Plant Markers from Mini-blinds

I've been building up a little stockpile of "things that need to be planted" over the past few weeks.

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.

The Fairy Garden

In May of last year, I told you how I repurposed our old grill and made it into a planter on the back patio.

Since then, it's seemed that everything I planted in it has been doomed to die a slow death.  First, I think in the location we had it, it was getting full afternoon sun and, being metal, it was heating up too much and literally cooking the plants inside. 

So then I moved it into the far corner, by the bedroom window, where it didn't get any direct light at all, except for perhaps a short time when the setting sun touched it briefly.

I had a Pothos Ivy in there for a while -- the photo below was taken right after it was planted.  It looked great at first, but within a week or two it just lay there drooping and leaves were dying off  until finally I dug it out and planted it in a pot and put it on the little plant stand next to the grill.

Within a week, the Pothos Ivy had perked up, had new growth and was getting its marbled coloring back.

I had to face it, what had started out as a good idea--to turn an old grill into a planter--wasn't such a great idea after all.  You could even call it an Epic Fail.

So now, here I had this "planter" on the patio, complete with the trellis I made from the saplings we cut from the lot next door before it was cleared, and nothing would grow in it.

What to do?

It just so happened, on the way back from a visit to the doctor, that I stopped in to Plants for All Seasons and became entranced by the collection of Fairy Gardens they had on display.

It came to me that it would be the perfect solution to my problem.

Using the gardens I had seen as inspiration, I used pine cones as bushes in my fairy garden, along with some items purchased at Plants for all Seasons. 

Here's a close up of it at that point.

Perhaps I should have stopped there but I added some shells and gravel, another toadstool and some actual fairies.

Below you can see the finished fairy garden in close up. 

 Maybe I over did it, but I'm happy with it :-)  And even the sweet potato vine is coming back!
 

Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

Waste Not, Want Not ... Recycling in the Garden

One of my mother's popular sayings from my childhood, "Waste Not, Want Not", came back to me a recently as we were left with a circle of landscape stones around a pile of sawdust where our tree used to be.

I had been unhappy with the way our island bed was looking this summer. It was surrounded by a single course of landscape stone and I was forever having to pull up the St. Augustine that was poking up between the stones that the edger couldn't get to.  In addition, because we had originally laid the stones directly on the grass when creating the bed using a sort of modified "lasagna" method, as the grass underneath had died off, so the stones had sunk.

Evenutally, the stones almost seemed buried in the grass, and didn't present the nice edging that I envisioned for the bed.

So a couple of weeks ago, as I cast a disapproving eye over the mess the back garden had become, somewhere in the gloomy recesses of my mind, a lightbulb went on and I had an idea.
Why not recycle those stones and use them to start adding a second course of stone on to the island bed?

So that's what I did.  I'm thrilled with the result.  Even though it's not finished (need to make a trip or two to Lowe's to pick up more stones) it just makes the bed look complete.  I'm still dealing with bermuda grass coming up all over, but at least the St. Augustine isn't sticking up between all the stones like it was before.  Also, even when the lawn needs mowing, you can still see the stone border, instead of it being buried in the grass.

I keep finding myself walking around it, looking at it from all angles and admiring my work, lol.

 

Why I didn't think of making it two rows high in the first place, I have no idea. Now I just need to get more landscape stones to finish it off. 

I love it when my "bright ideas" work out right :-)

Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

Garden Craft Projects

Early last summer I posted about how Eric and I had snuck in to the vacant lot next door to us and lopped some saplings so we could use the wood in craft projects and, in essence, keep the spirit of the little thicket even though the thicket itself would be gone.

I never got around to showing you what we had done with some of the wood, so I thought I'd share a couple of photos with you.

Remember the old grill that we repurposed to a planter last summer?  Well I thought it might be nice to add a trellis of some sort to it.  So I used some of the saplings to build a rustic trellis.

At first, we had the planter by the dining room, but the plants in it really suffered when the sun came round to that side of the house.  So I moved it back against the bedroom window, where it gets more shade, so the plants aren't getting cooked every afternoon.  I think they like it much better.

The other little project completed so far is this macrame owl.  I was big into macrame back in the 70's and when we went back to England on vacation in May, I noticed mum still had the little brown owl towel holder I had made her.  

I also remembered a larger owl I had made that she used to have hanging outside.  I decided I had to make one of those for our patio.

Here he is.  The two branches are cut from one of the saplings from the thicket next door and he came out exactly the way I hoped he would.  Pretty good since I was going from a 40 yr old memory and didn't have a pattern! He's hanging over the outside light on the patio, out of the rain.

We've got plenty of wood left and my husband plans to make a platform bird feeder for me, similar to one my dad has in his garden. 

He hasn't given me a project completion date yet.... 


Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

The Old Grill Finds a New Life -- as a Planter!

 Last fall, as my husband cooked steaks on our grill, we realized that flame was coming out from underneath the grill - definitely not a good thing - and that it was time to retire that grill and get a new one.  

Once the new grill was on the patio and in use, we discussed what we could do with the old grill.  Among the suggestions was to take the guts out of it and somehow turn it into a planter.

Over the past couple of weeks, that's exactly what we did.


The gas tank had already been removed and traded in for a new one for the new grill, so Eric got right to work removing the old burner and everything else.  He told me that parts were rusted right through and we were lucky we didn't have an accident!


Once the innards were out, Eric cleaned up the grill and giving the interior a good coating of Rustoleum to protect against rust.

On the exterior, he used a spray paint which gives a stone effect. I really like it :-)

The new "planter" comes with built-in drainage holes, but of course, those had to be covered up somehow to keep the soil in.

I started by simply adding some shards of broken pottery over the holes.

And then added some coco matting in the bottom.

All that was left after that was to add soil and start planting!

I kept the plantings simple in shades of pink, with some vinca and petunias, as well as a dahlia. I added a couple of spiky dracena for texture.

The new planter is set on the side of the patio, next to the table and chairs. it's easily accessible, which is good. I have a feeling I'm going to have to monitor it carefully and make sure it doesn't dry out.  It's not very deep, especially the bottom tier, which is made from the lid of the original grill.


Still, I think it makes an attractive addition, and it's better than just tossing it out.

Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.