Acceptable Level of Damage

 For generations, gardeners and farmers have been talking about the "acceptable level of damage".   How much are you willing to share with the pests?  There is even a rhyme.

One for the mouse, one for the crow, one to rot, one to grow

Few of us would mind losing a tomato, or even a few ears of corn here and there.  But Nature has no self control and deer, racoons, squirrels even insects, will destroy an entire plant or crop with no thought for the future or sharing.  It always seemed stupid to me that Asparagus Beetles would work on an Asparagus patch year after year until they killed every last plant thus eliminating their own habitat.  I guess they are a bit like humans in that respect.

Yesterday morning when I came out the door the first thing I saw was some mulch disturbance.  Someone either stepped in the net or got a mouthful and pulled up the staple.  They moved on and the daylilies were safe!

Around the corner I saw hoofprints in the mulch edge and found that some of the Hosta and Coral Bells were trimmed.  The plants were also sprayed so they did not eat them all.  I went ahead and trimmed the rest of them off.  I enjoy the foliage more than the flowers on these anyway.

I took some time to clean up the wild daylilies (Tiger Lilies) along the front fence.  The deer got to these the end of May before I even started spraying.  Usually they don't want the hard, new buds and wait until they are plump and ready to open.  The early stems had time to dry all the way to the base which makes it possible to pull them out easily instead of cutting them.  There are still mid-season stems in there that are still green.

That's a lot of stems, but the border still looks nice.  Just think how nice it would have looked with twice as many blooms.  

I ordered some larger covers on Amazon to try for some of my free standing perennials to reduce the number of plants I have to spray.  It is nice when the plants are small and I can put the wire cloches over them and not worry about them at all for awhile.  These mesh covers are designed like little pup tents.

There are a few plants that they will fit over really slickly, especially the clump of Cheyenne Spirit Echinacea at the corner of the walkway that I pass by dozens of time each day.  It is in a vulnerable spot, and it is something that I enjoy very much.  Being able to set this cover over it each evening will ensure that I get to enjoy every bloom this season.

Cheyenne Spirit 2023

The covers have a front zipper which is meant for you to be able to reach in and harvest from a covered raised bed, but it make is convenient to rearrange taller stems like these Black Eyed Susans.  The covers are pinned down with earth staples and stack neatly on top of each other when removed.

One less thing to spray each night.

Elsewhere in the garden, my cucumbers are blooming.  This little leaf cutter bee arrived in a shipment from Crown Bees this week.  She spent all day with her face buried in a bloom.

Everyday Household Items for the Garden Shed - 2020 Edition

 

I have a lot of cleaning brushes lurking around the garden shed.  Everything from fingernail brushes to kitchen scrub brushes, bucket brushes, and bench brushes.  Then I realized what I really needed to clean my four inch pots was a  Toilet Bowl Brush.  This is just the right shape, size and stiffness.  It even works on 3 inch pots which sort of surprised me because I thought it might be too stiff to push into a 3 inch pot. And of course gallon pots.  But the best is the 4 inch pots.  Pot in one hand, brush in the other.  Rotate once or twice and anything and everything you would be getting off with a brush is off.  Why did I not think of this sooner?

I have a couple of cleaners in the garden shed.  For basic scrubbing I have Castile Soap .  For the counter top and windows and other hard surfaces I have Windex.  I have a simple spray bottle with Pine Sol and water to make yucky stuff smell clean.  I have a pump bottle of Germ-X for disinfecting pruning shears and hands.  But what I use a lot is my Armor All Cleaning Wipes.  These things really clean plastic and rubber very well and they leave a nice shine.  For one thing they keep my rain boots and garden clogs looking nice.  They polish up my glossy plastic resin planters that I spent a pretty penny on.  And when I get done with the string trimmer or leave blower, I wipe them down too.  Just about anything you invested a little money in (Hunter boots ain't exactly cheap) that you want to keep looking new deserves the ArmorAll treatment.

