Gardening

December Gardening Tips

Winter. It’s right around the corner. With so many of us living in the midst of cold, blustery weather, the need for keeping our favorite, festive holiday plants in top shape is soon to be a pressing need for many of us in the northern hemisphere. With this in mind, here are a few of my favorite December Gardening Tips!

Tips for caring for the living, cut, or bulged Christmas tree varieties:

Be sure to select trees with firm needles; individual needles should bend rather than snap. Also, inspect the stump; the cut end of a fresher tree should remain moist and have sticky sap.
When you get the tree home, cut 2 inches off the base of the trunk.
Always be sure to submerge a freshly cut tree stump into a bucket of water; trees can absorb 1 gallon of water in the first 24 hours.
Check the water level in your tree stand twice a day for the first week. Add water as needed. Each day, trees can drink roughly 1 quart of water for every inch of trunk diameter.
If your tree dries out, the wound likely healed over and stopped absorbing water. Make a fresh cut on the stump and it can absorb water again.
When decorating fresh cut trees indoors, avoid placing fresh evergreens on wood surfaces; sap from branches can damage the finish.
When Christmas is over, recycle your tree yourself; cut off branches, and use as insulation over perennials.
For those with enclosed, bulged trees, such are one of our four-holiday trees, as seen above, be sure to keep in an enclosed bucket, which can be encased in a decorative tin or basket, and watered 1 gallon weekly. I chose a shorter, Aspen Pine, which will be planted after the holidays outdoors!

Additional Gardening Tips for December:

Amaryllis bulbs. Place amaryllis bulbs in pots for blooms for two weeks prior to blooming. Leave the bulb shoulders protruding above the soil; planting too deeply can rot the bulb. Water when the soil is dry weekly, and stake with a bamboo skewer when blooms become weighted.
Poinsettias. If you are anything like myself, then each year on Black Friday when I purchase these potted beauties, my main objective is to keep them alive! To ensure your plants stay vibrant, always display poinsettias away from heat sources or cold drafts; keep the soil consistently moist, but not soggy. When poinsettias end their bloom, cut back all leaves, and allow to remain dormant, watering weekly, and these plants will bloom again come the following fall!
Ice: When ice forms on tree and shrub branches, don’t try to break it off and instead let the ice melt naturally.
Vegetable Gardens: Be sure to cover all bare soil in vegetable beds before the new year; affordable, green ways to do so use pine needles or leaf mulch.
Fruit Trees: Be sure to gather any remaining fruits or nuts on trees or the ground beneath them, composting this debris; this cleaning will help to reduce pests and diseases next year.

Friends, I hope these tips would be of aid to all of my fellow gardeners this month. And if you have tips for keeping winter favorites thriving, I’d love to hear all about them below!

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Gardening on A Budget: How To Winterize Flower Boxes With Pine Cones!

Hello again, savvy savers! For this weeks Gardening Update Post, I wanted to share one of the projects I have been up to this weekend, and that is winterizing my front window boxes!

As most gardeners know, mulching is one the most important ways to maintain healthy landscaped plants, lawns, and bed displays. In fact, one of the many reasons why homeowner’s associations insist on mulch or pine straw for that matter. Mulching has many benefits to your landscaping efforts, such as:

When applied correctly mulch has the following effects on plants and soils.
Mulches prevent loss of water from the soil by evaporation
Mulches reduce the growth of weds when the soil material itself is weed free, and applied directly enough to prevent weed germination or to smother existing weeds.
Mulches also help your lawn and landscaping not only in the spring and fall, but also during the summer time by keeping the soil cooler during the summer period.

This leads me to the topic of winterizing your beds, and particularly your window boxes this coming season. Why should homeowners winterize their boxes and beds? In the winter, mulches serve to insulate the soil, keeping beds and boxes it warmer, which helps in the preventing of winter frost damage; this process is necessary as during summer, winterizing maintenance helps to keep Spring mulches in tact longer, helps preserve the nutrients in soil, and will untimely keep you with healthier, longer living plants into fall.

For my front window boxes, I have found that a fun, inexpensive way to winterize, and mulch these areas, is with pine cones.

To winterize your boxes, simply:

Start with window boxes, planters, and pots which have been cleared of all annual plants.
Have bulbs (if being planted) already sown into soil.
Next, remove the first layer of soil, about two inches removed and replaced with fresh potting mix, and well mixed into existing bedding materials.
At this point simple place pine cones three layers deep for winter; my 36″ wide boxes used 12 cones across and 3 cones high to create neat, inter-locking winterized mounds.
Pine cones should remain in the boxes for one two weeks past the last day of weather dipping below 40 degrees.
Pine cones can be removed, used for fire pits, chimineas, as fireplace starters, composted, or mulched into your lawn come the Spring as well!

