I am always saying that yet over the weekend I fell prey to Bluestones 1/2 price sale and have a partial seed order to Thompson/Morgan with a $10.00 off certificate. My WSing was a great success and I have been busy potting up seedlings - hopefully DH and I will be able to make the Raleigh fall plant swap cause I will have a ton of plaants to swap......

Lynne

Lyles
At least you're actually planting everything you buy right away! Don't worry about space - you *will always* find more :)

Lynne
Bluestone's sale means only one thing around here - the pot ghetto increases exponentially :)

OK....I so folded on my word. HA!

Today I couldnt resist 4 more gaura, 2 butterfly bushes, a hollyhock, catmint, 2 tickseed, a 1/2 flat of dusty millers and several other things. Picked them up this morning and alreadt planted in a rectangular garden I made next to the house on the southwest corner.

My property is about 1/4 of an acre. I figure I have 1/8 of an acre left to plant. Yikes.

Lyle

I'm trying not to buy anything else. I've been moving things around for months now.

I started this garden in 2005 and I'm now "editing" those original plantings. My son keeps telling me that I have some kind of supersize soil as everything seems to get bigger than it should!

Even in the garden started last year, the plants are huge!

I just moved 3 nandina 'Gulf Stream' and a lime spirea from beside my walkway so that the ice plant can continue to crawl. I'm trying to simplify my main walkway beds since I have so much going on in my outer garden.

The lavender experts tell me that my lavender will look good for only another year (maybe two). Then, it will be too woody to keep it looking good. I just sheared back the Spanish Lavender and it is easily 3 feet in size. When I replace it, I'll have to go with Munstead since it is less shrub size.

So...I'm looking at bulb catalogs and dreaming of larkspur, more snapdragons and trying some poppies. Seeds and bulbs.

Cameron

I'm doing the same thing, but in smaller proportion - only have a tenth of an acre, crunched further by house and driveway footprints, but that doesn't seem to deter me!

I do need to lift and divide a few plants and spread them around, but lacking that level of energy, I just go buy more for the bare spots. Memorial weekend sales got me good (and I got everything in the ground next day, a real record for me!).

That done, I seem to be growing a lengthening list of "needs" to buy in the next week or so (sales again). Just fill in stuff ...... y'all know what I mean!

If there's a support group to curb this type of behavior, I do not want to know about it! :o)

Cameron, I noticed that about your gardens too. Every time you shared pictures with the caveat that the gardens were all fairly "new" I wanted to scream. Everything is so huge and gorgeous. I've been gardening in my sand this will be the fourth year now and things I planted that first year are still struggling and I have amended and topdressed every year so far. Sigh. We recently got a couple of truckloads of horse manure mixed with pine shavings that I am thinking of bringing home and topdressing with next spring. Adele

I know that I've seriously OVER planted because I have trouble looking at a bare square of ground! If it is brown instead of green, it's all I can do to restrain myself...hence, I've got to continue to move and shuffle plants for the rest of my life! I mentioned bulbs and seeds, but I honestly don't know where I'll fit these things in the garden. I'm just going to have to be ruthless this fall and shovel prune the things that I don't really like or are too much trouble. My husband will be retired as of Tuesday, so I've now got more help!

Adele,

Ah, but you're only seeing what I want you to see in photos! :-)

When I built the outer gardens (fall 2006 for shrubs/bulbs and spring 2007 for the rest), I had 2-3 dump truck loads of good gardening soil brought in by JV Broadwell at Calvander (outside Carrboro). I don't know what they do to it, but it is rich! Every hole that I dig is full of earthworms.

The only fertilizer that ever gets added to my garden is Plant Tone before things emerge in spring and a tiny bit on new plants. I always wait until rain is in the forecast before I spread the Plant Tone.

I use Miracle Gro only for annuals in containers...I am actually afraid to use it in my garden for fear my plants will take over the world!

My mulch is either from Brockwell or Poultry Villa in Pittsboro.

Our soil underneath the garden soil drains well, too. This property was a cow pasture -- from a 200+ year old dairy farm. That's a lot of cow manure! When our house footings were dug, not a single rock was hit. A few rocks came out of the driveway, but not many.

shut up. tee hee adele

That's an argument I have with myself frequently. I have the opposite problem though. We just moved here a year and a half ago and I have over a half an acre that is pretty much bare with the exception of a few trees and a huge empty flower bed. The past two springs I have planted hundreds of seeds always forgetting how much care they need until they get established and always end up with way more than I can care for at once.

So this year I said.. I'm only going to work on veggies and my established plants until I can afford to put in an irrigation system. Since then I have installed two new fairly large perennial beds, added about ten new herbs to my herb garden, made two huge container plantings, filled seven hanging baskets, and planted three window boxes full of annuals. That doesn't include the new smaller container plants.

Just got to keep reminding myself...better to do small chunks successfully than try to do it all at once and kill everything including myself. It's hard to hold back though.. I am slightly addicted to dirt.

Nice self-control there, Lyle. Hope you'll come to the July open house of the company I work for. We welcome your kind, hehehe.

aezarian -- that's a "small chunk"? My goodness, I got tired just reading about all you've done with your gardens and containers! It must all be gorgeous!

typo correction -- JV Brockwell, not Broadwell for the soil.

I guess there are quite a few of us addicted to gardening. I've never been this way about buying/doing anything else. Just think of the positives --

great exercise, mentally and physically
it makes us smile
we improve our environment by planting flowers instead of lawn
helping bees, butterflies and birds (I guess we feed a few deer and bunnies, too)
sharing our gardens with others

I'm sure each of you can add to the list.

Just what are the downsides, anyway? I guess to my non-gardening visitors my garden appears to be a messy, chaotic mass of stuff! My garden has no perfectly groomed anything...no clean edges, no neatly arranged shrubs...and there is always a few spots that I've totally got torn up and "in progress"! I have nothing exotic. My husband and I stroll the garden several times a day. I can just "be there" for hours at a time and be perfectly happy...I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about?

lol - Nah. The small chunk would have been maybe one flower bed. I'm like a little kid when it comes to my yard though. I get excited and go a little overboard. Since I start a lot from seed it's easy to do too.. as opposed to when I have to look at a price tag on pre-propagated plants.

That which you plant, you must water..

Hey, there is always time to bring in some organization later. :oD

All you need is something unifying and to add define you spaces with those lines you mentioned. You could plant a swath of grass that meanders around, or a bluestone path with steps as needed, and voila, suddenly you have organization and the plan emerges. Someday when that's important. Not now, when there is planting to be done - ha!