For years I've kept a small number of essentials right at the garden gate.  Usually a pair of kitchen shears and a kneeler of some sort.  An old dull knife comes in handy for harvesting if you've forgotten to bring a good one out.  A few pairs of gloves clothes-pinned to the fence to dry. And usually a collection of different hose attachments from a watering wand to a misting nozzle for delicate seedlings.  Due to being relatively weather resistant and in constant use they have collected at the gate post in an untidy mound.  The shears are on a nail on the side of the post, but that didn't work for everything. I know some people put a mail box in their garden to keep tools, but I wanted something that would hold my big blue kneeling pad and watering wands not necessarily my trowels and such.  So I came up with this Wire Basket that hangs on the wire fence and is just what I needed.

I am always seeing people ask what kind of markers last the longest.  The answer to that queston is these metal markers.  But I get tired of writing them up with the special carbon pencil, cleaning the name off with steel wool, collecting them and keeping them corralled for the winter.  In fact the last time I used them was when I was expecting the Master Gardener class for a garden tour.  I figured that it would be helpful if they could read things for themselves instead of having to ask.   I don't use a lot of markers anymore.  I plant things in the position that seems logical to me (which is sort of like storing things in the first place you would look for them), and before long the plants are mature enough that I can pretty reliably tell the difference between tomato varieties or even pea and bean varieties.  

What I really want is a marker that will get me through spring transplanting and then go away.  These good old fashioned Tongue Depressors are just the ticket.  I write on them with a Sharpie.  They do really well marking pots and I can give them away freely that way.  Some of them I put in the garden and by the end of the season, they go into the compost pile with the plant waste or just get raked into the soil.  Nothing irritates me more than a plastic tag floating around the garden.  Problem solved.

A good vegetable brush.  This isn't technically IN the garden but it is very closely related.  When I was studying up on how to prepare sweet potatoes, one of the warnings was to make sure they are very clean and to not spoil your sweet potato pie with garden grit.  This is really true of all our root vegetables.  So I read Amazon reviews for awhile and settled on this handle-less coconut fibre brush.  Its quite a nice little brush and it tucks away in the corner of the dish drying rack, out of sight.

And that is a list of my garden tool improvements for this year.  I'm always looking for a better way to clean and store things.  Someday I may get it right all at once.

Let's Talk Row Covers

Tis row cover season.  Frost cover season.  Take it off and put back it on season.

I have my tomato plants in the cold frame.  The old and battered polycarbonate panels combined with a 50% sun shade allow me to harden off the seedlings.  I have to regulate how far open the lid is which regulates both the maximum temperature, and the amount of wind.  I always hope that the sunny days will be on my days off so I can adjust to conditions every couple of hours.  Satisfaction is defying the weatherman's prediction and knowing you got your cold frame set up right when you left for the office at 7am.

I am still baby-sitting the Chilly Pear tree.  It has now had its cover off more than on, but we are expecting cold nights this week, so it will be an on and off week.  The tree has done remarkably well under near blizzard conditions.  This past Friday we stopped by Tractor Supply, and they had a batch of fully leafed out ornamental trees in their parking lot that were frost burned all to heck.  That made me feel better.

I have lettuce babies and some herb seeds in pots in the garden.  I've been regulating their protection also with a plastic storage tub.

This not only keeps the soil warmer, it also is a humidity dome
preventing the seeds from drying out as they germinate

And then there are the Cauliflowers, Broccoli and Brussels Sprouts.  Last year I planted them in the Strawberry Bed which has a framework over it making it easy to apply a row cover with clothes pins.  This year there are Strawberries back in there so the cole crops had to go into the main garden.  If I don't want to be fighting little green worms every day for the next four or five months (and I certainly don't), it is imperative that the cole crops be covered from day one to keep the cabbage moths off.  Additionally, we have been having pretty stiff winds for at least a portion of every day and the young seedlings, which despite being raised with a fan on them daily, would still be dehydrated, battered and even twisted off.  The row cover buffers the wind.

There are a lot of products of different materials and dimensions out there that are marketed for supporting the row covers and building tunnels.  Additionally, I've seen a lot of examples on the internet of people supporting tunnels with bent PVC pipes.  This hasn't actually been a time where you can just wander into Home Depot and start bending PVC pipes to see which will work for this application.  So, with the challenge presented to my clever husband, I found that we had a substantial roll of leftover black water pipe hanging around.  I knew I wanted the hoops to be about six feet from end to end, which matches my existing bent pipe structures and row cover material.  Not only the strawberry covers, but this section shown below can be moved anywhere in the garden and is useful for either protecting lettuce in the fall or new plants in the spring.

