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| Clethra or Sugar Spice bush hosts beneficial insects and butterflies. |
People do not eagerly buy plants or gardening supplies in the late summer, so it is the best time to get bargains, to try some plants and seeds for almost nothing.
When we used to go to Walgreen's, I looked for the seeds to go on sale for 10 cents a packet. Since many packets go for $2, anything spent on dime packets seemed almost free. Lack of buying interest drops their value.
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| Wild Ginger Hidden Lily |
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| The flowers emerge from the ground and look elvish. |
At Walmart and Lowe's, I get plants on clearance. The challenge is getting an ID on them. Staff just water the plants - they know as much about gardening as Martha Stewart does. Vendors drop them off, according to the season, the way softdrink companies and bread delivery people do. I took one huge and unmarked plant home and found it was a Lantana. My best buy was a bunch of Hidden Lily Wild Ginger. The tubers last over winter here and multiply fast, but the gardening company unloaded the $20 specimens for almost nothing.
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| Liberate Hostas. They do not need total shade. They enjoy the sunand produce blooms for Hummingbirds. |
Likewise, garden equipment which will be used in a few months is put on clearance. A bird bath is good all winter here, so I bought one for $7 - concrete.
Bushes do well when started in the fall. My only fear is bunny predation, since they munch on tender plants and wait for them to re-sprout, then chew them down again. The rose collars are useful for keeping rabbits away, and I have thundering herds of them.
My biggest bargain will be free mints, daisies, and hostas. In each case I can get multiple plants from the original and triple the numbers in the rose garden. Around the maple tree I can replace the chaos with the sharp-elbowed mints. Like pro basketball players, they know how to shut down the competion.
Lastly, I have several plants that could be featured in the front, near the butterfly garden. One is the Chaste Tree with unusual blue flowers adored by bees. The other is Clethra or Sugar Bush, a shrub magnet for butterflies and beneficial insects. Autumn is a good time to transplant, because winter gives them plenty of time to become established.
Autumn gives me a chance to gather pine needles and leaves, all of which work well for mulch. Pine needles exclude most growth while leaves rot down to improve the soil and suppress weeds to some extent.
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| Chaste Tree is still used for mecine, and its blooms are loved by bees. Mine did much better when I stopped watering it and placed it in the sun. |
