Sale season in full swing

I've received notices of big sales at Grand Street Gardens, City Escape and Sid's. (I'm on their e-mail newsletter lists, which is a great way to get the early scoop on sales at your favorite garden center. If they've got one, sign up.) A quick foray round the Web indicates that a lot of local garden centers are putting stuff on sale already. Summer sales are standard practice, but it seems early to me, perhaps because the weather has made it feel like spring so long.

The good news is that the cool temperatures and rain (65 degrees as I write this with a big thunderstorm front headed our way) mean it's not too late to plant perennials and even trees and shrubs, although normally, headed into the hot July weather, I'd call it awful risky. You will have to water quite a bit. But if you still have any pennies in your Great Recession gardening budget, seize the day.

The worrisome news is that I'm afraid these early sales might be a sign these folks have had a hard time selling their stock this spring. The cool weather, the rainy weekends, the broke or scared-of-being-broke customers--it could be bad news in the garden retail business. And that's bad news for gardeners, who need good garden centers.

I've done what I can to support some this year, although others didn't get my business because they failed to do the recession-era math. I turned right around and walked out of one place as soon as I saw a $17.95 price tag on an ordinary one-gallon pot of 'May Night' salvia. That garden center had way too many plants left for late June, and I know why.

I stopped by a farmer's market out in Indiana Saturday that was selling off its spring stock and got three nice 4-inch pots of Heuchera americana (which I split in half to get six small but healthy plants) and six 4-inch annuals for filler for $10.

Yesterday I did a lot of dividing and transplanting, filling some bare spots. In a fairly sunny bed I replanted some amber- and chartreuse-leaved heucheras that hadn't done well in a shadier spot, and moved the 4-inch native green heucheras into that space. I filled in some other bare spots with houseplant cuttings rooted on the kitchen windowsill. I'm going to take a friend up on the offer of a couple of Knock Out roses. I replanted my porch pots with lettuce seed that had been kicking around my house for a year or so.

Basically, I'm in garden-with-what-you-have-or-what-you-can-get-for-free-or-really-cheap mode, which makes me part of the garden centers' problem.

But if I had money to spend I'd be all over these sales.

Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.

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