Welcome Christine, nice to have you here!

Plugs are really fine for most people...I just didn't take good enough care of them. And the chipmunks and squirrels kept tearing them out of the pots - that didn't help any.

Will be looking forward to pictures from your gardens too.

We hit 50 deg. today too!

Thanks Chris -- what part of WI are you from?

I am SE of Rochester MN about 30 mins!!

Hello from Delaware to medinac, luvnature and Christine. I'm Kathy in Wilmington with a postage size backyard.

The photos of the heuchera bed (and there are ferns and shaded plants in the back bed) used to be all ivy when we bought the house. It took forever to dig out the roots. My first scheme was to plant vegetables. So being young and new to gardening I put too many plants in and ended up with enough vegetables to feed the entire state. The tomato plants turned into a jungle and one plant tagged as zucchini was actually a pumpkin. Still kind of funny 30 years later to realize I must have been my neighbor's cheap entertainment. And it seems like every year there's yet another story to add usually resulting from one of my half baked ideas. In another post I'll have to tell you about my Scarecrow Sprinker fiasco from last year. It's a joke a minute over here.

I guess I'm pretty lucky with plugs as I just direct sow in the ground and forget about them but I've never been able to do that with Tiarellas for whatever reason. I love little plugs as you deceive yourself squeezing in more plants you know you don't have room for! (Kind of like those 4" pots of tomato plants)

The "moss" between the pavers is Steppables Irish and Scottish moss.

Oh, we've all made our shade of garden mistakes. When I first started out I planted enough vegetables to feed the entire town, I think! Looking forward to hearing about your scarecrow too.

Christine, I'm from east central Wisconsin - the little town of Ripon, about 20 mi. from Oshkosh. What zone are you in?

LOL -- I wanna hear the scarecrow sprinkler story!!!

I used to have a 3 X 10 vegetable garden.... I hate cooking so no idea why I even bothered but the first year I planted sweet corn, tomatoes, beans, peppers and get this cucumbers -- you can imagine how that looked. Needless to say I quit and then the next year my DH decided to plant all tomatoes in there... he went to the local plant store and picked up 8 cartons of tomatoes (ya know those little trays that contain 6 plugs each). Then he proceeded to plant them in the ground, the whole carton of 6 plugs all in a hole. I sat there and laughed inside, never saying a thing!!!

The next year I tilled it up and planted grass seed ... Thank fully we had new neighbors move in and guess what they are..... organic farmers ... so I just run down the road to their house and buy my vegetables. LOL!!

I am in zone 4

We have a couple of fantastic farmers markets here. It's not even worth the hassle for me to grow my own veggies for the most part. So I planted flowers in my big veggie garden.

My garden is flowers - I don't have the room I would like in order to plant veggies. I'd love to have the room.

One thing I do grow though, is fresh herbs - I love to cook and fresh herbs make such a difference.

Hi Christine, RE: The Scarecrow Sprinkler

It all got started with this guy .
and his merry band of 3 relatives which have hanging out for here for 3 years. I have 150 daylilies which they have always left alone, so everything was fine with the rabbits being squatters. Usually for some reason they would hang around the car in the late afternoon.


When they took up residence sunning themselves where the mulch is by the heux



is when I decided to buy the scarecrow motion detector sprinkler from Amazon.


The ss works well but the only thing that got wet for the first 2 weeks was me. I kept forgetting it was there or to shut it off when I was out. The 2nd weekend I had it there was no reason to go out back as it rained the whole weekend. Monday morning around 6:15 I'm dressed in a suit and heels for work and go prancing out back just for a peek at any dl's that might have opened and got blasted. That's when some four letter words came flying out as I was pulling the ss out of the ground. I look up and my elderly neighbor who was filling her bird feeders is looking over. And I know just what she was thinking; here she goes again... This happened about a month after a 5,000 foot black snake crawled out while I was weeding the heux bed. I screamed so loud someone called the police. Like I said before, it's cheap entertainment here.

Kathy, I'm sure it wasn't funny at the time, but it sure is now. I can just picture that! And I love the "5000 foot black snake" too!

