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New to Gardening

Posted by Sailfish Boston, North (My Page) on
Sun, May 15, 05 at 11:27

New to Gardening so I'm kind of in the dark here. I would be interested in planting low growing Phlox around the border of my garden patio. I see you can buy plants but I would go broke fast filling in the 100 foot border. I see it's an annual.. Does this mean it has to be planted every year? How does one go about propagating the plant? Can I start now or is it too late? TIA


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RE: New to Gardening

Hi again Sailfish
I don't have any experience with phlox but I do have experience of filling large new areas of space without spending much money! It's not too late to sow some annuals of your own straight into the ground (yes, annuals being plants that grow from seed, flower, then die, all in one year).

I think it's a good way of starting, you can fill the area for this year, and also then if you buy some perennials (plants that will come back for several or many years) as money allows, and perhaps a few shrubs too, gradually you have less annuals and more things that require less work each year and also will give you something to look at during other parts of the year.

Claire.


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RE: New to Gardening

Well, I'm new to gardening too, but I did some research on phlox myself. Creeping phlox (phlox subulata) is a perennial, not an annual, and it forms a low growing mat that I am told spreads fairly quickly. You can apparently propogate it by stem cuttings. I just received the phlox I had ordered online, and I received tiny little twigs with some leaves on one end (sort of spiny, almost like rosemary) and roots on the other. As these are so small, I am hoping it DOES spread quickly. On the plus side, it was pretty inexpensive for a ground cover (I paid $7.52 for 24 of the little plants). The caveat is that to get it so cheap I had to let them pick the colors, and I have no idea what they'll be. A surprise for next year...

Anyway, good luck!


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