This hoop house can be moved over the nursery plants at night to protect from late frost.

I have collected a lot of frost covers and remnants of frost covers over the years.  They typically come in widths of six feet, ten feet or twelve feet.  The lengths vary from ten feet to fifty feet (and they are not easy to cut neatly).  The frost protection varies from "summer weight" which rates about 28 degrees and will protect from a light frost to "garden quilts" which protect down to 24 degrees.  The thickness also affects the light transmission.  Summer wight allows 85% of light transmission, and the heaviest of the quilts allow 60%.  There are also shade cloths that block at least 50% of the sun.

Summer weight is what I want to use for most of the season, but it is easily torn and doesn't hold up well to battering winds and heavy rains (or hail or snow load).  After a few years of exposure to UV rays and other weather conditions it becomes even more fragile.  With potentially violent weather in March and April I do best with the heavier garden quilts for starters.

I attempt to keep all of this stuff sorted out by writing the dimensions and frost protection in a corner of the cloth with black marker.  And this stuff is AWFUL to fold neatly.  You think folding a fitted bedsheet is tough, just try wrestling with a 10' x 20' piece of eiderdown on a windy day.  So once you get it folded and put away, you are not going to want to unfold it just to see what size it is!

I had been planning to drive re-rod into the soil inside the sides of the beds, but my husband convinced me to drill into the wood itself to set the base.  The hole is not particularly tight on the rod.  I will be able to pull it out with the aid of locking pliers.  The hole is four inches deep.

The half inch re-rod slips inside half inch pipe firmly but easily.  The taller your rod, the more upright the sides of your hoops will be.

Now lets talk fasteners.  The catalogs which sell row covers don't present any clues as to how you are supposed to hold down the row covers which I think is a missed marketing opportunity.  Why not sell all of the hardware people will need for the cover/support combination they are selling?  Heck, even write one of those helpful articles for the information portion of the website to take the guess-work out of it.  Yes, you can weigh them down with rocks or poles or even bury the sides in the soil.  You could use earth staples.  But you are going to ruin your row cover pretty quick, and it will not be easily moved for watering or weeding.

I spent the winter months surfing the net for examples and products, and using what experience I have to imagine how all this would work easily and hold up, stay secure yet be easy to remove for watering or weeding, not to mention harvesting.  These half inch Bootstrap Farmer clamps are pricey, but brilliant.  The one down-side is that they require a bit of force to remove, and you may end up tearing a lightweight cloth if you have to repeatedly remove them.

SOURCE

 There are less expensive versions of PVC clamps. 

You could use scraps of garden hose.

Tekton makes a variety of sizes of strong spring clamps.  We have a bunch of them accumulated around the garden shed.  The 3/4 inch size work perfectly on the 1/2 inch water pipe.  And they are much less costly than the Bootstrap clamps above.

SOURCE

The Earth Staples, which I have used in the past for pinning down covers, actually work brilliantly for gathering and containing the ends of the fabric as long as you are placing them in firm soil. 

The earth staple has a hole to pass the end of the row cover through and pin it down

With a six foot length of pipe, spanning three feet of bed, I knew from my existing frames that the ends would be almost two feet tall.  I needed enough material to drop two feet and then insert into whatever I'm pinning it with.  My beds are 12 feet long (outer dimension) so I needed a length of fabric at least 18 feet long. 

12+2+2+slack=18 feet

This worked out perfectly.  Thankfully, I had an existing row cover that length so I could try it before I ordered fresh material for this season.  It isn't particularly expensive to replace.

So this is my finished row cover.  I can loosen the ends, slide the covers up one side of the ribs, and clamp them up giving me easy access to the plants.  I used the blue Bootstrap Farmer clamps (which I already had) on the ridge to stabilize the tunnel.  One downside of the black Tekton clamps is that the jaws are a little rough and can snag the fabric.  The blue clamps do not have the problem.  I am going to try placing some neoprene squares under those clamps to cushion the fabric.

The pipes are placed every 40 inches.  I had originally planned five supports instead of four, but we ended up drilling into the beds and there is already a re-rod drilled into the center of each side.  I would have had to shift everything off center and the four ribs seem sufficient for summer.  If you were extending the season into the fall with a chance of snow weighing down the cover, closer together would be better.

