I’ve started preaching a bit. Telling people how we all need to go organic and get over silly expectations of control over chaos. It’s been a slow, but constant transition for me. In our nursery and garden, Tom and I walk the walk, we love to get all feral and sweaty and spend long hours weeding and feeling the dirt. Seriously.

But most people for whom I garden, clients, aim for magazine looks…. and it takes chemicals to get there. But a brand new, all grass garden, studded with fruit producing shrubs and vines, has been pure from the start; synthetic chemical free.

Chemical Alternatives

For others, I spent a few hundred dollars at the professional landscaper supply store. This is a place where guys with big trucks pull right into the drive in warehouse to load up with chemicals. A drive-in tool and supply store. It’s always fun. In my load included about 40 pounds of Osmocote — it is truly slow release and targeted.

I look at all these chemicals as a tools. Most of the time, they are poorly understood, poorly used, and do cause a lot more problems than they solve. But they are simply a tool; not inherently good or bad.

So after we loaded up at the store, we went gardening.

It’s transition time for Southern gardens — spring’s ending. We’re getting gardens ready for summer with basic, early summer perennial border stuff.

Here’s what we did:

Quick broad leaf weed killer spray in pinestraw areas behind borders
Tucked all yellowing Leucojum bulb foliage under pine straw
Seeded in zinnias, castor beans and peanuts
Sprinkled soil over the seeds
Watered in with Foothills Liquid Humic Acids (to stimulate germination)
Dead headed roses
Divided some gray leaved Juncus ‘Blue Arrows’
Moved Crinum ‘Pink Flamingo’ which was getting smothered by knock off roses
Cut back some Arundo donax, Salvia ‘Henry Duelberg’ and Aster ‘Fanny’s Aster’ so they wont flop too much later on
Ordered from the 50% off sale at Brent and Becky’s Bulbs some Lilies and Glads for late season color

We came home dirty, took a quick nap and a special Cleanse Juice smoothie — to get out any toxins from the morning. And we did some gardening around my house. It kind of got out of hand, we ended up coppicing a dozen 20 foot tall Japanese Parasol Trees (Firmiana). As their trunks were too beautiful to trash, we made a giant tee pee. Fun, ferrel stuff.