Got Some New Plants

Today I went to the new Lowe's in the city of Murphy. I found this Lowe's to be a lot nicer and had better plant prices than the one in Garland near George Bush Tollway. The Lowe's in Murphy had some many plants on sale and they were great prices. The prices ranged for 50 cents to 7 bucks.

I picket several different types of salivas, lantana, and Dwarf Banana Tree. I will have more info on the banana tree.

I then took the Salivas and Flame Acanthus that I potted in large nursery and placed them under my hanging strawberry patch. Before placing these pots around the posts. I installed some old news paper down to keep the grass from coming up around the pot. I then put wood mulch down. Its mostly composted, so I will have to get some fresher mulch next week.




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What a productive weekend...

This weekend was one of the most fun weekends I have had in a while. This weekend I attended the Fort Worth Garden Forums Plant Swap! Even though I am new to gardening and I have a very limited amount of inventory that I can trade for, I still got a lot of the plants I was looking for! After the swap I followed a fellow gardener back to her place in Copper Canyon to get some donkey compost from her.

Going to the Swap was a bit out of the way for me. Its about 50 miles away one way. Add in the trip to CopperCanyon and heading home I probably put a 150 miles on the truck this past weekend. But it was well worth it. Met a lot of great people, got a lot of new plants and eat some good food.

As you can tell I have been busy! About 3 hours before I took a picture, my yard was a lot worse. At about 2PM on a windy, cool Sunday afternoon I started my plantings.

I took a small section of yard where it was nothing but weeds and other yard trash and cleaned it up and dug out about 8 inches of top soil and mixed in a mix of EarthGro Topsoil, Donkey Poo, humus and landscapers mix to build a raised border less bed. I did my best to to keep the new organic soil off the the rotting fence. Eventually I will create some sort of border for this bed, I just have to find some recycled bricks or yard borders in order to complete this bed. I topped off the bed with a thick layer of hardwood mulch from the city recycling center. Before adding the Mulch I planted 5 large cannas that will reach about 10 feet tall and 2 rows of smaller red cannas. Now I have no Idea what these guys will look like. If it looks funny or does not go will I will move them next year. Once I see what they look like I will research and figure out more about these guys. Once the plants come, I will complete the layer of mulch and take a bag of decortive mulch and cover the decomposing stuff up if needed.

The bed is another small bed of canns. Now the cannas are a little close to my weeping crepe myrtle but I will deal with that when the time comes. I just do not have the room for both. I l figure I will be digging up some extra cannas when they get to large!

In this part of the bed I planted a Turk's Cap and several different types of red and orange daylilies
All the small 4 inch pots are new seedlings, I traded for. There are some Turk's Cap, Flame Acanthus, and several types of Salvia, that I can not wait to pot up!

In this group I received a Red Bud Seedling, Mock Orange, Purple Lantana, Salvia Greggii, and Salvia Guarenitica.
I also received 2 coral honeysuckles. I plan to let 1 run up the unused chain length gate for privacy and the other I am going to put it near my Cape Honeysuckle and let it climb and drap over a fence or a trellis.

And of course I planted a small amount of wood ferns. I plan to let this take of over this empty mud hole under my big tree. I will sprinkle some shade flower seeds and other types of seed that can handle more sun as it gets to the end of the shade areas. I will also let the vinca and ivy take over but keep both vines thin and trim.

I also received Blackeyed Susans and Giant Coneflower both are not ready for the camera.

Over the next few weeks I will be potting up the rest of my plants in the seed starting closest, prepping the last two beds and planting them. I have a very limited time, money and days left before it gets to hot work out here. I will post more updates as I work on the garden...

Thanks for reading...