Saving money with sticks

ShareThis

As the price of gas flirts with $4 a gallon, everyone knows the extra cash will come out of the household budget. For gardeners or for a homeowner who is creating the ideal homesite, you have to cut corners to achieve those goals set long before rising costs at the gas pump. Grandparents who garden lived through the Great Depression or were raised by those who did. They come from a much leaner time when you made do with what you have. In the wintertime when trees and fast growing shrubs are bare, it was their time to take in a unique sort of harvest. With leaves absent they could cut the suckers and water sprouts, long whip like growth and trailing weeping limbs. These sticks were not shredded or burned though. Instead they were used for everything possible from crafting furniture to creating new trees in the coming year.Decorate. Cut whips to fill jugs and vases with uniquely textured accent pieces that require no water. If you have red twig dogwood or similarly colored maple twigs, or better yet corkscrew willow, you can save a bundle. Instead of buying materials for your dried arrangements, use your garden's resources and discover your own creative whimsy.If you have grape vines, bittersweet, wisteria and other robust climbers, winter is the time to harvest your garlands and wreaths for this year or next. Leafless climbers can be more readily seen if they are running rampant in brambles or treetops. Rather than try to control them during next year's gardening season, cut them back now to enjoy for indoor arrangements, or as organic accents in every room of the house.Plant stakes. Lay out straight twigs about a half-inch diameter by three to four feet long. Set them flat onto a concrete slab without overlapping so they can harden off perfectly over the coming months. Come summer when dry and hard they make beautiful perennial plant stakes that blend into the garden more readily than manufactured ones. Shorter versions of these can be used to mark positions of bulbs underground so they are not mistakenly disturbed during spring planting.Trellis. Create grid trellage to attach to walls and fences. Twigs may be lashed together or larger diameter pieces may be connected with wood screws while still soft and green. When allowed to lay flat over winter in this form, they make strong naturalistic accents and useful grids upon which to twine clematis and other delicate vines.Free trees. Grandparents who grew up on farms know them well and may indeed recall the poplars and willows of rural childhood more than any other tree. The willows, genus Salix and the poplars, genus Populus, are both unique because they are so eager to strike roots. Even a small willow twig if introduced to soil will strike roots within weeks in the spring.In colonial America when iron was scarce and expensive, cuttings of willow and poplars were used all over the farm. Farmers needed a ready supply and would plant them from cuttings in windrows and hedges where they marked boundaries. They chose cottonwoods to provide shade. Willows were thought to help bind earth dams with their roots. These can be found in association with farm ponds too. In extremely difficult winters, the inner bark of these plants was fed to starving livestock both by Native Americans and pioneers. In early America, folks managed to create gardens despite their meager circumstances. In fact, gardening has never been expensive and therefore became one of the few ways to improve a home without becoming indentured to the home improvement store. It all depends on how resourceful you are and whether you go out and cut those twigs on a bright winter's day. If so, they'll be there when you need them six months down the line.(Maureen Gilmer is a horticulturist and host of "Weekend Gardening" on DIY Network. Contact her at her Web site www.moplants.com or visit www.diynetwork.com.)