Day 10 I Spent 30 Days Transforming My Garden

Hi everyone, Janie here. Welcome back to my garden and welcome to day 10 of my 30-day garden transformation. I am committing to getting out into my garden for 30 days in the month of July. I'm putting on my gardening boots every day. I'm completing my daily gardening routine and I am focusing on one garden task to improve my garden and make it better than the day it was before. So let's get started with my daily routine and of course I'm starting off with watering my plant stash. Now Sadie has been helping me out this month. She's been working in the garden to try and make some money but she ended up taking today off which I thought was totally fine. So I ended up watering by myself and then I moved on to weeding. This is a garden bed that I just planted earlier this year and I absolutely love it. It was one of those garden beds that I didn't put a lot of thought into. I just had plants and I just kind of tucked them in. Some of them worked, some of them haven't worked as well but overall I really really like the look of this garden bed and I actually haven't really touched it since I installed it. So it needed some weeding, it needed some deadheading, it needed some cutting back and of course some mulching. So I weeded this area for my daily garden routine and then the next thing on my routine list is deadheading and I focused on deadheading these marshmallow shasta daisies that I have here. I think I have I want to say like five of them in this area and they have taken quite a while to get established. They were looking really scrawny and really small for a very long time. These were here before this year. These have been here for a couple years now and they finally finally started filling in and I had a really beautiful flush as you can see and then all of them kind of passed their point of prime and so I deadheaded them and hopefully I will get a second flush this season. So actually one of you gave me that this advice about the marshmallow shasta daisies. I was talking about how I was kind of iffy about them and you told me to wait on them, give them some time and you were totally right. I really really do like them. They're a very interesting shasta daisy. Marshmallow is the perfect name for them because they look like little marshmallows, very cute. So you can see I cut them back and they look so much better. Then moving on to fertilizing. I did choose to fertilize this area since I was working in this area as well. There are some annuals tucked in here and there in this garden bed but I ended up just fertilizing the whole thing. Not intensely, just a light fertilizer with the Proven Winters water soluble fertilizer. It just works really well. I got all everything fertilized and I think everything needed a little bit of fertilizer because when they did construction in my back garden, this is where the construction workers cleaned up all the concrete stuff. So there's a bunch of concrete stuff and I'm pretty sure that makes the soil... I can never remember if it's acidic or alkaline. I think it's alkaline. So it felt like all of the plants here needed a little bit of fertilizer so I just gave it a quick coverage with the fertilizer. Finally the last thing I had to do with my daily garden routine is I had to plant one plant. And I thought about planting something in this garden bed area that I was working in but I couldn't really figure out what I wanted to plant here. That garden bed I had tucked in really really closely so I decided to move a little bit further down my long border over to my favorite apricot honey roses. Now here's the problem. I didn't do a very good job filming. I did not think I was filming right now when I was deadheading my Summerific Hibiscus and I missed a whole clip of placing the Ajuga that I planted in this area and digging the holes. So sometimes that happens. Sometimes I think it's filming and my camera's filming and it's not and then when it's supposed to be off it's filming and I get some pretty funny footage. So here's more of that footage of where I didn't think it was filming but you'll see in the next clip how I placed the Ajuga kind of right in front of that Podocarpus right to the right of the Lantana right there. That little plant in the back that is a Japanese Anemone that I actually planted for one of my blooming garden videos and I have to say I don't I don't think my garden does well with Japanese Anemones. I've lost, I planted I think three of them and I've lost all but that one right there and I have to say I don't think I've ever seen it bloom so that's probably not a great plant but I'm still gonna leave it there. You can see where I placed the Mahogany Glow Ajuga. These are more plants that I got from Blooms Wholesale. I've told you guys I've been planting the plants. They loaded me up when I went and did a tour. I did a nursery tour of their nursery and they filled my car with these beautiful plants so I've been getting them in the ground. So anyway long story short for my planting today I planted this Mahogany Glow Ajuga. It's like Ajuga. I have Mahogany Ajuga over in my orchard garden and it's really beautiful and has this dark foliage but this one is called Mahogany Glow and it's almost like a variegated Ajuga which is really interesting and it's so funny because I never really liked Ajuga. I just kind of like passed it by. I think I even remember telling my mom not to plant Ajuga in her garden and now I regret that because I actually think it's a really really beautiful ground cover and I love the blooms and so sorry mom for telling you not to plant Ajuga. I think it's a really really gorgeous plant and I love all the different colors so if you haven't tried Ajuga yet try it because it's just a very very neat plant and I think it's going to cover this whole area and I think it's going to contrast really well with that lantana you see right next to it. So anyway that was my daily garden routine for day 10. Then I decided what I was going to do for my focus garden task today is I was going to work on mulching. Like I said Sadie has been helping me out in the garden. She is she'll be 13 next month I cannot believe it and she is already saving up for her car which I just think is fantastic. So she has been working in the garden to earn some money and she was just telling me really she looked tired this morning she was telling me how tired she was and I told her to just take the day off and so she normally has been mulching for me doing a lot of mulch adding mulch to the garden and I decided I was going to take that on for my focus garden task today and I hate mulching. I'm so glad she's