This is an inexpensive, festive, and functional way to protect your window boxes, beds, and pots over winter, and I always receive complements from my neighbors whenever I do so!

I highly recommend this project!

Here’s to gardening,

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Gardening On A Budget: Fall Leaf Collection!

Hello again, savvy savers! For this weeks Gardening Update Post, I want to share some of the things I have been up to in my back yard this past week!

For my family, we have been in the midst of Fall leaves!

When I say leaves I mean leaves, leaves, leaves, and leaves; and I have a feeling that most of you are in the same boat as well! What’s difficult in my region, is that in Mississippi we have two sub-seasons this time of year.

First, we have a traditional Fall, from late August to the end of September, where leaves are falling but not the humidity! Then our season seemingly stops. The leaves remain partially green, perpetually a myriad of splotchy odd-ball colors, and the weather remains the same through Halloween. Then at last, my favorite time of the year, the true emergence of Autumn, where the humidity bottoms out, the foliage truly changes colors, and sadly, every square inch of my property becomes blanketed with the crunchy stuff!

This past week has found myself spending most of my spare time raking, sorting, and cleaning out my gardens from the same foliage, I longed for in the not so distant past.

While my yard may look untouched, I am in the process of organizing my leaves, and here’s what I’ve been up to:

Compost: Autumn leaves, which have been chopped and shredded with our leaf vac, act as a cheap, “brown,” high-carbon, layering material for our compost bin. Simply alternate layers of shredded leaves with the regular green materials, from our lawn mower to your compost pile to sit over the winter. I aerate my bin weekly.
Lasagna Gardening: I use Fall leaves, layered between layers of organic peat moss in my bottom vegetable garden, which is left to decompose for the winter, and is tilled into the garden come Spring.
Mow Them: My adorable husband, Daniel, has been gracious enough to keep uo with all aspects of our home mowing. He generally starts my getting on the roof, cleaning out the gutters, blowing out the leaves that have fallen from the roof and are in the beds, to the lawn, and are then mowed over; he takes three turns for each section of the yard essentially mulching the leaves into fine, compost layers which help insulate the lawn for winter. In terms of leaf removal, this one may be the easiest solution, as it involves no raking whatsoever, just 20-30 minutes of blowing. We do this weekly until the leaves are finished falling, and your lawn will look better for it next spring and summer.

So, what have you been up to this week, gardening-wise? I’d love to hear about it!

Here’s to Fall,

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Why You Should Be Creating Fall Leaf Mulch This Season

For this week’s Greener Living Tips, I want to discuss one of the ways that I save money around my year this later season of the year, and this is by making my own mulch! I invested in a blower/mulching device, and the mulch you see is mulched leaves, bark, and sticks found around my yard earlier this month, and it looks just like the bark mulch shreds previously purchased at Lowe’s!

I saved $60.00 by making my own mulch for just 1/4 of my flower beds in the front of my home! So, by using just these two methods I save more than $120.00 around my yard annually, and that money can be channeled back into other projects, such as my Indoor Greenhouse system!

Using leaf mulch helps your lawn to be able to:

Mulching leaves enhance landscape aesthetics during Fall.
Organic mulch improves soil fertility as it decomposes, reducing the need for fertilizers.
Leaf mulch help maintain soil moisture by reducing evaporation so less supplemental irrigation is needed.
Leaf mulch inhibits weed germination and growth, reducing the need for herbicides.
Leaf mulch buffers soil temperatures over the winter, keeping soils warmer in the winter.

And the best part? Leaf mulch can be made by simply mowing over leaves, and raking up the debris and using the newly made mulch around all of your flower beds, potted plants, and trees in your yard. This same process would be an awesome “brown” layer to compost bins. I also use this mulch as an aromatic layer for my outdoor patio chimineas, fire pits, and smoker. If you don’t have a shredder, don’t worry. Leaves can be shredded using the lawn mower. Just be sure to avoid “volcano mulching.” When mulch is piled against the base of a tree, it holds moisture, encouraging rot in the trunk. Mulch piled against the trunks of young trees may also create a habitat for rodents that chew the tender bark and can ultimately kill the trees.

