{"id":2626,"date":"2019-01-21T07:18:29","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T15:18:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=2626"},"modified":"2019-01-21T07:18:29","modified_gmt":"2019-01-21T15:18:29","slug":"gardening-resolutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/gardening-resolutions\/","title":{"rendered":"Gardening Resolutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"shade<\/a>We all make New Year\u2019s resolutions.\u00a0 By now, with winter\u2019s gray days weighing heavily upon us, many have already been broken.\u00a0 But gardening resolutions are different.\u00a0 Those of us in cold winter climates haven\u2019t had the chance to break any resolutions yet, because those resolutions depend on our ability to break the frozen ground.\u00a0 We can feel smug as we thumb the garden catalogs, which still arrive, despite the inroads of online merchandising.\u00a0 Breaking resolutions\u2014or not\u2014will wait until spring.<\/p>\n

Gardeners are eternal optimists.\u00a0 We have to be, because we are always up against the epic forces of weather and soil chemistry, not to mention money and time constraints.\u00a0 Every January, hope begins to triumph over experience as we look forward to spring.\u00a0 My New Year\u2019s garden resolutions are as follows:<\/p>\n

Sustainability: <\/strong>This year, I am going to use less plastic in the garden.\u00a0 This means fewer plastic pots and bags.\u00a0 I\u2019ll reuse the pots I have, and try to find garden centers or botanical institutions that will accept donations from my container surplus.\u00a0 When I am buying plants, I\u2019ll look for merchandisers that use biodegradable containers and packing materials.<\/p>\n

Last year wasps made a nest in my composter, making it impossible to use.\u00a0 Now that the wasps have departed, I will put the composter into service once more.\u00a0 This will reduce kitchen waste and enrich the garden.\u00a0 But the composter by itself does not have the capacity to deal with the large amount of organic waste material that the garden generates.\u00a0 Leaves are a special problem.\u00a0 This year, I\u2019ll use my mower on the leaf piles and turn those large accumulations into small mounds of shredded-leaf mulch.\u00a0 The mower is electric, so it does not produce the noise or emissions of a gas-powered machine, but it is perfectly capable of handling lots of dry leaves.\u00a0 The free mulch will go on the garden and I will no longer have to bag up leaves and lug the bags out to the curb.<\/p>\n

\"Shastas--A<\/a>
Shastas–Plants that takes well to division<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Divide and Conquer: <\/strong>Mature gardens like mine yield all kinds of dividends.\u00a0 One of the best is an abundance of great big perennials that are just begging to be divided.\u00a0 This year, I\u2019ll fill holes in the beds and borders with divisions rather than brand new plants.\u00a0 Dividing plants is a form of garden multi-tasking that actually decreases work and stress while encouraging desirable aesthetic improvements.\u00a0 It renews mature plants, saves money on plant acquisitions, fills up holes and ensures repetition in the planting scheme.\u00a0 That repetition creates the appearance of careful landscape planning, even if the \u201cplanning\u201d bears a striking resemblance to random plant installation.<\/p>\n

Moving Experiences: <\/strong>Sometimes plant arrangements work; sometimes those arrangements fail.\u00a0 Starting in the spring, I will take stock of my plant combinations and move plants that don\u2019t work well with their neighbors.\u00a0 There is no shame in arranging horticultural marriages that don\u2019t work and there is even less shame in divorcing plants from each other and setting them up in alternate situations.\u00a0 The well-worn gardener\u2019s mantra, \u201cRight plant, right place\u201d says nothing about finding \u201cright\u201d on the first try.<\/p>\n

One piece at a time: <\/strong>My garden isn\u2019t large, but it has a number of distinct areas, all with different growing conditions.\u00a0 This coming season, I will take on those separate areas one by one, with an eye to making each one as beautiful as it can be before moving on to the next.\u00a0 Too often my gardening activities are fragmented\u2014a bit of pruning here, followed by planting somewhere else, followed by weeding in a third spot.\u00a0 I may accomplish a lot, but no one area is ever at its very best.\u00a0 Focusing on a single area at a time is hard, especially in spring when everything pops up at once and the number of chores always exceeds the amount of available time.\u00a0 It will take discipline to ignore five needy spaces while perfecting a sixth one, but it is worth a try.<\/p>\n

All the Necessary Tools: <\/strong>Most of all, I am going to remind myself regularly that despite not having unlimited financial resources, I have all the tools I need\u2014intellectual, physical and mechanical\u2014to create a wonderful garden.\u00a0 All I have to do is use them consistently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We all make New Year\u2019s resolutions.\u00a0 By now, with winter\u2019s gray days weighing heavily upon us, many have already been broken.\u00a0 But gardening resolutions are different.\u00a0 Those of us in cold winter climates haven\u2019t had the chance to break any resolutions yet, because those resolutions depend on our ability to break the frozen ground.\u00a0 We … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3,5],"tags":[803,2035,2037,925,2036,944],"class_list":["post-2626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-winter","tag-dividing-perennials","tag-garden-resolutions","tag-growing-conditions","tag-plant-partners","tag-right-plant-right-place","tag-sustainable-gardening"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2626"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2629,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2626\/revisions\/2629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}