Sahara Season for the Gardening Vendors - Good for Gardeners

 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.

 Wild Ginger Hidden Lily

 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.

 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.

 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.

Creation Gardening - The Autumn Sleep Has Begun

One last rose was in bloom today, its flower faded by the cold nights, but still glowing bright and cheerful on a cloudy day. The Creation Garden is almost as interesting to watch in the fall as it is in the spring.

Just as plants wake up according to their season, so they fall into dormancy one by one. One reader envies my vast supply of autumn leaves, but he has a free supply of coffee grounds from a coffee house. My advantage is not having to haul my soil amendments. My neighbors bag them and I confiscate them, sometimes only dragging them across the street.

One neighbor probably snickered that I grabbed two bags full of sweet gum prickly seed-balls. But I was smiling. They went to the wild garden where few plants germinate. Besides, the seed-balls are normally picked clean of their seeds - either by birds or squirrels. If I need trees planted, I count on the squirrels, who cleverly place them in the middle of rose plants.

I finally concluded that the wild garden only needed to have its own way and grow its favorites, mostly in shade. Some junk trees are growing up into the little bit of sun that is available, drawing from the compost in one corner and the extra leaves placed in their area.

 This is the second bloom of the summer,
pink below - because I left the top blooms to seed for
the Cardinals nesting there.

Rose Collars Completed
All the roses and Crepe Myrtles are wearing their rose collars now. Soon they will have a layer of peat humus for extra protection and soil building. Leaves inside the collar will contribute to insulating the plants and feeding the soil.

Crepe Myrtles enjoy rich soil and bloom accordingly. The Mother of All Crepe Myrtles got a special dressing of crushed leaves and top soil from the street. Leaves accumulate in the street, but some areas are especially rich in top soil washed off, leaves crushed by parking cars and trucks. That mixture is heavy with promise, and I pile it up under the biggest Crepe Myrtle, pictured above.

The newly planted Crepe Myrtles have collars, so I add coffee didies to them. After each pot of pour-over coffee, I have the grounds left in the paper filter. This coffee didie makes a good addition to the soil enclosed by the rose collar. The total adds up quickly. Soon I will have a bucket filling up, to carry bunches of them to the front yard.

 Butterflies and other pollinators love
Joe Pye Weed.

I took the name Joe Pye Weed for granted as I watched the flowers turn into seed. I sprinkled some seed near the plant and took the rest of the seed-heads to the Butterfly Garden.

Joe Pye Weed will be high on my list for the rose garden, tall and easy to grow, taking room and sunshine away from the grassy weeds.