My favorite thing is going into the yard in the spring and seeing what nature has given me. One year, it gave me a papaya tree, a gift from a passing bird. I don't like papayas much, so I just let it feed the wildlife.

Today, I went out and found a bounty of seedlings from the plants that reseed themselves every year, plus some root sprouts from several plants, amaryllis seedlings, and seeds that have now dried and are ready to be harvested on a few plants.

What can I do with all these plants? There must be a hundred or more! Well, here is what I plan to do with them:

1. Pot them up and sell them online. Craigslist, here I come! I can also sell them on auction sites or just set up a lens here to sell them. Why not make some money from my good fortune?
   
   
2. Move them to other places in the yard, or make entirely new beds just for them. Nothing like free plants for your yard. So far, I've dug and potted about 20 seedlings to make a long needed hedge between my house and the dilapidated abandoned house next door. The beauty of this is that these plants also produce fruit, so this is a step in the path to my Urban Homesteading project.


3. Trade them for plants I don't have. There are plenty of places online where you can trade plants with other avid gardeners, who also have spring babies and overflow plants they need to get rid of. It takes little or no effort to go to gardenweb.com and post what you have and what you want, and see what you're offered. I've gotten some of my best plants this way.
   
   
4. Give them to friends and neighbors. I have some neighbors who have just moved in, and she was admiring my yard and said she loved plants. So when I'm done with what I can use myself, the rest will go to her and also be listed on Freecycle. You wouldn't believe how many good friends I've made this way, and how many great plants I've gotten in return!

So go out and see what's coming up in YOUR yard, and now you know what to do with them.

In order to grow with free plants, sometimes you have to start from scratch. A seedling here, a cutting there, a pup or a shoot. I've always loved watching things grow. If you don't want to have to wait for your plants to grow, free plants probably isn't the way to go. The Bleeding Heart shown on the intro was grown from two cuttings of a vine that we were cutting back at a garden center where I worked. The cuttings were 4 inches long, and didn't even have leaves, but I knew how to root them, so I did, and now I have this plant growing up the side of my house.

Below are just a few of the plants I've gotten starts of, either seeds or cuttings, for free.

These gloriosa lilies came from bulbs a friend was clearing out of her garden because she had too many.
She gave me 5 bulbs, and since they multiply so rapidly, I now have dozens.

This Heliconia Rostrada (Lobster Claw) was a freebie at a plant swap. An established blooming plant in a 3 gallon pot can sell for up to $100.

This "Charles Grimaldi" brugmansia was grown from a 6" cutting I got in an online plant trade. This is only a two year old plant. I traded for six rooted plant cuttings, and the cost of postage was $3.95 for my end of the trade.

This Thevetia Peruviana was grown from a seed gathered from a tree at a garden center where I was working. It's now about 10 feet tall, and I've traded so many seedlings, I can't tell you how much I've made off of this plant alone. Unusual and hard to find plants can reap you huge rewards in plant trades.

Sometimes things run amok. In Florida, this can often be your yard. Things just grow out of control down here, and they put out seeds, and seedlings, and sprouts, and runners, and pups like crazy.

The wonderful thing about this is that you end up with an over-abundance of plant material, so that when you want to change the entire look of your yard, everything you need is right at your fingertips.

My project for today was to clean out and plant something around my (free) birdbath. I knew I had to have something in the over 200 potted plants, and the yard run amok, so I searched, and found a scraggly, burned by the cold, growing out of its pot spathe lily. How beautiful, I thought, that would be planted around that birdbath, especially when it starts to put out those beautiful, delicate, white blooms. So I set about pulling apart the clump, which, btw, had been living in that same pot for over 8 years. OH MY! What a job! But I did it, and now, there is a whole ring of spath lilies planted around the birdbath, just waiting to grow and bloom and add beauty to the garden.

After I had replanted the area, guess what? I still had over 20 plantlets left. I can't wait to see where I'll put them! I'm thinking of a Betta Vase for one of them, and maybe potting up a few for friends and to sell. What fun! And believe it or not, I only broke off half the clump, so tomorrow, I'm going to repot the rest, and cut it back and fertilize it so it will be able to again grace the space where it was, and grow once again to give me many free plants.

