Why I Oughta...

Tired of those Mums that you bought for your front porch keep splaying wide open and flopping over, revealing an empty crown?  That's what happens when the tips of the flower stems get weighted down with the blooms, as they open up and grow.  That is...if you keep them alive until then.  Mums are hard to make work, but when they do, they're beautiful.   So, you likely know all the tips by now:  soak the root ball in water.  Water from the bottom-up.  Don't buy them too early in the season. Here's the best tip I can give you in terms of something you can do to keep them looking good: Wire them up.   Wrap a wire or string around the stems to corral them together.  And, keep the crown of the mums together and the stems upright. Here, below are a couple of photos of the Mums we brought home for our front porch this weekend.  I used padded garden wire around the stems: I also placed the nursery pot into a garden trug that is full of...

You bought that big container of mums and put them on your porch.  They look good.  Now, the tough part:  keeping them alive.  And keeping them from flopping wide open and splaying. First the 'keeping them alive' part.  It is pretty easy:  water them.  And, even better...'bottom water' them via a bucket or pan that they can sit-in.  Otherwise, drag your hose over there and keep 'em wet every few days.  If you're like me and you're dragging your hose around to try to eek out the final few dahlia blooms, then just stop at your mums and spray them down. As for the second part:  keeping them from splaying wide open?  That part is pretty easy too:  Wire them up.  Here's a post that I shared all the way back in 2017 that is popular every Fall: ProTip: Tie Up Your Mums .  Every Fall since then, we've done the same thing.  Buy the big set of Mums.  Use some twine or garden wire around the perimeter of the blooms to...

#6 on my 2022 to-do list included the need for providing a more robust structure or trellis system for our one-year-old Cascade Hops vine that was planted last year.  Last year, I used a small, metal ornamental trellis that allowed the vine to get up about three or four feet off the ground .  This year, I was planning on providing a true, stand-alone trellis.  But...the growth of this vine thought otherwise.   Why?  Because it grew like crazy and by the time I was getting around to thinking about which trellis to buy, it was too late.   But, my 2022 to-do list still stood.  What could I do?  I decided to take the same route I took with the Belgian Fence frame:  attach some deck screws to the fence and wire up a grid on the fence to provide for the vine to grow up.   I put in a dozen or so screws and wrapped green, outdoor wire around them in a box-shape and some cross-wires to make various ways for the vine to grow. ...

I've done these ' Christmas Haul ' posts over the years where I show off some of the gifts that I have received from family and friends at the holidays.  In 2011, I posted a couple of Beatles magnets that I received .  In 2018, I posted a photo of a bird seed bell .  For 2019, Nat's folks gave me a heated bird bath for the backyard .  Last year, I received a gift that sat RIGHT at the intersection of two of my loves:  Disney pins and jigsaw puzzles .  And, I also put a new pair of chainsaw protection gloves to work in the Spring.   This year, I received some fun gifts from Nat and the kids and as part of a family gift exchange, Nat's brother gifted me a few things for the yard.  I mean...what else would I want, right? The first thing they gave me is here, below.  A double pack of Rapiclip Soft Wire Tie (Light Duty) espalier training (padded) wire.  Each of the spools is 16 feet long.   I've posted about this padded traini...

One of the items on  my 2019 gardening to-do list (addendum)  was to make sure I got around to wiring up the new Gold Cone Junipers that I planted this Spring.   When  I picked them up , I was drawn to the promise of their bright needles and how they filled a big part of my desire to add conifers to our landscape.  In  that original post , I referenced how a pro-gardener recommended that these particular junipers get wired up to avoid any sort of Winter/snow damage.  That's what this post is for:  documenting that I actually wired them.  The top photo shows one of the Gold Cone Junipers all wired up with a green coated metal garden wire.  Compare that photo above with the photo of the same shrub  in this photo .  I tucked in all the leggy new growth and bound it to the core of the plant.  Here's a closer look at the wire:  The shrub in the foreground is wired up.  The one in the background is not...