It's the time of year when garden departments at the local home store are scaling back their inventory. Both perennials and annuals are on sale and you can find some amazing bargains if you know what to look for.
I literally haunt the sale section of Lowes this time of year!At least half of my perennials were bought there at clearance prices over the years! Though it can be frustrating to wait till next year to see your plants at their finest, your finances will thank you!
There is a trick to buying clearance plants though. You don't want to buy something that you can't use or that is sickly or too root bound to recover. After all, many of these plants have spent way too long in tiny pots without fertilizer or proper care.
On the flip side, as long as you can provide good care and get them in the ground soon enough to establish some roots before winter, they should wake up in spring like they never were neglected! You might even get a few blooms now.
That's how I got the black eyed Susan's that take over my patio planter every year. They were a pitiful blob of greens with 4 half dead flowers for $3 one September.Now I have them absolutely everywhere in my yard!
I'm also a huge fan of buying tulips and daffodils right after Easter. They are often marked down to $1 a pot and are great to fill in areas with bulbs cheaply.
Of course this won't work for most annuals. Perennials though follow a pattern of growth and dormancy and as long as you get them in the ground and established before winters freeze, they'll do just fine....even if they seem a little unhealthy the day you buy them.
You'll want to check out the plants thoroughly before purchase though. Here is how I evaluate a plant to determine if it's a lost cause, or well worth the price!
When my daughter was little she was obsessed with glitter gel. I wouldn't let her have it because it was so full of chemicals. Then I came up with the idea of adding glitter to aloe vera gel. Aloe vera is completely skin safe and can be made without extra chemicals. Well from all my research about aloe vera I know that it is antibacterial and antiviral. So basically aloe has almost everything you need to make your own hand sanitizer. Plus it's skin safe.
Of course it's antibacterial and antiviral properties are mild compared to alcohol which damages the bacteria or viruses thus killing them. So after my daughters obsession with glitter gel wore off I started using the leftover product that we had made as hand sanitizer.
I'm way into essential oils and one of my favorite essential oils is tea tree oil. Tea tree or melaleuca oil, is known for its antibacterial, antiviral and antifungal properties. Combine this essential oil with rubbing alcohol and aloe gel and you have the perfect recipe for homemade hand sanitizer.
I never really wanted to grow Hostas. I mean, they look nice and all but I just wasn't the greenery type. I preferred plants that were full of blooms, useful herbs or ones that produced vegetables. Shade gardening was never really my thing either, till we moved. When you live in the middle of the woods though you have a lot of shady areas to plant in and what better plants to take up space than a hosta?
The hostas were already here when we got here though. There were two different varieties of hostas in the one garden bed. One was all green and the other was green and white. I learned pretty quickly that they were easy to care for and filled in large spaces well.
That was enough to let them stay when I redid the flower beds and they have remained there for 10 more years.
I also learned that hostas (also known as plantain lilies) are really easy to divide, transplant and move around. They do not require a delicate hand when doing such things although they will recover more quickly if you're gentle!
Forgetting them in a bucket for a week after digging them out of the garden might not be their favorite activity, but they will survive! Not that I know anything about that. lol
Nothing says summer like the bright, sunny faces of a sunflower! They're just so cheerful. While a whole field of sunflowers are absolutely mesmerizing, they can be just as stunning when grown in smaller clumps or even alone.I have been adding sunflowers to my landscaping and gardens for years. They are simple to grow and there are varieties that will fit almost any space.
In fact they are one of the easiest to grow food crops. You can easily harvest the seeds for yourself, to share with your chickens or even the wild birds.
There are several types of sunflowers you can grow for seed or flowers.I've grown everything from the black oil sunflower seeds that you commonly buy for bird seed and the common mammoth sunflower, to ornamental Teddy Bear sunflowers and a pretty Tigers Eye variety.
The larger sunflowers obviously produce more sunflower seeds. They also produce larger seeds. Each sunflower head produces between 1000-2000 seeds!
Smaller ornamental varieties don't produce as many seeds but the seeds they do produce are still edible.Many of the sunflower varieties have been developed more for the flower than the seeds, so you might have to try a few varieties and see what produces the most seed for the type you want to grow.Unless you're only in it for the flowers...then absolutely choose by color, flower size etc.
Ornamental varieties are often small enough to fit into flower gardens or even containers. Which is great because no matter what the size of the garden spot you have you can find a sunflower to fit!
Recently I woke up in the morning and I had the worst taste in my mouth. Seriously horrible! Since I couldn't motivate myself to get up I lay there and wondered what in the world caused my mouth to be so gross today? I mean, if I could taste it then my breath must be horribly stinky!
So what causes bad breath and is there any way to actually 'cure' it for good? Better yet...what kind of natural remedies for bad breath are out there?
Obviously good oral hygiene goes a long way towards keeping bad breath at bay. Still, as many as 1 in 10 people currently suffer from bad breath.There are only a few things more socially awkward than having to keep a lid on your mouth (literally) all the time, for fear of being repulsive.Bad breath can interfere with your personal and professional relationships if you're constantly talking away from people or not getting close for fear they can smell it.
That kinda stinks...no pun intended.
