tip of the day: pine cones

Besides being really cool looking in baskets and arrangements around the holidays, pine cones can be helpful in the yard.  Dogs or other critters getting into your flower or herb beds?  Throw in a few pine cones. 

They look pretty and they deter the varmints.  When it rains, they close up and retain the moisture for a few days, keeping your bed damp after the rains are gone.  This is a shot of what is usually our herb bed, though this is early Spring.  (I can tell as the Pansies still look pretty good, and they wither once it warms up.)  When the trees start spewing their Spring seeds and old leaves, it's easy to remove the cones, clean the bed out, and replace them where you need them.  They don't normally float out in a big rain either.

Another use:  filler in large potted plants.  Throw a few in the bottom with your drainage rocks and they'll take up room so you don't need quite as much soil.

I actually just dug these out of another planting today, and was getting a pot ready for a tree, so threw these in the bottom.  And we don't have any pine trees on our property, but my office has a few Ponderosa Pines on our lot, so I go out on occasion and gather cones.  I'm sure people think I'm crazy, but who cares?  My beds and pots are diggin' it!  See what I did there? ;)

~alice