Friend-LINK:

Administrivia

A bit of administration information to get us started this week. AGN has been listed on The Gardening Launchpad web site and is also the currently featured article. The Gardening Launchpad has hundreds of great gardening links and I am proud for AGN to be one of them. Check it out today!

If you or any of your friends would like to link to AGN, please feel free. Let me know when you activate your link and I will add a link for you on the AGN page. Better yet, send your favorite links to the AGN mailing list so everyone can benefit right away. Keep your eye open for this new LINKS section.

Anachronism

How is this for a picture of life in 1999? As I write this I am sitting on a wooden bench in my garden surrounded by trees, plants and cooled by a light breeze. The birds are flitting about the feeders and the squirrels are nuzzling the ground looking for those last few sunflower seeds. Neither seems bothered much by the clicking of my laptop keys as I type in these words. It is so amazing to be able to engage in my three favorite activities, my garden, technology and writing all at the same time. Say what you like about Y2K problems and "Millennium Fever." On days like this I think life is pretty good.

My life has always been filled with such anachronistic examples. I actively seek out ways to integrate both "high tech" and "high touch" parts of my life. This is one of many reasons I am drawn to gardening. After hours of facing the computer screen nothing brings you back to reality like a few minutes in the garden. The next time you see someone who has had their head stuck inside their computer too long, take them out to your garden and recharge their batteries.

Time vs. Money

I was leafing through an ad for a local nursery this week looking for some shade plants to fill a few empty spots in my back garden. While there was a good choice of ferns, shade azaleas and the like something else prevented me from buying. By the time I added up all the plants I wanted and needed to fill the spots, the cost looked more like a car payment than a gardening bill. Plants costing between $6 and $10 can add up quickly when you want to fill even a medium-sized bed. There can be a better way though

As with most things in life there is always a trade-off between money and time in your garden. You can either spend money to have a more fully developed perennial to plant in your garden or you can take the time to propagate and grow plants from cuttings or seeds. While we all like a little instant gratification now and then, propagating your own plants can be yet another enjoyable gardening activity. In some cases it can give you a garden you could never afford otherwise. While we may not be able to justify spending money on our gardening "hobby" we can usually afford the time to start seeds and make cuttings.

Here are a few resources to get you started in propagating your own plants from seed, cuttings from your own garden or cuttings from friends and neighbors.

Multiplication by Division from About.com

Propagation

HappyChris' Propagation Page

Propagation - Volume 1 Home greenhouse, hotframe, snow damage

Move it or lose it!

Moving plants around can be another useful tool in building gardens. In my case I have a wisteria trellis that originally had plantings at each of its four corners. One corner of the trellis was bare, though. Obviously that plant had not survived and the previous owners had not attempted to replace it. As it happened they had also planted wisteria along the rear of the garage. Unfortunately, this proved to be a bad location as the plants were pulling on the gutters, crawling under the eaves and even invading the air conditioning unit on the roof. Luckily, I didn’t have to throw out these wisteria vines, I just needed to move them to the trellis where they belonged in the first place.

Removing these rather large plants from the space between a sidewalk and the rear of the garage proved more difficult than I thought. Despite careful digging it was almost impossible to avoid damaging the roots since they had grown under the sidewalk itself. There was nothing to do but pull them out and try to keep as many roots as possible. Out of the 5 plants I ended up with 2 candidates for transplanting to the trellis.

Today, one plant is eagerly climbing up the previously bare trellis leg and heading for the light. I would guess that by next summer it will have nearly filled in the bare section on top of the trellis and mingled with the existing plants to create a cool shady spot to sit in on hot summer afternoons.

I happened across a few other vines the other day on the north side of the house. How they have survived this long I will never know. I already have plans to move these to better locations and expect even better results since they are in locations that make them easier to remove. Wish me luck!

Keep Digging!

Douglas