I Attempt Gardening

Today we had a bunch on errands that we needed to run and not much to do at the house as we are waiting on the whole water/electricity thing to be fixed, so it was off to the mall first.

On the way over to the house, we decided to stop at the Farmer's Market to see their fall festival, which turned out to be a LOT Of plants.

We looked at several of the set-ups and found one that was Carolina Wild, who I had found online and had wanted to visit their store. So, I ended up buying three little pots of creeping phlox, which can live in all my shade and are a native plant.

Went to another stand and that had chocolate chip ajuga for only $2 each, so we ended up buying 5 of them. Then it was off to Home Depot (where else) to buy mushroom compost to ammend my soil with, some mulch, kneeling pads and a hose. I wasn't feeling great and hauling the mushroom compost into the cart was not easy.

Got home and decided to start with the ajuga, which I planned to plant around the tree right in front of the porch. I started by raking away all the leaves and grass clippings in the area. It looks like there is some clover (maybe??) already growing there as well as something with very fine almost little grass like shoots, so I left those two plants wherever I found them and concentrated on getting up the weeds. I found MANY MANY weed roots. I did not even BEGIN to get rid of all the weed roots. In fact, I'm afraid there were cut ends of weed roots in the sides of some of the holes I planted the ajuga in. Hope the ajuga does okay.

It took me quite a while to try to pull up weed roots and then try to dig little holes, clear MORE weed roots and then finally plant the ajuga. The final ajuga I planted is not in quite as deep a hole as the others as I encountered a HUGE root down there that I wonder if it might be one of the tree roots, so I just sort of shifted the hole a tad and planted the plant.

I also tried to clear all the surface debris off the dirt right in front of the porch in case I want to do a foundation planting. When I was done planting the ajuga, I watered each plant a little bit and then spred mulch over the whole area. I really have no clue what I am doing or how to mulch, just tried to copy what I've seen on the ground elsewhere. The front of my house does have the red clay, it was quite hardpacked some places, so I tried to loosen it up some. I did mix in a little bit of mushroom compost with the soil when I was refilling the holes. I am wondering now if I should have added more of the mushroom stuff, or just tried to work it into the whole area. But, I'm only planting ajuga and there were A LOT of weeds.

Ajuga (it is the little dark green clumps) under the tree, with mulch.

Then it was on to the creeping phlox, which I was going to plant over by the gas meter, in a shady area along the side of the house. I was pretty tired at this point and the soil over there seems better, so I spent less time digging up weeds (did find some sort of vine growing along the ground, but it seems dormant right now) and ammending the soil for these three little plants. Did get all three in the ground, hopefully they will thrive and aren't too close to where there is water runoff from the roof and that whatever that vine is won't get them.

Creeping Phlox- pre-mulch. This is a native plant. Hopefully it will survive.

My next project is going to be finding someone with a pickup truck to help me get my big shrubs, especially the ones at Underwoods as they have been there quite a while now. Almost went and got the hydranga and camellia today but I was too tired to try to dig a hole big enough for a shurb. I'll need to be REALLY energetic to plant the beautyberries, they are HUGE!.

While I was gardening, mom got the laundry room painted with a second coat of paint and then used the same paint on the ceiling, which looks REALLY good. She will finish that up with another coat on the ceiling tomorrow, then I just have to paint the trim and we have one room done, 5 to go.