out there helping me because I really really just hate mulching. It just you get so dusty you get it in all of your orifices your nose your mouth your eyes like it just gets absolutely everywhere but it really does make the garden look absolutely incredible. It makes such a difference and it is so good for your garden. When I went through my master gardener's training I've told you guys but we in class we never said mulch because mulch was so important you had to say it three times mulch mulch mulch because mulch helped with temperature control of your soil it helped keep the moisture in with your soil it helped keep weeds down by keeping the temperature down it kept the microbes and the microorganisms going in your soil it just is so incredibly beneficial and I just recently read that you should be mulching your garden twice a year which oh my goodness is absolutely too much but I can commit to once a year adding some more mulch I think it's just going to be like weeding it's just one of those things that you just continually have to do to your garden to keep improving it and my absolute goal is is to plant enough ground cover and plants in my garden that mulching becomes a smaller and smaller and smaller job every year that's really what I want to happen but you know being just in the third year in our garden I still have plenty of areas that I need to mulch now talking about the types of mulch there are different types of mulch that you can choose for your garden and it's definitely a personal choice I am at my last garden I used black mulch and I just think black mulch is gorgeous I love love the look of black mulch but technically black mulch is I mean this is what I learned in my master gardeners you know I'm not shading anybody that has black mulch because I do love it but black mulch can actually cause the soil to get hotter because of the black because of the dark nature of it so it's not the healthiest thing for your garden plus black mulch has died and that's not the healthiest thing for your garden either arborist wood chips is fantastic for your garden and one of the things one of the reasons why arborist wood chips is so good for your garden is because they are different shapes and sizes and that helps keep the whole area aerated and it helps the mulch break down faster which creates more organic matter which feeds your soil so if you're really focusing on feeding your soil arborist wood chips is absolutely the way to go now normally I like using arborist wood chips because they're free if you use get chip drop getchipdrop.com or get them from an arborist but I have been having the hardest time getting deliveries from getchipdrop.com they it's just been months and months and months and then when I do get a delivery it's not great which is such a bummer because I've had really good experiences with getchipdrop.com if you guys aren't familiar with that it's a kind of like a match.com for gardeners and arborists where the arborists have wood chips from trees they've cut down and instead of taking it to the landfill they will drop it off at your house for free you can give them a donation which I usually do but you know if if there's not enough people on the app then you're not going to get your delivery so anyway this year I paid for what I consider the second best type of mulch which is called walk-on mulch and the reason why walk-on mulch is good is again because of that abnormal shapes it's not all the same size nuggets like that you get with like black mulch or the mulch that you get in bags those are all the same size nuggets and they do that so that the mulch doesn't break down and it stays in your garden longer and that's great for people who don't really want to worry about it and just want to mulch and be done with it but for a gardener like myself who's working on the quality of my soil I actually want my mulch to break down so walk-on mulch will break down faster than the little mulch nuggets so what you see me spreading here in this area is walk-on mulch and I'm just doing a couple inches and not only does it make the the space look so much better but it's actually going to feed the soil this is one area of my garden that I haven't added a lot of compost to for the rest of my garden I've done no-till gardening which is you want to it's you know it's like four to six inches of compost and then another couple inches of arborist wood chips and all of that breaks down and adds to the soil but this area is the one area or one of the areas I should say that I have not done that in my garden and I definitely notice a difference the soil is nowhere near as good as other soil in my garden and it's on my list to add compost to eventually but you can just imagine it's a lot of cost and it's a lot of work to do that so I think it's just going to take some time to get to all parts of my garden and then eventually I'll just have to start over and go add more compost and go add more arborist wood chips to where I started and that's just the nature of it right so as you can see after I finished mulching this area it made a thousand percent difference it looks so much better I am so happy with how this looks and it just gives that is the goal of this 30 day challenge is just to do it just to do a little bit of gardening but do it often do it every day and then that's going to help with the motivation I mean if you even think my daily garden routine it's to pull one weed and I probably pulled I don't know 30 weeds today it's to deadhead one plant and I deadheaded five plants today it's to plant one plant and I planted six plants today and that is what I think is the really great thing about this challenge is I don't have to do anything I have to do the bare minimum right which is pull one weed fertilize one area but you just get so motivated when you start seeing a little bit of progress like this that little and often that Sarah Raven recommended to all of us or told all of us it really just makes such an incredible difference in your garden all right so that is it for the gardening part of my day 10 of my 30 day gardening challenge I cannot believe we're a third of the way through already uh so I got my daily garden routine done I did great stuff for my daily garden routine and then for my focus garden task I mulched and I have mulch dust all over me and I need to go take a shower but first I wanted to answer some um some questions that you all left in the comments section and I have to say I love all your comments in this challenge I love that a lot of you are joining in with me on this challenge no pressure to join in but if you do get motivated read the comments section because