Well, we are definitely starting to feel the pressures of getting everything done for the summer. We had planned a different post for today, but we’re hurting pretty good after moving and stacking two cords of wood. So, we’re going to have a light post for tonight.
We usually cruise through our big box stores late in the season, looking for heavily discounted subarctic hardy perennials. The big box stores bring in ridiculous amounts of perennials up here and after the big gardening rush of early summer, some of them haven’t sold. As we get later and later in the season, they tend to go on heavy discounts where you’re paying $5 to $7 per plant. These perennial plants typically go for $30 to $40 at MSRP. For several years now, we’ve brought in literally hundreds of dollars of perennials for a fraction of that cost using this method.
The timing of this bargain hunt seems to vary a bit from season to season. Sometimes it’s a bit earlier, sometimes a bit later. But, we usually make it a point to start our hunt in late July to early August.
You do have to be really, really careful with the varieties you choose. Especially here in zones 2 and 3. The curation of big box store perennials is not expertly done and they try to sell plenty of perennials that will simply not survive here. But, there’s usually a few that are hardy down to zones 2 and 3 in our case. So, with a keen eye, you can scoop up some solid subarctic winners.
At this point in the season, these perennials might look a little rough for wear. But, we’ve found that it generally still works out as long as we get them into the ground by winter. Big picture, we’re looking at next year’s growth and beyond. So, what they look like now is of marginal concern. They just have to be healthy enough to survive.
This year, we picked up a few Candytuft, which looks like it’s good down to -40F and is a solid zone 3 candidate. We’re going to put these into our expanded subarctic rose garden, which is increasingly looking likely to become a 2024 and 2025 project for us. We are excited about it, though, as it’s giving us an opportunity to truly put a rose garden concept to the test, plus an opportunity to experiment with a lot of flowering subarctic hardy perennials.
We figured some of you bargain hunters might want “in” on this trick, it’s been pretty solid for us in greatly expanding our perennial selection!
