Simple ways to save money while you garden
If your houseplants spent summer soaking up sunshine on the porch or patio, you may be preparing to bring them inside as fall nights get colder. Unfortunately, a plant isn’t always the only thing making the trip through your front door. Spider mites can hide on foliage, and they’re so tiny that you may notice…
Dumping every container at the end of the gardening season can feel painfully wasteful, especially when you’ve filled several large planters with expensive potting mix. The good news is that gardeners don’t necessarily need to start with completely fresh bags every spring. The University of Illinois says soilless potting media can be reused when the…
A half-price plant sitting in the clearance corner can look like the gardening equivalent of finding a forgotten $20 bill in an old jacket. Maybe the leaves look a little rough, the pot has a few weeds, or the plant simply needs some attention. That bargain can absolutely become a beautiful addition to the garden,…
Fall garden centers can make a gardener feel wonderfully reckless. One minute, the plan calls for a few replacement plants, and the next minute the cart somehow contains enough mums, perennials, and ornamental grasses to require a financial debrief on the drive home. Before spending $200 on new plants, take a tour of the garden…
Fall garden clearance has started, and that means garden centers are making room for the next season while shoppers get a chance to snag useful supplies for less. The catch? A red sale sticker does not magically turn a struggling plant, outdated product, or wildly inappropriate purchase into a bargain. The smartest clearance shopping focuses…
Poison ivy can look like nothing more than a crispy pile of garden debris when the season turns, but that dead-looking material deserves a very wide berth. Burning it can send urushiol, the oily substance that causes poison ivy’s infamous rash, into the smoke, creating a much bigger problem than a few itchy spots. The…
A snake sliding through the garden can turn a peaceful morning of watering tomatoes into a full-blown wildlife documentary. But that snake probably did not wander into the yard with plans to terrorize the gardener. In many cases, it arrived because the garden offers exactly what a snake needs: food, shelter, water, warmth, or a…
A backyard vegetable garden can turn an ordinary patch of grass into tomatoes, peppers, herbs, pollinators and, occasionally, a very determined zucchini. Then an HOA letter arrives and suddenly that cheerful little garden looks like a legal dispute with tomato vines. The good news: an HOA does not automatically get to remove whatever it dislikes….
The first frost can turn a lush garden into a sad collection of blackened stems almost overnight, but not every plant needs to meet its chilly fate. Some garden favorites deserve a rescue mission before temperatures dip, especially plants that can move indoors, produce more food, or return next year from stored roots. The important…