Namely, some bulbs and roots such as Liatris, Echinacea purpurea and Rudbeckia.
I'd been putting it off because planting these also involved doing some serious weeding in the island beds. But I've been tackling the weeding a little at a time when I get home from work in the evenings.
There are about a zillion seedlings coming up and I'm getting to the point now that I think I can reliably determine which are weeds and which aren't. Some I'm letting grow a bit more before I yank some perfectly good zinnias or whatever out of the ground!
Another reason I had been putting off doing the planting was that I didn't have any plant markers.
Then I remembered a trick I had been given by Ursula, who used to blog with us on Houston Grows a few years ago. I have since lost touch with her, but this great idea for plant markers came back to me and I decided to do it this year.
It involves an inexpensive mini-blind -- this one cost me $3.25 in Walmart. All I had to do was snip the threads and remove the hardware and then I could trim each slat into three or four sections, depending on how long I wanted my markers to be.
One end is trimmed into a point to make it easy to poke in the ground -- et voila! Instant plant markers. All you have to do is write on them with a Sharpie and you're all set.
I've got enough plant markers to last me a few seasons at least :-)
So I spent a pleasant morning trimming my plant markers and then planting the roots. And I finished just in time. And just as I was cleaning up and putting my tools away, it started raining. Not a deluge, but enough to water in my new plantings.
Have a great weekend everyone!
Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.
5 comments:
This is a very useful tip, and Ursula was full of them, wasn't she? I repurposed an old mini blind some years ago and made a lifetime supply of plant markers from it. They do work!
I thought I had done the same, Dorothy, but I searched high and low and could not find them. So now I've made myself another life time's worth. I'll probably find the old ones now!
Under $4 sounds like a steal. I need to try that. WHat will you use to mark. I have found indelible markers don't last. I wonder if a graphite pencil will work-only on metal though and I suspect your blinds are plastic.
What a great idea. We had a set of mini blinds left in the attic from the previous owners when we moved. How long does the sharpie writing last on the markers?
Its been a few years since i used these, but If I recall, the Sharpie lasted at least until the seeds came up. I also used a label maker before, and stuck that on the markers. That worked well too - just remembered it!
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