Kathy

we have one too. It is too easy to forget that the thing is on. Do you think you can outrun yours, like I do with ours?

I wish I was your neighbor!!!

Christine - I am sure they enjoy the show!

Hi guys. I've had a lot of family medical issues to deal with and now I'm home for awhile, I hope.

Today I was out prancing around the backyard and found 3 dead heux, Blackout and (2) Tiramisu. All 3 are plugs and I don't have a clue why they didn't make it.

I bought a new camera, which evidently needs a proprietary memory card. As soon as it comes I will add some heux photos to the database. Kathy

Sorry to hear that Kathy - both the medical issues and that you lost a bunch of plants. Hope your health is on the mend. I know if I plant small plugs late in the year they don't have time to establish a decent root system in the ground before cold weather hits they usually don't make it.

Thanks goldfinch4. It's actually my parent's health that has me running the roads. These plugs were planted last spring and this morning I see a swarm of fungus gnats. It's always a battle with something. Last year it was thrips and whiteflies which I'm sure will be back too. The other plugs are coming up nicely though.

Kathy

I am sorry - I hope your paren't health gets better soon.

I had an awful time with plugs last year. I lost almost everything I had because we were so very dry.

Thanks Carolyn.

This site has in the UK has a lot of heux and t's new for 2011 which I've never heard of.

On the left select category and then click new for 2011.

http://www.heucheraholics.co.u...

Catalogue
http://www.heucheraholics.co.u...

There are some nice ones there!

Hello ladies - popping in again, catching up on this thread. Kathy, I'm sorry to hear of your parents ill health. That's always a huge concern and I hope they are doing better. How the roles reverse as we all get older, but that's ok, right? I did laugh hysterically about your SS story and the snake- and Carolyn, I can just picture you trying to outrun yours! I have to say that the picture of the lounging bunny sure is adorable though and believe me, I'm no fan of bunnies! I've got two hunting dogs and those darned bunnies have built their nest twice in the yard, with very bad outcomes. I can relate to your battles with bugs. And thanks for reminding me of the thrips - I think it was...they were all over my boxwood last year so I'll have to watch for them again and catch them early. It's true, it is always something!

Well, I relocated a whole bunch of heuchera to a bed on the side of the house. I've had more trouble with that bed over the years and have amended it more times than I care to remember. The thing is, I was always using mushroom compost that came direct from a mushroom farm. My plants would thrive for a couple years and then peter out and die. I never could figure this out. Well, I finally read that mushroom compost contains alot of salts so it's typical for your plants to do well initially but then they take up all the salts and that's what kills them. I purchased a bunch of cotton burr compost and tilled that in good and have planted a bunch of heuchs in there this past fall. So far most of them are doing really well and look great - keep your fingers crossed for me! Of course all my plant tags are gone so I'm going to have to go off memory.

Went to Home Depot today. They have the same Heuchs they've had for the past few years. A local grower supplies them. When I first began buying them from there they were $4.99 and $5.99 - huge bargain. I think with their popularity they're now up to $8.99....still a bargain I know from mail order but funny how demand drives the price up huh?

Cheryl

Hi Cheryl - Very interesting about the mushroom compost. The heux at our garden centers are $12.99 - $18.99 and they never have the newer varities. I'm going to order Autumn Red and Root Beer online and be done with it. Home Depot only has Purple Palace here.

My latest concoction is mixing ground cinnamon and red pepper and sprinkling it between the rows of plants. Maybe coincidental but I haven't seen swarms of fungus gnats since I've been using it for a week. I'm pretty angry today that one of the rabbits ran through and broke netting that was put up for a morning glory "window" and trampling new seedlings.
I bought the netting from Gardeners Supply and then bought (and painted) wooden posts. Ordered seeds from Summerhill and soaked them. Two wks later rabbits ruin it.

I also found another dl that has been gnawed on. I'm going to try the Liquid Fence or Havaheart rabbit repellant which is very odorous, like rotten eggs, which will only give my neighbors something else to yak about.