Golightly
06-28-2005, 09:25 AM
Hi Gang! Gardening rookie here... We rent an apartment in a 2 family house so I'm not really interested in developing any kind of a garden, just not killing what is already there.
Well, I do have some flower boxes with petunias and a hanging pot with mini-petunias that my mom got for me. Those, I'm just watering when they need it and dead-heading.
Namely, I'm worried about some roses. We live outside of Boston, MA and there appear to be four rose "bushes" outside the house, in a little strip of dirt between the house and the driveway. 2 seem to be climbing or vine-like (and rather mature) and two are smaller and seem more like normal plants and not vines. The climbing bushes have lots of deep pink (or fushia) blooms that come in clusters. One of the other rose bushes (which is positioned practically on top of one of the climbing bushes) had one big dark red bloom.
We also have big peony plant that already bloomed (I was sooo excited as I had peonies at our wedding). But DH wouldn't let me cut the peony blooms as we don't own the plant and they all wilted and fell to the ground, practically bringing the whole plant with it. So sad. :(
My parents came to visit and my mom mentioned something about caring for the plants and DH asked her not to because although they are planted against the house we live in, we don't own them. My mom basically told him to get over it, bought some gardening gloves and snippers and went to work...
She cut all the dead blooms off the peony plant and then snipped away at the rose bushes... She showed me how to cut them just above a 5-leave branch and then we zip-tied some of the really long branches that were crawling along the ground up onto an arbor that someone must have left there.
Luckily, the woman who lives upstairs thought it was great that we were working on the roses. She also said that the plants didn't have any care at all last summer but that the lady who lived in our apartment 2 years ago worked on them all the time to the glee of the landlord (a big, fat "told you so" to DH). :p
Sorry this is getting so long... basically, I want to do what I can for these plants, but I truly don't have a clue what I'm doing. Do you guys have any advice for me? Do I continue to clip back the plants? Do I remove every single bloom once it's "done" even if that means that there are none on the plant at all? Do I water them regularly?
The weeds were like ground cover too so I pulled them all up, and would like add bark mulch or stones or something to keep the dust down and make it look prettier... is that a good idea?
I am not much of a gardener and am not really interested in investing a ton of time or money on property we don't own... I don't want to grow prize-winners, I just want to do a little more good than harm.
Thanks and Cheers,
Well, I do have some flower boxes with petunias and a hanging pot with mini-petunias that my mom got for me. Those, I'm just watering when they need it and dead-heading.
Namely, I'm worried about some roses. We live outside of Boston, MA and there appear to be four rose "bushes" outside the house, in a little strip of dirt between the house and the driveway. 2 seem to be climbing or vine-like (and rather mature) and two are smaller and seem more like normal plants and not vines. The climbing bushes have lots of deep pink (or fushia) blooms that come in clusters. One of the other rose bushes (which is positioned practically on top of one of the climbing bushes) had one big dark red bloom.
We also have big peony plant that already bloomed (I was sooo excited as I had peonies at our wedding). But DH wouldn't let me cut the peony blooms as we don't own the plant and they all wilted and fell to the ground, practically bringing the whole plant with it. So sad. :(
My parents came to visit and my mom mentioned something about caring for the plants and DH asked her not to because although they are planted against the house we live in, we don't own them. My mom basically told him to get over it, bought some gardening gloves and snippers and went to work...
She cut all the dead blooms off the peony plant and then snipped away at the rose bushes... She showed me how to cut them just above a 5-leave branch and then we zip-tied some of the really long branches that were crawling along the ground up onto an arbor that someone must have left there.
Luckily, the woman who lives upstairs thought it was great that we were working on the roses. She also said that the plants didn't have any care at all last summer but that the lady who lived in our apartment 2 years ago worked on them all the time to the glee of the landlord (a big, fat "told you so" to DH). :p
Sorry this is getting so long... basically, I want to do what I can for these plants, but I truly don't have a clue what I'm doing. Do you guys have any advice for me? Do I continue to clip back the plants? Do I remove every single bloom once it's "done" even if that means that there are none on the plant at all? Do I water them regularly?
The weeds were like ground cover too so I pulled them all up, and would like add bark mulch or stones or something to keep the dust down and make it look prettier... is that a good idea?
I am not much of a gardener and am not really interested in investing a ton of time or money on property we don't own... I don't want to grow prize-winners, I just want to do a little more good than harm.
Thanks and Cheers,