These covers also look neat and tidy.  I expect they will hold up well.  The covers will need to be replaced every few years, and if the pipe needs to be replaced, that will be simple to do.

Garden Truths

Spring is the time of year when new gardeners are just starting out and they have a million questions that some of us old pros find either laughable or just plain aggravating because we've heard them so many times.   Of course there is no such thing as a dumb question (yeah right), so on the Facebook gardening pages the same old questions are answered over and over.  Day in day out.  And never more than now during the Covid-19 quarantine when the entire free world has been told to stay home for weeks if not months and not empty the grocery stores over every edible crumb.  Rant over.

Gardening suddenly became extremely popular so here we go again with some basic gardening truths that may help some beginners.

Gardening Truth #1.
Forget the weed block.  Weeds don't come up from below.  They blow in on the wind or they creep in from the edges.   Now if you just put down weed block and make it into a walkway then it works fine.  But as soon as you put soil or mulch on top of the weed block, the soil grows weeds.  Someone has made a fortune selling that useless product to gardeners.  Save your money and a ton of aggravation and just don't use it in the first place.

The one proper use of weed block would be underneath walkway material.

I call B.S. on this one.  Creeping Charlie was never so easily defeated.
There would still be vines even if the leaves were burned.  Someone cleaned that last one up.  And left long enough the Creeping Charlie would come up over the edges.

Gardening Truth #2.
Early is not always better.  Whomever thought of selling carrot seedlings to newbie gardeners is a cruel bastard.  They always grow in a knot (or whatever shape you leave them in when you stuff their taproot into the soil) and look like they're diseased.  Some plants do not do well being forced into an early season by growing under lights.  Be patient.  Direct seed your carrots.  And sweet corn. ... and bush beans.  You will need more plants than you could ever start on your window sill if you want to make a meal.

Gardening Truth #3.
There is no substitute shortcut for weeding.  (See Gardening Truth #1)  You can reduce the quantity of weeds over time by carefully managing your soil and staying on top of things.  But there is no store-bought product that can give better results than simply bending over and pulling it up.  Seriously.  Besides, its good exercise.

Gardening Truth #4
Don't Zone Out.  Know your gardening zone.  It takes less time to type the question into Google than it does to ask someone and have them tell you to type it into Google.  Because it is zip code specific.  And even then, you should look closely at the map because elevation can alter your zone just a bit.  Knowing your zone and reading your seed packet will save you the disappointment of planting too early or the frustration of having to cover everything when there is a freeze warning.

USDA Plant Hardiness Map

Gardening Truth #5
Wrap that rascal.  The best way to discourage or destroy pests is to starve them out.  Interrupt their life cycle.  And the only way you are going to starve them out is to block their access to your plants.  And the most effective and least invasive way to do that is with a barrier.  Fence them out.  Cover your plants.  That way you won't even have to identify your bad bug and figure out how to fight it.  How do you keep moths from laying eggs on your cole crops?  cover them.  How do you keep birds from eating your berries?  cover them.  How do you keep Japanese beetles from turning your bean leaves to Swiss cheese?  cover them.

So those are my responses to two weeks of Facebook questions asked by enthusiastic beginners who are trying to find the shortcuts.  I'm not saying there are no shortcuts. Covering all of your vulnerable plants is a shortcut.  But gardening does require consistent dedication, some work and a lot of trial and error.

An Ounce of Prevention

Over the years I've learned a few simple gardening methods which make gardening so much more enjoyable.  They fall under "risk avoidance".  There are problems you can avoid with good planning and never have to deal with them at all.  When I see people searching for a solution for a problem I just want to tell them how they could have avoided it completely.  Some things cannot be fixed.  But an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

The answers that the Gardening Public usually throw at the poor people is "Try Epsom Salts"  or "Water more".  Well, I don't know what your gardening problem is, but unless it is a magnesium deficiency in your soil, Epsom Salts will probably not cure it.  Just sayin'.  Buying a good old fashioned real live paper gardening book wouldn't hurt.

Problem: Bitter Cucumbers
Solution: Choose varieties that are gynoecious (produces only female flowers) and/or parthenocarpic (produces fruit without fertilization).  My favorite variety is Bristol.  Apparently, bitter cucumbers come from male pollinated fruit.  And it seems to be made worse by inconsistent watering.  I buy my seeds from Johnny's Seeds and they always label their varieties well. Also, when in doubt - water.  Sometimes it can be difficult to decide whether you should water or not.  If you aren't sure - at least water the cucumbers.  And the bush beans.  More on that later.

