is it Spring yet??

I have lots of plans to fix all the mistakes I made last year lol

Hey Lennie, what mistakes did you make last year? Tell all!

lol oh boy where to start.....I put 3 clematis vines around my mailbox (each one different) thinking if ONE grew I'd be lucky. All 3 have grown, but you can really only actually see 2 of them, one is buried but a flower manages to poke through when it blooms. Then I planted coreopsis & agastache there, too,all bunched up in the middle of the area and last summer it just looked messy. There are pretty stepping stones in there that aren't even visible.
My foundation beds are bare...I left them half finished when I started a new job at the end of summer (WHY can't I be independently wealthy??) and I can't stand the sight of them now that the snow is gone. And I stupidly lined up shrubs like little soldiers. I realize I need to group them a little more artistically. And I need some evergreens in there, and some color. I have plenty of room, I at least made the area very big & deep, plenty of room to mess up haha.
I also made a rock garden with too many rocks that look too arranged. Hey maybe we should have a Garden Don'ts section, like some of the fashion mags, we could post pictures of what NOT to do lol

At least everything didn't die. I have seen that to many times on DG. Move a shrub, take out a few rocks it will be fine. Spring isn't even here yet so there is plenty of time to get things done. Don't be disheartened look on the bright side. My next door neighbor gave me a yellow bell last year it has a few tiny little blooms on it. Hers is well established and is blooming lkie crazy. I am just glad that mine is still alive. My oldest grandson says I can grow anything. I just wish that were true but I'm not giving up. I can't wait to get outside and dig in the dirt.

No worries, all mistakes are worth learning from. LOL :) I'm with you guys, I can't wait to dig!!!! Hubby is so lucky, give me a bucket of dirt & I'm the happiest girl in the world.

thanks guys! I HOPE everything is still alive , I think so! I'm a little more high maintenance than you Summer, I need dirt AND chocolate lol Smokey I had my husband drive me 30 minutes to my sister's place and load up rocks to lug home.....I took as many as he was willing to lift & carry...I plan on making a shrub border along the property line, so I can push some rocks over there....I saw some pictures with trees, shrubs, and well placed rocks that looked nice. If I could just follow a garden plan & not change stuff, it would be fine. Hey I do the same thing with recipes, I guess I like to experiment.

Gardening is a process.You will never be satisfied.You will have many failures and successes.You will always be learning.You will never be bored.No garden ever looked as good as it will the next year.Have fun,Edge

Have been gardening for about 20 years; perennial gardening quite intensively for last ten years. Am sure the worst mistake I have made, is planting plants that I subsequently learned were invasive. Fortunately have moved to another house since then.
Think the worst plant I met early was crown vetch. Leave little bits behind in the soil and you've got lots more a year or two later. The worst plant I met later (in other peoples gardens) was goutweed, which is a very deep rooted aggressive spreader.
Mind you, as edgeoftheworld said of gardening, you're learning all the time. A lot of this learning turns out to be by trial and error. The same plant can be fine in one location and decidedly not in another.

Mother Nature teased us with temps in the high 60's for a few weeks...today we are supposed to get 2-4 inches of snow. Like you, I am so ready to get my hands in the dirt!

Last year was my first attempt at gardening. I bought alot of plants and flowers that I thought were pretty. I spent alot of time putting them in 'just the right place'. As the season went on, I found out that all my plants and flowers were basically the same heighth and even worse, I had Full Sun Plants planted in Full Shade. In some spots, I had my taller plants and flowers in the front and my shorter plants in the back of the beds.

One of the worst things that I did...when I would go to plant something new...not knowing what I was doing of course...I dug up my tulip bulbs. This year, I have one little tulip left.

On the bright side, I had two planting seasons last summer...lol. I had to replant alot of things...mainly the full sun plants that I had in full shade. I guess I got a double dose of first year experience.

Like everyone else though, as new as I am at gardening, I LOVE it and I can't wait to get back into this black rich dirt here in my yard!

