Fuchsia Saturday

Alright, confession time. I want to upgrade my blog site because I want the ability to have a little more organization and tabs so that I may also share recipes I have tweaked as well as gardening information! I have learned SO MUCH about gardening in just the last year and continue to learn more every day, and have found that a lot of my friends want that knowledge, too. So why not share! Plus, another confession, it’s SPRING and all I have is yard work on the brain, so it’s REALLY hard to focus on researching appliance information. I’m sorry! I really am working on a juicer blog!

So here is a peek at what happened in my garden this weekend!

Fred Meyer's Fuchsia Saturday Ad

FUCHSIA SATURDAY!

For one thing, I think I will finally remember how to spell fuchsia. YES! We moved into our house a little over a year ago and the previous owners left us a lot of trash, but also a lot of helpful items, too. Two nice black metal hanging baskets were left behind and I saw an ad for Fred Meyer (in the Kroger family of grocery stores) advertising for Fuchsia Saturday last year. Bring your own planters (up to 8), buy some flowers, and they will give you free Black Gold dirt. I took my baskets in and was smart enough (I thought) to arrive fairly early. They were already sold out of the fiber planter inserts you need for the baskets. Grrr. Home I went. Probably best that I save money for other projects anyway, right?

Fiber planter insert

This year, I am prepared! I bought the inserts at Lowe’s in February! Ha! I also got an ad that directed me to this video link they provide on how to plant and care for fuchsias, which totally helped me pick out the proper number of starts to purchase for my baskets. You want to have about an inch around the perimeter of the basket or pot, and you can just kind of set the starts on top of a little dirt and fill in around them until they are lightly packed in.

I probably could have stretched it to six, but I did five per basket. I did “Winston Churchill” in one and “Dollar Princess” in the other. And of course, I still arrived early and it was buzzing with action already, so I think that was a wise choice!

They need morning light and evening shade, so I ended up buying a new hook to install on the front porch. Which might get too much light. We’ll see! Hopefully by next year I will learn more about annuals and hanging basket arrangements, haha!

Miracle Gro Liquafeed system

You’re supposed to feed them often, so now I’m trying to figure out how to use all of the Miracle Gro Liquafeed refills the previous owners left behind for us in a normal spray bottle, versus the hose attachment you’re supposed to use. (My preference would be to spray them with a bottle versus changing the hose head just for two silly planters! I live in the Pacific Northwest - I rarely require Miracle Gro!)

I am going to trust this information I found on a gardening forum: “The Liquafeed refills are the same product as the 12-4-8 Liquid All Purpose Plant Food, which says to apply at 1/3 capful per 2 gallons. A capful is about 4 tbsp or 12 teaspoons, so 1/3 of that is 4 tsp/2 gallons or 2 tsp per gallon.” Hopefully that works!

I will definitely make this an annual event to take advantage of the free dirt and free labor to plant my stuff for me! I will also be sure to bring other planters if I have any more to fill next year. I am hoping to fill two with succulents (this year? Maybe…), so I may not need to.

Winston Churchill in my back yard

I will definitely share pictures if and when these babies bloom! Oh, and another tip from the video is to squeeze above the flower when they die so another flower will grow. Hopefully I make it to that point!! :)

Other than that, I got new gardening gloves while I was at Freddy’s! They are lovely! I divvied up two different varieties of daffodil bulbs that were getting overcrowded and had stopped blooming for this year. I planted some of the extra bulbs in other places in my yard and set the rest aside for a friend who is filling her new yard with goodies! I’m so glad I have someone to give all of my extras to - goodness knows I have plenty more to share when I get around to digging everything up!

Weed B Gon

My brother spread more weed and feed on the lawn in trouble spots. It worked really well last year on our front lawn/dandelion garden so this year we only have random spots to deal with. We had dug up a ridiculously large pile the two weeks previous to this, so it was high time for chemical warfare. I got a spray bottle to put my Ortho Weed B Gon weed killer into (because I didn’t store it properly and the hose must’ve clogged up over the winter. Whoops! Read the instructions, kids!) I did all the silly dandelions growing out of the cracks you can’t possibly dig them out of. Die, weeds, die!

My biggest weekend project was pressure washing our deck, which we inherited in pretty terrible shape! (Ah, the things you don’t pay attention to when buying your first home, hahaha!) Surprise - there’s wood under there! Next will be weather-sealing it. I’m so glad we’re finally getting around to doing this because we have to ice skate across it anytime it rains (which c’mon, we’re in Oregon, people, it’s always raining!) and I don’t want someone getting injured out there.

Pacific Northwest problems...

Phew - I am exhausted! I hope you all had a productive or else relaxing weekend! :)

Dollar Princess on the front porch