Gardening tips from a newbie

1. Buy your perennials early in the season, when no one is planting (except clueless newbies like me!). You’ll get a deal like 2 for 1, or only pay $1.99 for the lil guys, so if a few die, you don’t really care.
2. Sheep manure works. End of.
3. Don’t be stupid and don’t hire a company to “do” your lawn (seeding, fertilizing, all that jazz). If you do, you’re essentially paying $100/hr for a high school kid to push a seeder around your lawn for 10 minutes, with the precision of a bull in a china shop. So if you don’t cover up your gardens, you’re going to be pulling up little grass seedlings for the rest of the summer. THE.REST.OF.THE.SUMMER.
4. Veggie gardens are a lovely idea in context. A bit of a bitch to build. Fun to watch grow. And yummy to eat. And yes, you will plant too much. And things will rot. This is called the circle of gardening life.
5. If you’re cheap (hi!) but want to landscape with some bushes and stuff, buy now – in the dead heat of the summer when everything is on crazy sale. I picked up a hydrangea this past weekend for $17. $17!!! That’s like 50% off. And it’s f-ing beautiful.
6. Ants, while mean and bitey, don’t actually affect your garden growth. So you don’t have to spend lots and lots of time online and trying different things to kill them. Because none of those things will work and they don’t matter anyway.
7. Grubs on the other hand are disgusting when you’re planting in the spring, and turn into scary gross beetles and need to die NOW. But “killing season” for grubs is spring and fall only. Wait until then to spring the nematodes on them. Then hope the bastards die. Because if they don’t they’ll ruin your lovely lawn that you invested a shiteload of $$ in earlier in the season.
8. Vinegar works on dandelions but digging them up is better.
9. As well as the yellow bastards, the clover and all that other shit that is all over my front lawn can go to hell. I don’t have any other solution yet except spending ridiculous amounts of time digging it up by hand. Now that I have realized I don’t need to wage war on the ants, I am now spending my time researching weed killer...

xxoo.S