yields. The microbes that feed on the fertilizer components of milk are also beneficial to the soil. Like us, plants use calcium for growth. Powdered milk also contains phosphorus and potassium, necessary agents for plant growth.
• Molasses: Molasses is high in calcium, magnesium, iron, and potassium. It also contains sulfur and a host of micronutrients. Using molasses as fertilizer provides plants with a quick source of energy and encourages the growth of beneficial microorganisms.

So, friends, this is one of my favorite and healthiest ways to keep my garden and yard looking its best each season and I hope you will consider using it too! And if you would like to check out some of my other organic gardening posts, click here.

So now, I have to ask, what are planting this season and what will definitely need to be fertilized in your own yard this year? I’d love to hear about it!

While you may think of bees simply as a summertime nuisance there’s more than meets the eye with these hard-working insects. Bees actually help to ensure that many of your favorite foods to reach our dinner tables each night. From apples to almonds, we have bees to thank for any one of our favorite foods coming to fruition.

Sadly, due to environmental pollution and deforestation, many domestic bee varieties now face a greater foe than ever before, a condition known as Colony Collapse Disorder. A disorder that causes bee populations to plummet, which means that over time, many of the organic produce foods we rely on day in and day out could also be at risk of disappearing from our meal plans as we know them.

In the United States alone, more than twenty-five percent of all honey bee populations has disappeared since 1990. This is particularly scary facts as bees, one of a myriad of other animals, including birds, bats, beetles, and butterflies, called pollinators, animals that aid in the propagation of domestic food crops by way of cross-pollination, or the the transfer of pollen to a stigma, ovule, flower, or plant to allow fertilization. Bees, in particular, are vital to food production. 

Cross-pollination directly helps at least thirty percent of the world’s crops and ninety percent of our wild plants to thrive. Without bees to spread seeds, many plants—including food crops—would die off. For when domestic and international bee populations die off as will human beings. 

(Photo Source)

Beyond the fields, bees also help to keep our economy humming. More than $15 billion a year in U.S. crops are pollinated by bees, including apples, berries, cantaloupes, cucumbers, and various other crops. U.S. honey bees also produce about $150 million domestically in honey product revenue annually. 

The monetary effects of this decline can already be seen from a global perspective. As the global economic cost of bee decline, including lower crop yields and increased production costs, has been estimated to be as high as $5.7 billion per year since 1990. Which makes maintaining bee populations crucial for keeping American tables stocked with quality organic produce.

Consider this, with every third morsel of produce you consume, you could ideally thank a bee for that tasty bite of food.

Researchers believe that Colony Collapse Disorder may be caused by a number of interwoven factors including Global warming, which has caused flowers to bloom earlier or later than usual, as well as pesticide use on farms, which caused parasites such as harmful mites, to be immune from crop dusting, while simultaneously killing pollinators, such as bees, each growing season. A deadly combination when it comes to organically grown produce.

So what can be done to protect our precious bee populations?

To begin, we can urge our policymakers to take action to protect the bees and other pollinators that help keep fresh food on our table. This means increased grant funding to aid farmers for organic farming practices that help wild bee populations thrive, such as leaving habitat for bees in their surrounding fields, crop rotation, and avoiding the use of harmful pesticides.

We can also urge policymakers to increase funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), so we can invest in our farmers and farming communities by way of research on pollinators and organic Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques through Farm Bill conservation programs.

We can also create bee-friendly yards at home. If you are a gardener like me, your weekends may find your elbow deep in planting your summer gardens and annual landscaping. I’m reminded of years past and my struggles to grow certain crops.  Despite my best efforts, cucumbers were always absent from my garden harvest.  Year after year, no matter how hard I tried, I could not get any cucumbers to grow.  Because what was missing from my garden were honeybees.

(Photo Source)

So with this in mind here are a few ways you can keep a more bee-friendly garden at home:

Choose plants that attract bees: Bees love native wildflowers, flowering herbs, berries and many flowering fruits and vegetables.  Some honeybee favorites include – mints, basil, sage, thyme, borage, oregano, lavender, chives, berries, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, cucumbers, tomato, winter squash, pumpkins, melons, watermelons, broccoli, crocus, tulips, sunflowers, asters, lilacs, wisteria, cosmos, black-eyed Susans, gaillardia, cup plants, goldenrod, loosestrife, bachelor’s buttons, peony and honeysuckle.  