Problem: Powdery Mildew on Squash
Pre-Emptive Solution: Choose varieties with high resistance.   This usually means planting F1 hybrids, not heirlooms or fancy foreign varieties, but at what price sanity?  My favorite variety many years running is Dunja.  You can also plant backups a week or two later and keep them in an isolated area.  Summer Squash and Cucumbers have a fairly short season.  Better to have two or even three short seasons in a row than to try to keep worn out vines going past their prime.

Problem: Squash Vine Borer and Cucumber Beetles
Pre-Emptive Solution: Plant later in the season.  A co-worker told me that his father taught him to never plant a cucumber plant before the first week of June.  That way when the Cucumber Beetles hatch in the spring, there are no yellow flowers to attract them.  This apparently works for Squash Vine Borer too.  I only see the SVB moths in May.  I don't seed zucchini until June.  By then the moths seem to have moved on.  And besides - good things come to those who wait

Problem: Bell Peppers not Ripening
Pre-Emptive Solution:  Plant them in large containers. Do yours take forever to ripen?  They do in my zone 5b.  If the plants are still going strong when frost is imminent, move the containers to the patio and/or cover them when frost threatens.  You can extend your season several weeks.

Problem: Stubby Carrots
Pre-Emptive Solution: Is your soil too hard and not tilled deeply enough to give you long, flawless carrots?  Containers and loose potting mix is the answer.  People who grow perfect carrots for fair exhibits actually use PVC tubes and sand.  THAT will give you a long straight carrot!

Problem: Curly Green Beans
Pre-Emptive Solution: Bush beans can be tricky.  For one thing, they aren't always bushy.  Know this in advance.  Some harbor secret ambitions to be pole beans.  And being broad leaved, they are susceptible to wilting in the afternoon heat.  These things combined mean that your bush beans may soon be sprawling all over the ground under their own weight and the abuse of the sun.  And all of this up and down business means that they will continually stub the bean ends into the ground.  The result is curly beans.  And I like straight beautiful beans.  And even worse, the tips touching the ground can lead to rot.  And then it's ruined. The way around this is to always plant your bush beans (or at least your new varieties until you know how they'll act) on pea trellis just in case they want to climb.  And keep them well watered.  Problem solved.

Problem: Cabbage Moths

Pre-Emptive Solution: Cover your crop.  Whether it is broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts or kale, your crop will be prettier and much more successful if you keep those little white butterflies out of it.  This means either covering it with a floating row cover or some kind of wire mesh.  Or both.  The wire above is just large enough to allow a moth through.  I know because I found one trapped in there.  But it will keep off 99% of them and discourage them from laying their eggs that turn into those little green worms you find in your broccoli.

Problem: Cold Soil Temperatures

Pre-Emptive Solution: Solarize your soil.  Many varieties require quite warm soil to germinate seeds.  In my case it's the Gotta Have It sweet corn.  If your soil is not warm enough you will have dismal germination rates.  Many people use black plastic, but if you can get your hands on some polycarbonate greenhouse panels, those things REALLY do the trick.  And they last longer than sheet plastic.  I don't know about you but I'm not real fond of folding up dirty, wet plastic.  It disintegrates after a couple of years anyway.

Problem: Losing fruit to insects, pests or fungus
Pre-Emptive Solution: Bagging Fruit.  I have learned to always bag my apples.  You don't have to bag them with plastic, you can bag them with paper bags, or mesh bags or even sections of pantyhose.  But the idea is to keep the bugs and the airborne disease and the deer noses off your apples.  Or any other round fruit you might be growing.  This make a HUGE difference in the appearance of my apple crop and so far has kept the deer and squirrels from eating them.

Problem: Bird Damaging Seedlings
Pre-Emptive Solution: Wire cloches.  I buy mine from Gardeners.com and I find them useful for several problems.  Over the winter they stay over my Primroses to keep the rabbits from nibbling them down before they bloom in early spring.  I also use them for patches of crocuses which the deer always seem to eat just before they bloom.  Then they get used for any tender transplants such as sunflowers, pumpkins, zucchini or even beans.  There is something about these particular seedlings that makes the crows just want to snip them off.  You can also use dollar store wire wastebaskets. I like the aesthetics of the cloches, but if I had a lot of plants to cover I would have no problem using the wastebaskets.  If you are worried about pests knocking them over, pin them to the soil with two Easy-Out Earth Staples and they won't be going anywhere.

