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Helpful Hint: Spring Gardening
Usually I frequent our local nursery for my spring planting supplies both for the selection and the staff's friendliness and expertise, but I admit that, from time to time, I go to Home Depot or Lowe's for basic plants that I know will be cheaper there.
Like yesterday.
The weather was beautiful and I needed the occasional break from websiting, and also I'd carved a wide swath of destruction on our front planter on Sunday, ripping out some plants that had the audacity to grow beyond my clearly stated instructions. So, I thought I'd save some time and drive 2 miles to the Home Depot instead of the 5 or 6 to the nursery and just pick up some geraniums and daylilies.
I did find some other things I liked there and quickly filled my basket picked up a plant or two, but I couldn't find daylilies anywhere. When I asked about them, I was told that they had the daylilies hidden away because they didn't have color on them yet.
I laughed and said that as long as they had tags identifying them, I couldn't care less if they had blooms on them yet, and that this was the best time to plant daylilies.
They frowned and said that I couldn't have them. That I needed to check back in a few weeks when they would be blooming. That the daylilies don't tend to sell very well when they're not blooming because people think they're just grass.
And so instead they'd like me to buy them in the heat of the summer and plant them when they're least likely to survive the transplanting. (Ok, I know, they're daylilies and it's pretty hard to kill them, but still.)
This isn't a new lesson for me, but it was a nice reminder:
Home Depot: will sell any plant to anyone in any region even if said plant will die a miserable death in said region, as long as plant is blooming, even if said plant should be planted far earlier than when it is blooming, because they think their customers are idiots.
Your local nursery: will sell plants that will do well in your area, at the appropriate planting time. And will give you great advice to boot.
Yep, a whole post about plants in order to make an obvious point. Sorry, folks. It's all I got today.Labels: gardening, home depot, red barn garden center
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