Gifts for the Gardener

Does it seem like your free time is spent doing maintenance yard work around the house?  You work long hours all week, and then on the weekend instead of spending time with your family, shopping, on the boat, on the golf course, hunting, etc., you are spending it pushing a lawn mower inhaling that blue smoke?  Give yourself a lawn care company for a year and enjoy your time off doing what you like to do.  You can still spend time in the yard doing specialty things; just get rid of the mowing, edging, control product applying and blowing.  Also consider hiring professionals to do other house maintenance (power washing, painting….). 

Plan a trip to a local public garden (for example Magnolia Plantation, Middleton, Boone Hall, Drayton Hall, Charles Towne Landing, the many county parks or Hampton Park) and get ideas for your own landscape.  This also makes for a wonderful day with the family.  You can take a picnic lunch and make it a full day enjoying the beauty of the Lowcountry. Many of these parks you can buy a yearly pass for just a little more than a onetime visit and enjoy the park throughout the year.

If you would like to take a road trip, travel to Brookgreen Gardens by Myrtle Beach, or Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia. You can also give a gardener a trip out of the area for a long distance gardening adventure.  Calloway Gardens in Atlanta, Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania, The National Arboretum outside of Washington, D.C., The Redwoods in California or any other garden throughout the United States…..or anywhere in the world!

Give a gardener a gift certificate for a future House and Garden Tour event.  There are great tour events throughout the year in areas all over the Lowcountry.  Kiawah, Seabrook, Daniel Island, City of Charleston, Summerville, Mount Pleasant all have different garden tours.  If you want to go on a road trip, Savannah and Beaufort also have garden tours.  

Give your gardener a membership to one of the many clubs or societies in the Charleston area. The Rose Society,  The Charleston Horticultural Society, The Native Plant Society, The Camellia Society, The Koi Fish Club and Daylily Society just to name a few.  I have attended many of these club lectures.  They are all very informative and are passionate about their interests, willing to help newcomers, and provide different community projects to improve the Lowcountry.  I have run into many old friends and have made many new friends at these meetings.

Books (different Universities sell very informative books at very good prices), quality hand tools (especially pruners and pruning saws), cuttings from your garden, a plant, tree, or bulbs, or something you have canned from your garden.

A gift certificate to any of the local garden centers or nurseries makes an excellent choice for the garden enthusiast.   They are bound to find something they like!

Make Life Easy - Measure your Yard

Knowing the square footage of your grass areas and bed areas are key to applying any fertilizer or control product correctly. With the nice weather we are having, now is a great time to get out there and measure the yard.

An old bathroom scale and bucket also aid in the proper application of products. If your yard is 8,000 square feet and you want to apply a product at 4 pounds per thousand square feet, then 8 times 4 is equal to 32 pounds of product. Get a bathroom scale and a five gallon bucket. Pour 32 pounds into the bucket and apply it equally across the yard.

Make notes about spreader settings used and particle size of product, so you know what setting you should use the next time you use this product.

I can remember several times hearing different variations of this same answer to my question while at the counter at Possum’s. “How many square feet is your yard?” Rough answer,” well, last year I put out that bag that covers 5000 square feet and it was perfect for my yard, so I must have 5000 square feet.”  Sorry, wrong answer.

Based on a pound of nitrogen, we sell 50 pound bags that cover as much as 23,000 square feet and as little as 1000 square feet. Unfortunately, the bag does not know the size of our yards or how fast you walk.

In the old days, yards were mostly square or rectangular, and they were easy to measure. Now most yards have curvy bed lines that sweep across the landscape, making them more difficult to measure. If you can break the yard up into little squares or rectangles, and measure the length and the width then you can get your square footage. Length multiplied by width will give you your square footage. Add up all the squares and rectangles that you measured the square feet of, and you will come up with the square footage of your yard.

If this sounds like total “Greek or Geek” to you, ask a landscaper, a realtor,  a landscape architect, someone that works with floors or carpets, an engineer, a construction worker, someone who pours driveways, or anyone else that regularly needs to measure the square footage of something to help you. Your plat map from when you purchased your house might help as well.

Now, there are even websites that you can log onto and they will tell you the square footage of your yard. Of course, I like to do it the old fashion way – length times width.

I know this measuring seems like a pain, but most of us stay in a house for several years or decades. A little pain spread over several years of having very useful information is worth it.

Once you measure the yard, put the measurements in about 5 to 10 locations throughout your house, your car (so you have it with you when you go to buy product) and the garage, so you do not lose them. I have learned over the years that I put information like that in one “special place” so I do not lose the information. I then forget where that “special place” is!

Poinsettia the Number One Flowering Plant?

Little did Joel Poinsett know that when he brought the first Poinsettia back from Mexico that it would become the United States most popular “flowering plant”.  Joel Poinsett, a South Carolinian, was the first ambassador to Mexico.  In 1825 he introduced the Poinsettia to the United States.  These plant sales top over 70 million each year.  The dollar value is much greater.  If you ever have a chance to visit a wholesale nursery while the Poinsettia crop is being grown, it is a site you will not soon forget! 

The question I always get this time of year involves forcing the Poinsettia to “bloom” before Christmas.  I have bloom and flowering in quotes, because Poinsettias are mainly grown because of its colorful bracts not flowers. 

To force the bracts to change color, keep the plant in total darkness for 14 hours straight.  After the 14 hours of darkness, the plant must receive 6-8 hours of bright sunlight daily for 8-10 weeks.  Depending on the variety of Poinsettia you should see the bracts change color.  The easiest way to accomplish this is to place the plant in a dark room with a grow light and a timer. This way you don’t have to adjust your schedule to care for the plant.  My little secret is to support the local nurseries and buy new plants each year!

The other day I was asked when and how to divide Amaryllis.  To divide Amaryllis, wait until the foliage dies back in the fall and dig the bulbs up with a pitch fork so you do not disturb the roots.  Add Cotton Burr Compost to the bed where you dug them out and divide and replant into the new bed about 6-8 inches apart.  Be sure to plant these with at least one-third of the bulb above the ground for better blooming.  Plant the bulbs in groups of 3-5 for a better show.  The larger bulbs will bloom the following spring, where some of the smaller bulbs may take 2 years to bloom, depending on the size of the bulb.

Unfortunately, this nice cool weather is bringing out the Large Patch (Brown Patch) in our turf.  Be sure to treat the areas before it goes into dormancy. Map these damaged areas in your yard and treat with a preventative fungicide in the early spring, so your newly emerging grass will not be attacked by the fungus.

Now is also a good time to apply neem oil or horticulture oils for over-wintering insects.  Since neem oil controls some fungi too, I have been using more of it the last few years.

Beat the rush and bring your soil sample into Possum’s for testing for a green and healthy landscape in 2016

The camellias, tea olives, holly berries, pyracantha berries and of course our fall leaf color … what a wonderful time to be in the Lowcountry!

Always read, understand and follow product label. The product label is a Federal Law.