I went to visit a friend today and got two free plants. I cleaned out my potting area in the garage, and found two bags of used soil I had brought home when I worked in a garden center. We had huge pots of this soil from repotting plants, and it just got dumped, so I decided to start bringing it home and using it in my yard. I have one whole bed that's filled 3 inches deep with this soil. I also resterilize this soil, mix in some compost or manure to give it more nutrients, and maybe some perlite, and reuse it. What I found today is about a 2 cubic feet of soil. That's about one of those large professional type potting soil bags. I'm going to have to find another source for used soil, since that garden center closed down. Most garden centers nowdays don't repot plants, they just toss them out, so that may take some doing.

I also did some thinking about these two invasive vines that I've been trying to get rid of for a couple of years now. The vines are Alamo Vine and Black Eyed Susan Vine. I planted both of these, but in this neck of the woods, they try to take over your yard. In colder climates, they are wonderful hanging basket plants, and the cold keeps them from being invasive.

So even though I can't stand these vines, I'm thinking, if I grow them in baskets I can control the growth, and also collect the seeds to sell or trade for other, more desireable seeds. So there I was, digging up little seedlings, scratching around for fallen seeds, and putting them into hanging baskets. I'm also going to put some into plug trays, and see if I can sell them in bulk. Believe me, they haven't stopped coming up yet.

I'm also putting an ad on Craigslist to sell the hibiscus seedlings that are taking over my back yard in bulk. I must have 1,000 of the things coming up, so if I can sell them, why not? I figure 100 for $10.00 isn't a bad price. Grown out in 1 gallon pots, they sell for $3.00 in garden centers, and in cold climates, they don't come back up. I have so many, and the ones I keep just keep putting out seeds, so I'll never be at a loss for a supply.

I've also started digging up the little oak seedlings that come up everywhere and growing them out. People around here are always looking for oak trees for their yards, and they sell for outrageous prices! You can't buy a 1 gallon oak tree anywhere. They only come in 3 gallons and up. So I figure maybe I can get some bulk sales from nurseries, and also some 1 gallon sales from consumers.

I'm experimenting with digging and repotting a native groundcover that is HOT right now, a kind of mimosa with pretty little pink puffball flowers. Our Florida native doesn't have thorns like the kind I'm used to seeing growing wild further north. Up north, they call it sensitive plant, because when you touch it, the leaves close up (like all mimosas). If I can successfully transplant and grow it out into 4 inch pots, I will definitely have something I can sell.

Also found a big clump of Gloriosa Lilies, the plant in the picture above, that I can definitely pot and sell, or trade for something else.

So not only can you save money by using what you have in your yard, you can actually MAKE MONEY!

What is a weed? I have heard it said that there are sixty definitions.
For me, a weed is a plant out of place."
- Donald Culross Peattie

This module would not exist, except that I lost my cup of coffee. That's a long story, but in the process of looking outside for where I had set it down, this is what happened.

I love weeds, especially some of the prettier ones. Here in S. Florida, we have wild Portulaca Pilosa everywhere.

It's up to you whether this pretty little weed will be a friend or foe in your garden.

The leaves look just like the portulaca hybrids, except it has these delicate tiny pink flowers.

My birds love this stuff, and it's a very economical way to provide them with greens. I usually just go snip some from wherever it's growing, and leave the plant to make some more for them to eat. However, since this grows in what used to be my lawn (another story for later), with mowing and such, the supply can become limited. I had started planting it in pots, but today, I had a problem that I actually solved with this pretty little weed.

I have about a 10 foot strip of yard on the right side of my driveway that I'm going to be killing off so that I can plant Wedelia as a ground cover. I'm hoping that in another year, I will have no front or side lawn at all, save for native groundcovers.

In this plot, there is a lot of the wild portulaca growing, and this has always been my favorite "harvest" spot.

Under my front picture window, I also have a bed that has been problematic from day one that I moved into this house. When I got here, it was filled with a particularly prickly kind of aloe, which I didn't like, so I removed it and gave all but a couple of starts away.

This bed is only about 3 feet deep, so it's hard to put anything in it that doesn't eventually overflow onto the walkway. Over the years, I've tried everything. What's in there now are some caladiums, but since this bed is in full sun under a roof overhang, and doesn't get rainwater, I'm constantly having to water it. That's bad, because it's mostly sand. I've tried over the years to amend the soil, but somehow it's still just sand.

Anyway, I also have a terrible problem with weeds in this particular bed, because having the bulbs in there, I can't really mulch it. So all summer, I'm pulling crabgrass and other noxious weeds out of it. Very annoying. I've even thought of just cementing it in and making a porch, it's so annoying, and it's right there in front of my house.

