How to save greenery in your garden | The Compleat Home Gardener
There are creative ways to reuse and recycle in the garden.
Marianne Binetti will be at the Point Defiance Flower Festival in Tacoma on June 1 and June 2. She will be the speaker moderator for the event, which will run from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Japanese Pagoda. For more information, visit www.ptdefianceflowerfestival.com.
Marianne Binetti will host a free seminar on “Super Cheap Gardening: Reducing Yard and Garden Costs by Recycling, Propagating and Redesigning” at the Sumner Library on June 8 at 10:30 a.m. Free plants, fertilizer samples and more will be available.
Gardening and landscaping are expensive. Not only do you need to buy trees, shrubs, and flowering plants, but you also need enough soil, pots, and fertilizer to fill a cart at the garden center and empty your wallet. If you can't make it to my free talk at the Sumner Library on Saturday, June 8, here are some of my best tips for growing more in your garden while saving money.
Tips for saving on potted plants
Reuse potting soil. Yes, you can use the same potting soil for several years, but you should first refresh the soil by digging up the pot and turning the soil over so it's fluffy and airy. Remove the old plant's roots. Make sure you reach the drainage holes and they're not clogged. If the old potting soil is very light, add a trowelful of compost to it. Old soil needs a little organic matter, as it's full of living soil microorganisms that help plants absorb nutrients.
If you're growing annuals, fill large pots halfway with empty water bottles or recycled plastic nursery pots. Annuals are plants that die back in winter and grow color in summer. They need 8 to 12 inches of soil to establish roots, so you don't need to fill deep pots with soil (your plants will love it if they do, but saving money may be more important than pampering them). Putting recycled bottles in the bottom of large pots will make them lighter and improve drainage. Remember, the less soil there is in the container, the more often you'll need to water them.
Recycling and Reuse
You can make creative, free containers using metal washtubs for bulbs and lilies, old colanders for herbs and succulents, and metal trash cans for bulbs and annuals. Anything with drainage holes can be used to grow plants, so go to a thrift store or rummage through your cupboards at home. Old baskets can be used as covers for cheap plastic seedling pots, and traditional wooden, ceramic or clay pots can be found at garage sales.
Potted Shrubs – and into the Landscape
If you're overhauling your landscaping and pick up a new shrub or small tree, either at a sale price or from a friend, consider growing it in a large container or pot to help strengthen its root system until you decide where to plant it in your garden. A young dwarf Alberta spruce or maple planted in the middle of a pot surrounded by colorful annuals will make a great patio centerpiece for a few years. Then, once it outgrows its pot, you can transplant it into the garden.
If your soil gets bad, you can get some leaf humus for free. The partially decayed leaves of small-leaf maple, beech and birch are called leaf humus because of the visible white mold filaments that are decomposing last summer's fallen leaves from the trees. These partially decomposed leaves are an excellent soil conditioner and help the soil retain moisture.
Making your own compost is the ultimate money-saving gardening hack, but if you don't have the space to compost, collecting fallen leaves is the next best thing to improving your soil for free. Tip: Collect fallen leaves in plastic garbage bags in the fall (ask a neighbor if you don't have one) and poke lots of air holes in the bags to let them rot over winter. In the spring, use these partially rotten leaves to improve your soil and mulch it around your plants.
Free Plants by Cutting: This month you can take stem cuttings from hydrangeas, boxwoods and hundreds of other shrubs, remove the lower leaves from the bottom half of the cutting, and then insert the cutting into moist soil. A lavender row or boxwood hedge may take several years to mature, but you'll have the satisfaction of growing new plants from old ones and creating an entire hedge from just one plant.
Begging and bartering
If you're willing to dig them out of someone's cluttered garden, you can get some great plants for free. Use local social media and word of mouth to offer to remove unwanted shrubs, perennials, and ground covers from other people's yards. Many perennials, such as astilbe, delphiniums, and hostas, thrive when dug up and divided every few years. Ground covers, such as ajuga, saxifrage, and black mondo grass, also need to be dug up and divided to keep them tidy. Exert your influence by trading some of your perennials for them. This is a great way to collect hard-to-find plants and hardy ground covers to fill out your new garden.
Marianne Binetti has a degree in horticulture from Washington State University and is the author of “Easy Answers for Great Gardens” and several other books. To request a book or answer your gardening question, send a letter to PO Box 872, Enumclaw, 98022. Please send a self-addressed, stamped envelope. This column is copyrighted by Marianne Binetti. For more gardening information, visit her website at www.binettigarden.com.