Use spacing to your advantage: If you have space, planting any type of fruit tree is perfect and trees such as maple, willow, black locust, and sumac are also good food sources for bees.

Group similar plants together: Try to plant at least one square yard of the same plant together to make a perfect bee attractor. But if you are short on space planting just a few wildflowers or herbs in a planter or window box is all that’s needed to provide more foraging opportunities for bees.

Pick plants with long blooming cycles: Or choose plants with successive blooms. This way the bees will keep coming back again and again.

Let your plants flower: Leave the flowers on your plants and deadhead them to allow the honeybees to get the pollen and nectar they need. If you are growing herbs or vegetables such as broccoli, harvest it but leave the plant intact. When you are done let it go to flower for the pollinators and leave it in the garden until the flowers are gone.

Provide a fresh water source: A bird bath filled with pea gravel submerged in water provides bees an area to stand on while also providing needed water sources for honeybees each season.

Avoid the use of pesticides and herbicides in your garden: Or anywhere in your yard including your lawn, for that matter. A simple rule of thumbs- if little paws or hands touch those areas, pesticides don’t belong there! This ban also applies to products your lawn care company uses. When in doubt leave it out.

Appreciate the beauty of weeds: Dandelions, clovers, loosestrife, milkweed, goldenrod and other flowering weeds are very important food sources for bees. In areas filled with green sprawling lawns, dandelions and clovers are vital plants for a bees survival. Let them grow and the next time you see a dandelion going to seed, grab it, blow those seeds around and feel good knowing you are doing your part to help save the bees!

Change your mindset: At first, you may not like the idea of attracting stinging insects into the garden. Keep in mind that stinging is a defensive behavior used for defending the nest against predators. Just as humans instinctively protect our children, as do bees! Most bees as far too busy to sting. Ever watched a bee when it visits a flower and noticed that the bee often too busy to even notice you! Foraging bees are happy and curious. They are not looking for a fight. They are friends. They help provide us produce and help keep our world moving along.

So as you can see friends, you can provide bee-friendly habitats at home with very little effort or cost. You do not even have to uproot your current garden in order to attract more bees. Providing shelter for bees can be as simple as maintaining a garden full of spaces guarded against the elements, providing natural watering sources, or simply learning to appreciate bees, not as pests, but as beautiful reminders of the delicate reminder of the part we all play in keeping nature at its best.

Now I have to ask, do you provide bee-friendly spaces around your home and garden? If so, I’d love to hear about them below!

Here’s to all that bees do,

Hello again, savvy savers! Here in my neck of the woods, Spring has sprung! Though according to our old friend Punxsutawney Phil, we are still officially six weeks from the start of Spring, my yard is starting to come alive with Spring Bulb plants, or “fall” flower bulbs which are planted in the fall, grow roots into winter, then sprout and bloom in the spring. These include favorites such as tulips, daffodils, hyacinth and others.

So, today I wanted to share some of my favorite tips for Spring Bulb Care this coming season. Here are a few of my favorite Spring bulb growing tips:

1. Most spring bulbs emerge and bloom in spring — then their foliage starts to fade and they go dormant by midsummer, usually by June 1st.
2. It’s important to let the foliage naturally go yellow and wither.
3. Never try to stake or braid foliage to try to make it look tidier.
4. Try planting Spring Bulbs in flower beds, alongside other perennial foliage, so that when bulbs start to fade, they will naturally be eclipsed by the emergence of other Spring plants, which prevents your beds from losing sparse.
5. It is helpful to remove the flowers on most spring bulbs as soon as they start to fade; this helps bulbs conserve their energy into producing seed instead of a big crop of blooms the following year.
6. Don’t fertilize blooming bulbs, but do make sure they are planted in beds will compost, mulch, and nutrient rich soil.
7. Bulbs should be fertilized in fall, and one month before blooming, in the end of January; for beds covered in snow, simply remove snow, place in-ground fertilizer stakes, and replace snow accordingly.
8. Many spring-flowering bulbs are native to hot, dry areas — so they prefer dry conditions in summer when they’re dormant.

I hope these tips help you to enjoy your beautiful Spring Bulbs for as long as possible this year.

Here’s to gardening,