This is an awesome way to save this holiday season! So friends, if you have any tips for reducing your end-of-season yard waste at home, I’d love to hear about it below!

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Gardening Update 9/2814: Chrysanthemum Time!

Hello again, savvy savers! this weekend is a very, very slow weekend in my garden. The humidity of late summer is in full force, and my husband and I are spending double duty on nightly watering sessions for out gardens, flower beds, and hanging garden areas; we have switched our attentions from perseverance to full on preservation, in hopes of salvaging as many perennial plants as possible going into the next season.

However, one area of garden happiness for me this week is that my discounted chrysanthemums, purchased from Walmart last Autumn for $0.50 a plant, have doubled in size and are starting to bloom for the fall, and within the next month will be gorgeous; I planted the bed in rotating patterns of orange, yellow, and white to mimic candy corn! For those with mums planted in-ground, early August is the time to stop plucking blooms off of plants, start concentrated feedings, add new mulch, and let the growing season commence for your mums!

Here’s to gardening until next week!

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Weekly Gardening Update, 8/17!

Happy Sunday, everyone! Here is this weeks gardening update!

This weeks Gardening Update revolved around my $1.00 rose bushes from Fred’s Super Dollar have thus far produced some of the most beautiful roses I have ever grown, as seen above. They are just so lovely, and I will be giving some today to my neighbors as a little community happy gift! I also love my free lattice, as it was recycled from discarded pallets, and works just as well as anything purchased at my local supercenter! I feed my roses a special homemade blend, which i will be blogging about in the weeks to come!

Here’s to next week!

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Battle-Of-The-Bulge, Budget Style: Gardening To Lose Weight, Part II!

Hello again, savvy savers! Today I am starting another new blog series, Battle Of The Bulge, Budget-Style! I will be focusing on ways to live a healthier, more active lifestyle while be able to afford clean, organic, obtainable foods! I believe this series can be worthwhile for many, who like myself, wish to get more in shape, not through crash-dieting but by small attainable lifestyle changes! All of the changes I propose will be free or affordable, and most meals and plans will contain couponed savings or deals! Fads are fancy, but coupons are a commitment! With that said, here is where I am currently: I have a family history of high blood pressure, diabetes, and cancer. I am looking to lose 60lbs., find affordable non-gym membership options for working out, and change the way I consume food; this includes meals, snacks, and splurges!

Today I am 31 years young, I am 5’6”, and weigh 198 lbs; I am down one pound since last week. I walk my dogs but beyond this am not terribly active. My lifestyle causes sedentary behaviors; I work-from-home, blog, run two internet businesses, and perform advocacy work online as well. I am an internet-based excuser! Today this changes! Spring has sprung, and so shall I! I have taken up yoga, and have started working out with a pedometer on as well!

For my 8th post, I wanted to discuss a new measure I have implemented to help in my healthier lifestyle choice, gardening! Did you know that according to the American Heart Association, gardening 1 hour daily will burn up to 400 calories, and considering that the average weekend project tales 4-6 hours, and that maintaining your yard weekly, in warmer weather, will take nearly 1 hour a day, you would, on average burn upwards of 2,400 calories a week! An entire days worth of calories! This is a staggering number! For me, I make sure to water the plants, lawn, and mow as often as I can, as its no longer a chore for me, but an exercise! I love that performing tasks for hobby can lead to better health!

How awesome is that? For a small, simpler routine, here is my suggested, and used, gardening workout routine:

Pull weeds in 1 flower bed for 10 minutes
Rake mulch back into place in all beds, as needed, for 10 minutes
Fertilize roses, bushes, and low-lying shrubs for 10 minutes
Manually edge 30 feet of driveway, sidewalk, or straight-edged areas, 20 minutes
Water front flowers beds, 10 minutes

So, by my routine, all of which I can accomplish before 8 am, or after 6 pm, and will burn 400 calories! No gym membership or lawn service needed! This is an awesome way to put on a few podcasts, listen to a cd, or just have some time to yourself, and your yard, for nothing more than time! I also keep my Shih-Tzu, Sassy with me while gardening to lose weight; I have metal screw-into-the-yard hooks in various places in my yard, which I leash and harness Sassy to, and move her from area to area; so I can bond with my fuzzy-love, lose weight, and clean my yard at the same time! This is one of my favorite ways to burn extra calories, while creating a more serene home for my family and myself!

Also, if you are looking for other ways to save money, lose weight, and maintain your yard, beds, and landscaping, be sure to check out my frugal garden tips, here!

Here’s to the Journey!

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