The five gallon
container price tag with the one gallon plant. There's nothing more annoying than
spending a few extra dollars for a larger plant found in a five gallon
plastic pot and discovering when you go to plant it, a one gallon container
had recently been transferred to the larger pot. Generally the roots of the
plant haven't had a chance to spread into the new surrounding soil.
When you removed the plant from the container, all the new soil falls away,
and your left holding a one gallon root ball.
You've planned
your flower beds from seed and ordered specific colors to provide the
contrast and colors you want in your garden. You've taken the time to start the seeds in
flats or direct sow into the soil. Then you wait caring for your plants as
they grow toward maturity. The first buds form and suddenly you have
flowers. But wait, some of the flowers are different colors than you
thought you planted. Instead of yellow, you've got a flaming red or white.
If you pull out the plant it leaves a noticeable gap in the flower pot or bed. Oh
well, there's always next year when you'll be sure to plant plenty of
extras.
You're
wandering through the nursery and spot a colorful pot you must add to your
garden. The $85 price tag will put a crunch in your gardening budget but
you can't walk away from the nursery without the container. A week
later you find yourself browsing through a chain store nursery and there's
the exact same, manufactured in China, pot for $39.95.
You've recently
moved to Tucson and searching for a few plants at a big box nursery in
early October. You find one gallon tomato plants and add them to your cart
and hurry home to plant them. The plants freeze to a deathly black color
in late November with several little green tomatoes on the stems. Why were
they for sale in the garden center in October, you wonder? It pays to know
your plants and their growing requirements. Read the labels.
It's time to
add a few plants to the landscape. You head out to a nearby nursery and
browse through the plants until you find what you're looking for. One
hundred and fifty dollars later the plants are loaded into the trunk and
back seat of your car and you're on your way home. One week later
you happen to drive by a nursery on the other side of town and decide to
pull in and have a look around. To your surprise you find the same plants
you purchased at your nearby nursery for the same price, but the plants
are twice the size and look twice as healthy. You have to look on the bright side.
Your plants should grow to look just as healthy someday.
Pete helped you
out at the garden center. He made plant recommendations, hauled soil
amendments to your car and suggested you were thinner than you knew
yourself to be. Pete suddenly became your idea of a gardening expert.
Next time you visited the garden center you asked for Pete and learn Pete
no longer worked there because he had earned enough money to pay for another
semester of law school.
You've got
bugs. The little things are all over your flower buds and making new
leaves curl. You're off to the store for a pesticide. An hour later the
bugs are sprayed. A couple days later you find a few dead lizards along
with the dead bugs. A week or two after that the bugs are back.
The one page
newspaper advertisement. Usually on one of the back pages of a Sunday
morning newspaper section will be a full page advertisement for the sale
of all sales. Sometimes they're good sales, some times they're too good to
be true.
The complete
books of gardening. Has anyone really ever published such a thing?
An idiot's guide to anything. What kind of person would admit to such a
deficiency? Okay, maybe an idiot.
Garden related
television programs that show before and after giving the average gardener
high hopes for a beautiful garden with the help of qualified personnel.
The actual cost and amount of time involved to complete the project is never mentioned.
You'd be amazed at what a $100,000 investment can do for a landscape.
(2004)
