How Does Your Garden Grow?

If it’s anything like mine this year, it’s growing weeds– and lots of them! The weather hasn’t been conducive to taking Noodle outside for long stretches to weed my garden, so they’ve gotten a little out of control. Thankfully I went for simplicity this year: we created a few large garden beds to replace some difficult-to-mow areas (currently they only have dark mulch, NEXT year I’ll landscape them), a small container garden for my herbs, and a few small beds that only have perennials.

SPEAKING of perennials, I sometimes wait until the heat of August of buy them. That’s when most people have already done their planting, many of the blooms have faded, and garden centers want to get rid of those last few specimens to make way for mums and pumpkins (ack! not yet!) The plants may be faded now, but as long as they are otherwise healthy they’ll be in all their glory when spring comes around again.

I was at Home Depot yesterday and noticed they had BEAUTIFUL perennials marked down from $6 to $4. It’s not quite a steal, but I snagged two gorgeous Lavender plants and another deep maroon one (can’t remember the name and it’s too late to go sneaking around my yard with the flashlight– I’ll edit this post tomorrow with the name!). So instead of spending $18 in the spring, I get three hearty plants for just $12. If this sounds like a good deal, scout out your Home Depot, Lowes, and local plant centers to see what they have.

Here’s a bird’s eye view of my three new plants:

Depending on your planting season, you may get even better deals by waiting a few weeks. I decided to get the three I did now because they were a good deal, but I’ll be on the lookout over the next few weeks for even more mark-downs. Landscaping can be expensive, between the mulch and plants and tools to keep them all in line. I try to save money where I can when it comes to gardening, and this is a pretty easy way to score some less expensive plants!

Oh, and did you know that Starbucks gives away free coffee grounds for gardens and composting? Composting is next on my list (I’m sure you’ll hear about that adventure in the future) so I took note when I noticed a basket full of neatly tucked bags of free coffee grounds sitting on the floor by the register.

How is YOUR garden growing this time of year? Did you score any good deals on plants? Shout out in the comments below if you did!