So here I was today, pulling up wild portulaca for my birds, and it hit me...I should plant it in that bed! It would be perfect, because 1) it doesn't need much water, being a succulent and 2) it grows quickly, and blocks out anything that tries to grow around it. I had had great luck with transplanting it to pots, so I knew it would transplant well, so I started digging, and now I have a patchwork of portulaca plants in the bed.

I truly hope this is the final solution to the problem bed. Of course, it dies down in the winter somewhat, but I'll solve that problem later. For the summer, at least, that bed's problems are solved.

So while you're looking at a little weed, and thinking how pretty it is, try to think of how you can use it in your garden. I'm sure you can find a place for it.

Haven't written in this in awhile, so I'm just doing a quick text mod, and I'll be back to add pics later. In the eastern back corner of my yard I have a pot where at one time I had built a beautiful bed for my banana trees. It was a triangle shape, with the bananas in the back corner, and other plants in the front. I even had a little stepping stone path leading into it, what for, I don't know. I had thought at one time of putting a fountain there, but decided against it.

The problem with this bed, was that it was right next to "the yard from hell" (the abandoned house next door). Directly behind the bed was a huge cypress tree, which sent roots scurrying everywhere into my garden, sucking up all the water and fertilizer. As time went by, it just got to be a chore to try to keep it nice, so I let it go. And go it did...straight downhill.

Today, I decided to do something with it. Well, I didn't really "decide" as much as I was out there and couldn't stand it anymore, so I started cleaning it out.

My first plan was to just take everything out and mow it, so I took out the black plastic border, and raked everything out of it and threw it into the yard next door. Hey, it came from there, I'm just returning it! Seriously, I'll eventually clean it up and put it by the curb, but not today.

Then I started looking at it. Some snake plants (mother in law's tongues) had sneaked in from the other yard, so I pulled those up, thinking I would put them into a pot or something. The more I cleaned, the more I realized that I really could make this like a butterfly garden if I just put things that didn't need much of anything to live, and watered and fertilized it every now and then.

So I started to look around the yard, and came up with some Cranberry Hibiscus seedlings, Hibiscus Radiatus seedlings, Tropical Sage, a low growing plant with blue flowers I can't remember the name of right now, and a stick of Spinach Tree (boy, do they root easily...just stick them in the ground.

So I had my palette, and there was my medium. There were still three plants growing in the spot, a sickly Fingerleaf Philodendron (Philodendron selloum), and even more sickly banana tree, and a Dragon Tree that wasn't doing badly at all.

I decided to leave them for now, so I planted the Cranberry Hibiscus seedlings in the very back, where they could drop their seeds and spread at will. The Hibiscus Radiatus and low growing plant went in the front on one side, and the tropical sage in front on the other. The stick of Spinach Bush went beside the banana tree. I thought it looked o.k., but there was going to be that problem of privacy (which was what the bananas were originally for), so I went hunting again. I came up with a temporary solution, that will take some time to come to fruition, but it's an experiment anyway. I planted five Surinam Cherry Tree seeds on the back side of the bed, and right behind them, I put the Snake Plants. Finished it all off with some fertilizer and water, and now we'll just see what happens.

I will say that the reason I didn't plant larger plants (I have plenty) is because of the difficulty of digging through the roots. I had to go with seedlings or seeds, or something with very shallow roots, thus the choices I made. Plus, none of these plants need special care after they are established, except the P. Selloum, which I may actually move, and the banana, which I will probably eventually move as well.

I'll go rake up some oak leaves tomorrow to mulch it with, but I'm pooped for today. All in all, another project...all free!

Happy Frugal Gardening!

I have had a dozen or more daylily plants in pots for years. In fact, some of them have died over the years, and since many weren't tagged, or lost their tags, I have no idea what I have left. That makes it all the more interesting, because today, I put most of them into the ground.

Yes, I planted about 8 of them into the front of my garden on the southeast side of my house. It gets just enough sun, and will be a nice place for them to spread and grow, if they should so choose.

All of these plants were free. I brought some with me from SC when I moved here, and I didn't plant them there, so they really were free. I got some as a gift from a friend who was thinning hers, and sent me two surprise packages full of them.

I used to have some very pretty varieties, but I don't have a clue what I have now, so I guess I'll just have to wait and hope. Even if they are all just plain old orange daylilies, I'll be happy.

This IS one of those times when I wish I had been able to save them all, so that I wouldn't have to wait to know what I have, but some things can't be helped.

In additon to the 8 I planted, I divided some, so I now have 8 more pots waiting to grow out and be planted somewhere else.

My next project is to find a place for the Milk and Wine Crinum lilies I had to move.