so many people are talking about what they did today what they did yesterday what they planted what they fertilized what they weeded which is just it's so motivating for me to read so thank you all for leaving the comments um in the in the comments section um a couple questions that I have gotten for the past um couple videos people are still wanting to ask about the fertilizing the water soluble fertilizing that I've been doing with my plants um Sydney says odd to me spraying fertilizer on the foliage not the soil where the roots take it in is this a practice people follow and Maryline actually answered Sydney and I really liked Maryline's uh answer yes plants can absorb nutrients and fertilizer through its foliage yes you can google search for foliar feeding or application for more details yes Maryline is right um plants can absorb actually can absorb fertilizer especially nitrogen through its leaves and um and and it also takes it in through its roots as well and if you have a water soluble fertilizer most of the time if it has enough nitrogen in it you can use it as a foliar fertilizer and I personally like using um for instance proven winner's water soluble fertilizer in in part as a foliar fertilizer because you have to think that it's a synthetic fertilizer it's not an organic fertilizer so it's not feeding the soil at all it's doing nothing for the soil it's only going straight to the plant the plant is sucking in those nutrients and um and it's helping that plant specifically so if you know I I spray it onto the foliage some of it is going to get taken up by the leaves and then the rest of it is going to drip through like rain go to the base and get sucked in through the plant's roots I also like overhead spraying my plants especially during the summertime because I live in a hot and dry climate here in northern California and I think it's good for my plants to get some overhead watering so that just gives me a chance to overhead water my plants as well so to me it's kind of a no-brainer to do a little bit of foliar fertilizing and then you'll see I'll go down and I'll water the base of the plants with my water soluble fertilizer now um I was talking to my friend Linda Master Rosarian you know I talk about her all the time because I love her and I think she's a genius um she actually told me that I was talking about how she overhead waters her roses during the summer because we're so hot and dry here that it actually helps protect her roses and she actually uses organic like I think she uses sea kelp and fish emulsion and she overhead waters and does foliar fertilizing with her roses um and she lives you know she lives very close by me and and like I said she even agrees it's good to get some overhead watering for our plants um now if you live in a more humid climate and you have a lot of humidity during the summer you might not want to do what we do here and I try and be very kind of generic when I'm talking about things in the garden but there's just some things that you know I'm going to do foliar fertilizing and I just have to say it a couple times and make sure that everybody hears you know ask your local master gardeners or ask your local garden center if you should be doing that or if you should hold back because maybe you have black spot or powder and they'll do really bad because of the humidity you have in your garden so um you know kind of think about it think about your garden think about your climate will for foliar fertilizing be good for you will root zone only fertilizing be good for you a little combination of both be good for your garden just be just kind of think about it and be really intuitive about it but foliage you know foliar fertilizer definitely is a thing and leaves definitely can take in nutrients uh Rosie asked the same question when I fertilize my flowers I always just do it at the roots I notice you spray the whole plant um and yeah Tina Parks responded she's using the hose and sprayer since it's much easier and faster to fertilize a large area at that time plants absorb fertilizer through their foliage too and the roots will get some also with dripping that happens thank you Tina yes I completely agree with you um and never do it during the hottest part of the day yes anyway so that uh answers hopefully answers that question that you guys have about the water soluble fertilizer then I had one more question from Tammy if I can find it there we go a question about your proven winners crepe myrtles you planted behind your greenhouse how are they doing can you show them next time you're doing a back garden tour I'm seriously considering buying about 10 of them to plant as a privacy screen between me and my neighbor's house I love crepe myrtles I never see or hear you talk about them also can you buy them in a bigger size than the pint size I would hold off on those center stage crepe myrtles Tammy um they for me they sat there for a very very long time and um and they didn't do very well and I lost three of the six and then I ended up just I only have one left right now and then I was talking to my friend Kevi um from Garden of Shrubs she is based out of Texas and she said the same thing her center stage crepe myrtles kind of just sat there and didn't really do anything um so I don't know what Proven Winners is doing about those center stage crepe myrtles they might be removing them from their rotation or something like that but if I were you I would go to the garden center and I would look at the local whatever local crepe myrtles are really good like basically whatever ones that they park or that they plant in parking lots or stuff like that right we have a lot of Tuscarora crepe myrtles we have Nansha's white crepe myrtles around here um basically whatever of those crepe myrtles are going to do I think are going to do better than the center stage crepe myrtles and I no shade to Proven Winners you know you guys know I work for Proven Winners I love Proven Winners I think they have the best plants on the market but not all of them are 100% and I think it's good to hear which ones I really like and which ones I don't I'm not a huge fan of and I think center stage crepe myrtle I'm not right now I'm not a huge fan of so um that would be my answer for that is maybe go find some other crepe myrtles not the center stage ones so anyway that is it for day 10 I hope you all enjoyed this uh stay tuned for day 11 I have no idea what I'm gonna do again I'm I'm like I was so organized in the first week and now I'm kind of like what am I gonna do tomorrow I don't know it's gonna be a surprise until then I hope you all have a chance to get in your garden today