So those are some of the techniques I use every year to avoid problems.  I'm always learning new ones.  Maybe some of these will be helpful to you.

Everyday Household Items for the Garden Shed

Our garden isn't very far from the house, but we've learned that keeping the garden shed well stocked saves trips in and out of the house which in turn saves both time and cleaning.  We have a refrigerator in the shed which we keep stocked with water and other beverages and also has room to temporarily store produce.  Maybe I've thought of a few things you haven't, but I'd love to hear what your essentials are.

• Spray on Sunscreen: It is so much easier to spray on sunscreen and reapply throughout the day if you have dirty hands or gloves on.  SPF 50 applied hourly allows me to stay out in full sun for 6 hours or more without any burn.
• Hand Sanitizer:  Even if you have soap and water, if you have been handling blighted tomato leaves, sanitizer is a good extra precaution.
• Bactine: for those scrapes and cuts that you don't want to run into the house and doctor right this minute.
• Castile Soap: I keep a wall mounted pump dispenser mounted on the post next to the garden house spigot so I can wash up any time I need.
• Paper Towels or Scotts Rags in a Box:  I almost always have one tucked into my shirt somewhere.  Good for wiping faces, blowing noses or actual cleaning.
• Chlorox: for disinfecting scissors, reusable tomato ties etc.
• Avon's Skin So Soft:  Nothing repels deer flies any better.  
• Technu Extreme Poison Ivy Scrub: for those times you think you got into it despite precautions.
• Mineral Oil: for oiling tool handles
• Plastic Sandwich Bags: for bagging fruit on the tree
• Beer: for making slug traps (also used tin pie plates)
• Table Salt: for salting slugs
• Knife Block: I picked this up for about six bucks at an outlet store.  I use the knives for cutting broccoli etc. The kitchen shears also come in handy

• Apron: If you really aren't dressed for hauling around a wet dirty pot but you don't have time to change into mud clothes
• Nitril Gloves: for really wet, muddy jobs.  These fit inside regular cloth gloves
• Plastic Bowls or Colanders: for picking peas or beans.  I picked up a whole stack at a church rummage sale
• Measuring Cups: for measuring concentrated fertilizer or for flicking beetles into
• Funnel: for refilling quart spray bottles with something nasty like deer repellent
• Wooden Clothes Pins: for pinning on row covers or blanching cauliflower
• Band-Aids: for covering blisters or repairing fingers

Sometimes I think the everyday household products out number the actual gardening products and tools.

Surviving Greenhouse Season

Greenhouse Season, the most wonderful time of the year, is finally here!  In Zone 5 anyway.  Those of you in Zones 6-7 or higher are already planted and maybe even harvesting.    Those of you who got snowed on this week - you have my sympathies.  We have had one of those Mays where people are having to put off planting.  We've only had two light frosts, but the ground has been wet, and the sun hasn't shone and overall it was hard to get into the spirit.  Also, the plants are behind schedule.  There just hasn't been any sun and things are not growing well.  Up until this past week, things have looked pretty lack-luster.    But now it's Game On!

Last weekend the Home Depot garden center was a mad-house.  People were buying mulch and potting mix and hanging baskets by the truckload.  I slipped in quietly to get a few supplies while hubby bought some bolts at the other end of the store.  I retreated to the car parked in the lot which was even more frightening.  I prefer to do my shopping during quieter times.  In fact, I have a very well thought out, tried and true method for surviving greenhouse season.  Each year I spend about $200 on annuals and some replacement perennials.  I frequent six greenhouses, and check out three or four more.   Even WalMart and KMart can have some unique, hard to find items.  But they might kill them before you get there.

