If you refer to yourself as a lazy and a cheap gardener, welcome aboard! If you enjoy a little dirt under your fingernails, you're in good company - check out these tips that will save you both time & money:

1. Reserve a spot in your garden plot for a "perennial nursery" start your own perennials from seeds, keep them in the "nursery" area for the first year, then transplant them to where you want them in your yard they will be well established after the first year of "babying". (perennial plants cost plenty, starting your own from seed costs just pennies!)

2. Mountain Ash berries ARE safe to eat, but don't be surprised if it takes 5-7 years for your tree to fruit the reason birds fly into your patio door window after gorging on the Mountain Ash berries is because they are intoxicated! you can make jelly from your Mountain Ash berries: Simmer 6 cups of berries until they burst add a cup of sugar for each cup of berries and juice continue by following the directions on a SurJel package.

(didn't your mom teach you, "waste not, want not"? here you can even eat your shade tree seeds!)

3. Uses for plastic milk jugs in the garden: hot houses for newly planted seedlings, collars for new plants, funnels, trays for under developing melons and squash to keep them up off the dirt, giant scooper for potting soil, sand, perlite, vermiculite, etc. (you are the queen of recycling, right?)

4. THE BEST and easiest apple maggot trap: cut part of the side of a milk jug out leaving a good sized hole into the jug mix 1 cup vinegar, 1 cup water, and 2 tablespoons molasses hang a jug in each tree or more jugs for large trees. (easier than a ladder and sprayer!)

5. Put foam packing peanuts in the bottom of flower pots instead of heavy gravel for good drainage. (a slug! you say we're going far?)

6. When you have a fruit tree that won't bear fruit it could be there is no pollinator close enough pollinators must be less than 100 feet apart if there is no pollinator for your tree, you can graft a pollinating branch into the tree, or, you can place a bouquet of the flowering pollinator in the same tree in orchards, put a bouquet at least every 50 feet.
(we're willing to sweat just a little bit to get some love apples!)

7. Cut the bottom out of plastic throw away pots push the "pot" minus the bottom into the ground around new perennials so you will remember where you put them next spring. (we're not only lazy and cheap, we're also a bit forgetful!)

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