Sunny – I’m with ya on the invasive thing. 1st lesson for me was with Viola / J. Jump Ups, they were so cute but turned out to be little gremlins!! 2nd and latest lesson, Lambs Ear – I’ve pulled & tilled (about beat me to death) without success. I’m trying not to round up the bed so I’ve laid out newspapers topped with pine needles to hopefully snuff them out. Ya know, it’s funny how the invasive mistakes always happen in places were you don’t want them. :)

Hi summer_girl
Have had to get rid of lambs' ear myself - interesting - it is not difficult to pull and dig up here. Sounds like you've got better growing conditions for it there!
Only have johnny-jump-ups around cottage parking lot. Not a problem; well away from gardens (several hundred miles!), but they sure can seed around.
Newspapers with pine needles seems an idea. I know that black polythylene sheeting on the ground (or landscape fabric, I assume), over 6? months should also do the trick.
I've never used Roundup. Ultra cautious. A friend of mine (whom I'm always referring to) has a quarter acre well known garden in our town. He's the most knowledgable horticulturalist I've ever heard or met. He uses Roundup for weeds with running roots and emphasizes how safe it is, if used properly. I'm sure you know some/all of this, but repeating the story: Roundup kills all plants (including the lawn) that it's sprayed (or gets tracked) on (onto), so you have to cover up adjacent plants with up-turned pots or the like. The Roundup goes through the weed (from, I believe, the leaves). It won't get to any part of the plant that has been severed (i.e cut off by a spade/tiller). The huge advantage with something like Roundup, is that the chemical involved breaks down in contact with soil and is then harmless. If you get Roundup on yourself (boots or gloves) or a good plant, all you need is a ready bucket of "slurry" (earth/clay in water). Slosh this on the affected parts and the chemical is neutralized. Ecologically sound. Safe. Don't think the Rounduped weeds should end up in a compost heap (?).
I have a particular running weed (don't know what it is yet) in one bed. I took the occasion to dig up and divide the culver's root, it ran through. If I did not succeed in eliminating all of this weed last year, I may (on a windless day) use roundup for the first time!
Lots of sympathy.
Sunny

Hi NoGreenThumbnTN,
Sure we've all been there and all done the same, or worse. I still haven't resolved the problem of digging up bulbs when planting perennials, dividing them or working the soil. Have found that just putting them back in the ground, at the time, seems to work.
I do think that, in hands-on gardening, even if someone feels they know (or other people feel they know) a lot, that person still can't get away from trial and error learning and learning on the job.
Still, like you, I can't wait to get back to gardening. In my case, it's heavy clay. Good stuff if you work it! Relevant word here is "work"! As you realize, gardening is definitely not an armchair activity.
Sunny

Of all my life lessons learned on gardening,here is my number 1.All ground cover plants should be outlawed.You can't keep it under control.It's a nightmare to get rid off.Even if you like it,eventually you get tired off it.It has taken me years to remove it from my yard.It would be easier to move away.It has always amazed me that the stuff is expensive to buy.I know in its proper place it can work.Just not on my property,thank you very much.NEVER,NEVER,again will I plant it.Edge

Edge is right.
Well said.
Sunny

Hmm. I have to wonder what y'all have been planting that treated you that way! It sure has not been my experience..... Just to confuse things here. ;-)

"Ground cover" is another one of those terms that means sort of what we decide for it to mean, they are all plants, and IMO each one has its place, somewhere........ I myself would (probably) never plant English Ivy, having spent way too many hours trying to get it out from around huge trees it was killing, so I do know not everything is benign especially in the wrong place, but I have also attempted to create patches of Irish and Scotch Mosses, of chamomile, of -- oh heck and darn! I am not remembering the name of this one I can see clear as daylight ! -- well, etc. -- and had them not take hold the way I wanted. I personally love Johnny Jump-Ups and never imagined anyone would find those invasive. So very much has to do with conditions and location. Not to mention personal preference.

I surely do agree some plant material sold as ground cover seems quite pricey......

~~ Kyla

I agree, some groundcovers are nice and not aggressive (although which ones those are can vary depending on your climate). It's the fast spreading ones that tend to be problematic--you get enticed to buy them because you want quick coverage, but then they eat up your yard. But there are slower growing groundcovers that are perfectly well behaved, you just have to be a bit more patient waiting for them to fill in.