Me at four years old in our geranium house

Since I was practically born in a greenhouse and spent many hours behind the counter as well as shopping I consider myself to be a bit of an expert.  So here is my advice:

1. Make a List
2. Conduct Reconnaissance Missions
3. Bring Appropriate Footwear
4. Get a Cheap Tarp
5. Bring a Box
6. Read the Tag
7. Buy a Spare
8. Take Notes

#1. Make a List:  how are you supposed to navigate this field of choices without a detailed plan?  Everyone has their own method of keeping track and mine might be a little excessive.  I keep a spreadsheet with a tab for each year so I can refer to last year's list and make changes as I go.  It is important to keep your numbers in individual plants, not in packs because if you need 24 marigolds and you mark down four packs because last year you bought four 6-packs, you may be surprised when you come home with 4-packs and only have 16 marigolds.  This is the voice of experience speaking.....

#2. Conduct Reconnaissance Missions:  Each year I am frustrated by the ever changing national gardening trends as well as the individual grower's reactions to the market.  One of my favorite greenhouses used to have two large houses full of individually potted Calibrochoa, Wave petunias and Supertunias.  This year they potted them all up in their own combination pots or baskets leaving only a few dozen flats of leftover singles to choose from.  Combination pots do me no good.  Even if I could get the monsters home easily and transplant the plants without damage, I'd soon have a huge inventory of unwanted large containers.  But that doesn't mean you can't find what you want at another greenhouse.  That's why I like to make the rounds first and rework my list before I start back at the beginning and start buying. 

#3. Bring Appropriate Footwear:  I conduct most of my buying and reconnaissance during my lunch hours.  Greenhouses deal in soil and water.  When you mix soil and water you get mud.  Some greenhouses have nice wide concrete paths, but even those can have low spots.  I keep a pair of garden clogs in the trunk of my car so I can slip them on instead of having to clean mud out of the treads of my good office shoes.

#4. Get a Cheap Tarp:  A trunk load of plants can make a real mess.  Dropped soil, petals, leaves and water don't have to be cleaned out if you just keep a cheap plastic tarp handy.  Line your trunk before you load it, then just pull the tarp out and shake it when you unload.  Voila'!  Clean car.

#5. Bring a Box:  We used to always provide boxes to our customers.  In the evenings Dad would take the truck to one of the local convenience stores and load up all of the boxes that soda shipped in.  They were the perfect size.  When we ran out of those, we did have custom boxes that we purchased flat and stapled together as needed.  This was less expensive than letting our customers run off with all of our plastic trays.  Modern growers don't seem to care.  And that, my friends, is why our oceans are full of floating plastic.  We also used to plant in peat pots and terracotta, but I digress.  Sure, if you are buying three full flats of marigolds, take the trays.  You may be able to use them at home if they're any good.  I have even let the containers influence my buying if I, for instance, need a couple more really good gallon pots to fill out my inventory at home... But if you are picking up two packs of this and a few pots of that, it's more convenient to walk around with your own box.  The tops of copy paper boxes are perfect for this.  I always have one or two in my car.

#6.  Read the Tag: You can probably skip this step if you are buying the same variety year after year.  But my neighbors get caught out now and then because they can't remember there are more than one kind of yellow marigold.  Janie, Safari, and Inca are very different critters.  Janie gets 6-8" high, Safari 10-12" high (fact: that's potentially twice as tall as the other one :/ ) and the old style Incas would be 18" or more.  And it doesn't hurt for an old pro to freshen up on the facts now and then either.

#7.  Buy a Spare:  I've always said that if you want to be bold, plant a pair of something but if you are a real risk taker, plant a whole row.  Nature laughs at symmetry.  One or more plant will either be eaten by wildlife or lack the will to live.  Also, no matter how closely you scrutinize a flat of annuals, you cannot guarantee that every cell has a plant in it or that every plant will be vigorous and healthy.  I usually buy a spare of everything and pot them up for use later.  If nothing else, you can use them to fill in bare spots late in the season when early plants are beginning to die back or lose color.

For instance, these three spare plants later went to fill a bare spot near our front steps, and due to their special care in the spares area, they far out preformed all of the similar plants I put in during the earlier planting season

And finally, #8. Take Notes:  If you potted up a beautiful combination pot that you would like to duplicate in the future, write down how many of what went into it.  Take notes of which greenhouse had the exact mix of marigolds you prefer so you won't have to go searching or miss out on what you want.  Keep track of your costs so you can budget the right amount next year.  Add all of this to your list (See #1) and you are all ready to start again next year.

HAPPY PLANTING!