Hi Kyla
Totally agree with you, we should be more precise.
Just looked up "ground cover" in Wikipedia. As you say it's almost anything. The list includes: lantana and gazania (useful and well behaved annuals here) and several of our widely used perennials, including shastra daisy (clump forming, never seeding, never running). At the other extreme, kudzu (I go to Florida) was included in the same list. Again, I agree we should be more specific.
It would seem to make sense to restrict the term "ground cover", with regard to plants, to plants that grow (quickly) to cover large areas of ground. Such plants would be tough and spread vigorously by runners, seeding, or both. They're, therefore, going to be hard to get rid of (Edge's and my nightmare). I mentioned crown vetch and goutweed above. They both take over and cover large areas (here) quickly. They're actually also sold as perennials, here, with no warning to unsuspecting gardeners. I agree using the term 'ground cover' is so confused, we should forget it.
Nobody could disagree re conditions and location: what's an annual up north, may be a perennial down south: what runs on sandy soil, may be much better behaved on clayey soil: etc.
My preference is that of a perennial gardener: johnny-jump-ups are too undisciplined/unpredictable for perennial gardens (at least the kind I do) which need a succession of blocks of color. Think you need a northern climate for this type of gardening.The height of the garden rises through the growing season as later perennials replace earlier ones. I also assume you would'nt see the johnny-jump-ups by the time they flowered here.
Certainly personal preference comes into gardening. I like all colors of perennial flowers, but I have a predisposition for blue (any blue: gentian blue, forget-me-not blue, powdery white blue, lavender blue). As somebody who likes to think they garden with their head, rather than their heart, this bothers me!
Keep questioning,
Sunny

Well, good points there. And your mentioning kudzu (*shudder*) makes me remember pennywort! which is all over the place in coastal NC where I was living for quite a while -- I believe it was imported by some well meaning soul in order to help stabilize the dunes or something; at least that's the story I heard. Very difficult to control and it is everywhere now.....

(Kudzu, btw, is an herbal medicinal in its native zone..... can't recall what it has been used for but it does make the lists of herbal materia medica. Heck, even pennywort is probably a nice pretty little and even perhaps useful plant wherever it came from in the first place.)

But my personal aesthetic is not one of maximum control -- I tend to like the more blowsy, wild-seeming views rather than the strictly ordered ones, so that definitely influences my preferences in a big way. You might say I like to think I garden with my imagination. ;-)

It would be super if vendors of plants did more education and included warnings -- even a simple "Can Be Invasive" would be useful. But, as they say, caveat emptor. And, I had forgotten your mentioning the crown vetch and goutweed, neither of which I am familiar with at all.

K.

Hi K,
Appreciate what you say. I am sure you are correct in what you say about
"maximum control", though gardening is about control. As they say; "Gardens die with their gardener". Suspect yours will linger longer than mine!
Hope I don't seem arrogant, but I think the interaction between more experienced gardeners, on a beginner gardener thread, is of use to beginner gardeners. Edge emphasizes how important the choice of plants can be to a new garden. You and I emphasize choices to be made in the style of garden, always as you say within the limits and potential of your particular location.
Gardening and learning,
Sunny

Well...we got over a foot of snow here last night. Here being Tennessee! After this melts...surely it will be spring...:)

Lisa

p.s. I LOVE hearing all of you talk about your gardens and your gardening ideas. You have no idea how much information I get just reading what you all have to say. As a too new to even call myself a 'new gardener' gardener...just know that I am hanging on your every word.

NoGreen - You sent the winter weather my way, no fair!! LOL It's sleeting like crazy here & we're under a winter storm warning. Hey, at least we can "talk" about gardening. :) I've been working on a slope beside of our driveway for a couple of years now. Full sun & red clay - I've planted daylillies that aren't being very productive for ground cover / erosion control. I'm thinking about crown vetch after reading the posts above. How quickly / thickly does it spread? Do I still have time to start indoors to set out this spring?

I've found the best way to use roundup is with a small paintbrush or a foam paintbrush. No over-spray, no drift. My buddy uses a paper towel to paint the leaves.

I wish the former owners of this place hadn't planted 3 different groundcovers in the SAME super large bed. I've gotten real good at roundup painting...

Round Up & a paint brush, what a great idea!! Ya know, you could probably use a regular household sponge and dab it on as well. There would also be very little waste, round up isn't necessarily cheap.

Hey, Sunny, we share that sense of wanting to support newer gardeners! That's actually one reason I chimed in -- I do understand the difficulties of dealing with plants we really don't want and which are totally in the way of what we do want! And at the same time I hope gardeners can feel free to experiment and have fun and fall in love with weird plants that may not be at all correct, and learn from that, and open into greater love and understanding of the interrelations of the natural world that we are all immersed in.

I know when I was first starting out I felt overwhelmed by all the authoritative sounding information and I personally benefited from being told "just go for it -- mistakes are okay and nobody knows everything" or some message of that kind......

Not trying to change your or anyone's mind or style of approach, either! But I will say too that for me, gardening is more about relationship than about control..... and yet! I do think I know what you mean, as control is truly a necessary aspect of the picture.

*smiles*
Kyla

I planted two of those above-mentioned thugs...johnny jump ups and golden moneywort. The johnny jump ups haven't been too bad, they're down by the mailbox. I have to confess I feel a little feeling of delight when I see some pop up somewhere else. The moneywort I just planted last spring, I asked a gardener about it & he said it was really easy to pick off if it goes where you don't want it. The area is so big & bare it's hard to imagine anything taking over. Those little johnny jump ups were blooming under the snow last year, several people around the neighborhood remarked on it...I checked on them yesterday and there's green coming up, and it's been in the 30's. We did have a 58 defree day last week, though, which is "unseasonably warm." lol

Interesting..... I googled golden moneywort to see if it was that pennywort I was mentioning (it is not ) and found this interesting set of definitions of the word "invasive" -- not at all always a bad thing. ;-)

http://davesgarden.com/guides/terms/go/500.html

The thing that was bad about pennywort (I do not know its scientific name) is that it spread underground and you could never get all of it -- and any little piece would grow more. Plus which, pulling it up tended to break it off, leaving prolific bits under the surface........

those are pretty funny!
I planted the moneywort in full sun (which is all I have here, all sun, all day, till the moon comes out) and it gets a little worn out. Once I get more shrubs in there, it might get some relief.

Hi All,
Really like the brush-Roundup suggestions.
Agree with Kyla's go-for-it-approach. That's also certainly been my approach
in my own gardens. After a while you see what works for you.
I now keep a complete record of all perennials I plant, which in two gardens, has been for eight years. Sometime, I should determine the exact percentage of all planted perennials that have died. I'm sure, it would be a large percentage.
By definition, a perennial plant is one that lives three or more years (viz. longer than a biennial). In appropriate conditions and with appropriate maintaining, some varieties last a few years, some longer and some quite a long time. Further to Kyla's point about lack of information provided by garden centers: it would be wonderful if you were told the potential life span of a perennnial, for the area you bought it in. Presumably this would not be good for somebody's bottom line and, also, likely for some new cultivars, they've not been grown long enough, in wide enough variety of conditions, for this to be known.
Should emphasize that when I'm talking about gardening, I'm almost always thinking about perennials in perennial gardens. Think I should have reminded newer gardeners that gardening almost exclusively with perennials, is much more challenging than gardening with annuals. Where we live, at least, you simply get rid of the annuals at the end of the growing season and start afresh with new plants in the spring.
Sunny

This message was edited Mar 5, 2009 4:47 PM

About unwanted plants. At my previous house, I inherited a pretty nice garden, established hostas and hydrangea, some lilies, some phlox, Iris, etc. BUT, the black eyed susans had to be put in their place ( the compost pile at the edge of the woods). They crowded everything out. I weeded and pulled like crazy . I left a clump that I kept an eye on because I loved the way , when they started to go to seed, I would find a flock of goldfinches feeding on them.

In my new house, dare I try more black eyed susans? Is there a new variety that wont take over the whole yard? Anything else that finches will like that have better manners than BES?

I know from my own yard,finches like purple coneflowers.I grew angelica once which is a biennial.They went crazy on it when it went to seed.

They loved my celosia, both the cockscomb and the brain coral. Which reminds me, when I cleaned the beds last year I saved those flower heads for weeks like this:snow covered, and the birds can't get anything but what the feeders have. I'm going to tie them into bird-food bouquets for the finches and hang them on the feeder cable.

Hi MonnieBC
A plant closely related to, and sometimes called, a black-eyed susan: the
best perennial I ever met, Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii 'Goldsturm',
orange or Goldstorm coneflower. It was the Perennial Plant Association Perennial Plant of the Year in 1999. There is some contradictory statements about this plant on the internet, perhaps associated with the huge range over which it is grown, but it is clearly highly regarded. The following is from my own experience.
'Goldsturm' has a very long bloom time for a perennial (mid summer to fall). It is hardy and low maintenance: it forms clumps that slowly increases in size by the growth of underground roots. When the clump is too large, for you, it is easy to dig off a bit, with a spade, and plant it elsewhere. You can grow it by seed, but it is easily available as a plant. For our area, I can say that it must be a very modest seeder. I've never noticed it seeding in any of at least a dozen perennial gardens that I've installed and maintained. It does not need staking and I don't believe it needs dead-heading to get a long bloom time.
I haven't noticed it particularly attracting our butterflies. I know that the dead seed heads do provide winter interest and I have read, food for birds; however, I cut my perennials down at the end of the growing season for a better view of the spring bulbs. I make other arrangements to winter feed birds!
Sunny

This message was edited Mar 2, 2009 11:45 PM