Gardening Thunder Bay

Tasks for a Cold Winter Day

2011-01-30T09:10:00.000-08:00

What to do on a cold cold winter day? Clean the basement of course. I will not be starting my seeds down there until April, but nevertheless, the big tables have become cluttered. (What to do with all the damn books!) Nevertheless, I start the clearing process - put away the camping and fishing gear and books! and get ready to put up the shop lights.

On the computer, (Microsoft Word file) I make a list of seeds and seed starting information. Each type has its own protocol. Some germinate in the dark; others need light. Some need heat and some cool. In a home growing situation, one does the best one can. I use the information I have collected over the years and the information in the seed packet. I note here the seed packet info is often vague or just plain wrong. For instance I start most seeds inside even though the packet says "plant outside as soon as the soil is warm." I want my flowers fast, not in August. The only seeds I plant outside are nasturtiums. I tack the list to the wall of the back basement room and I put up the calender with the start dates marked.

What else to do on a cold winter day? Toss out the hyacinth and iris blooming from the bulbs I planted in October. Put the amaryllis in the cold room. Water the house plants and give each on a quarter turn. Read my book in the heated back porch and watch the finches, sparrows, chickadees and starlings, and big black squirrel attack the feeders.

Last fall, I set out newspapers on a patch of lawn beside a garden bed. I shovelled compost onto the papers and in this way, the turf is broken down and a new section of garden can be created. But what to put here? I am very partial to giant hosta. I have a huge hosta bullying its way under the Explorer Roses. The giants are not easy to find but this year, T&T advertises Empress Wu Giant Hosta. Mmm. On the other hand, hostas attract slugs and then they look raggedy unless I constantly strew coffee grounds all around them. Maybe another rose? Or a hydrangea?

Seedy Saturday

2011-01-27T14:43:00.000-08:00

February 26th

11:00a.m.-2:00 p.m.

Waverley Public Library - Auditorium

Entrance is free – Donations Appreciated

Seedy Saturday is a place to:

o See displays from local gardening groups

o Hear a presentation and see a film on “Savingyour Seed” – by Kate Green from USC

o Find heritage, open-pollinated and unusualseeds from local gardeners

o Share your seeds or begin your collection ofheritage seeds

If you have seeds to contribute to the seed exchange, besure to bring small packets of any seeds you have, labeled with information about the plant name, where and how itwas grown, where it originated from and other plant features.

For more information call Kim McGibbon at 625-8813

For more info go to: http://www.nwofood.ca/ http://www.nwofood/.

The Sunflower Massacre

2011-01-23T21:10:00.000-08:00

Sunflowers. I never had great luck with sunflowers until last summer. Previously, I'd planted them in my very dry front yard, but they did not grow well. It was surprising because when I lived in Kaminisitiquia, I always planted a row of sunflowers along the edge of the vegetable garden and they grew very well.

But last year, I bought Russian Giant, the biggest variety, started them inside and set out small plants in the back lane, a spot in full sun beside an 8 foot fence. They were magnificent. Many were twelve feet in height. When they started to lean into the lane, I tied them to the fence. The stalks were hollow but strong and woody, about an inch and a half in diameter. It was like tying up a tree. The plan was to leave them tied to the fence and let the birds feed from the seeds all winter.

I also planted zucchini seeds at the feet of the sunflowers. These grew out into the lane and produced more zucchini than expected -many more. I was begging people to take them away.

However, tragedy. In September, my neighbour chain sawed all the sunflowers down. He thought that was what I wanted. Luckily I got a few pictures. I'll try again this summer, same variety,Russian Giant, same fence.

Resurection

2011-01-23T14:30:00.000-08:00

I am revising my garden blog. Perhaps the arrival of the seeds gave me the motivation. I have always kept a garden diary on Microsoft Word, but this year, 2011, my blog will be my diary.

Some background: I have a small city garden which is crammed with perennials and bushes. I like the jungle look for two reasons - it attracts birds, it gives a feeling of privacy and isolation in a busy neighbourhood. Also it is easy upkeep.

I also grow most of my annuals under lights in the basement. So far, I have ordered my seeds from my favourite supplier, T&T seeds in Winnipeg, and they have arrived along with a litre of slug pellets and a spray bottle of Critter Ridder - more about these two organic products later.

Free Garden Catalogues

2009-02-15T18:34:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to a bunch of free garden catalogues. Canadian all. http://www.highway7.com/t_nature/nat_0302_gardens.html

Canada Blooms in March in Toronto

2009-02-14T20:55:00.000-08:00

Celebrate Canada at our 13th Anniversary "Canada Blooms" March 18-22, 2009 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, South Building.
Click Here to Buy Your Tickets Today!

Canada Blooms: The Toronto Flower & Garden Festival invites you to visit a paradise bursting with six acres of glorious gardens in full bloom, more than 100,000 square feet of green thumb shopping and much, much more at Canada's largest and most prestigious flower and garden festival.
Interested in learning more about gardening? With four different stages going non-stop, the show offers over 200 hours of seminars, workshops and demonstrations in five days from some of the best garden experts in North America. And it's free with your admission to Canada Blooms.
Need a little inspiration or looking for ideas? Over twenty dazzling and unique display gardens designed and built by the best of the best around the theme "Canada Blooms", where we celebrate our tradition of gardening and horticultural excellence.

To learn more about Canada Blooms 2009, visit Canada Blooms.

Nice Gift

2009-02-14T17:27:00.000-08:00

My seeds arrived and with them a gift for sending my order in on line. A small envelope of Dry Seaweed Concentrate Fertilizer packs a big punch. Seaweed, of course, has been used for fertilizer by generations of Maritimers.

The dry stuff is extremely concentrated. One packet of 15 grams has the almost fairy tale ability to never run out. The packet is first mixed with a gallon of water. Then you use two teaspoons ! to a litre of water in make the mixture you use for the plants.

According to the blurb, this stuff works for houseplants as well as garden plants. Powerful? Not really at a 2-5-2 or 2% nitrogen, 5% phosphorus and 2% Potash. But a fine gift and thank you T&T seeds.

February Re-start

2009-02-06T17:58:00.000-08:00

In January, it was too cold to think of gardens but now I am fired up and ready to go. I sent off my first order to T&T seeds. This was the flower order which I'll start in my basement under lights. (T&T Seeds at garden@ttseeds.com)

I am scaling back this year. I have to. The flower beds are so chock full of large perennials that there is little room for annuals. We have had such a good snow cover that I am confident my perennials are ready to burst as soon as it leaves. (Unless it floods. With so much snow, that is always a possibility).

But I did order some of the old favourites: pink lavatera, canary vine - the best annual climber, godetia, mixed colour impatiens for the shade garden, sweet peas for cutting and lemon gem marigolds to finish the season. I had such good luck growing geraniums from seed that I ordered several packs for the patio posts T&T does not carry the variety of cosmos that I like (sea shell) so I will look for it around town.

I will be going to some bird festivals in April. This means I have to give up some of the more "picky" plants such as schizanthus, pansies and wave petunias. I did order a few seeds that I will plant straight into the garden, namely bachelor buttons and nasturtiums. These last flow over the bricks that edge the patio. I plan to plant lots of sunflowers along the fence in the back lane as a treat for the birds.

Meanwhile the house is full of the scent of hyacinths. The stems are a little stretched and have to be propped on twigs. Hyacinth stems are hollow and boneless. They will practically lie down across the pot unless they are propped.

The King Alfred Daffodils came along nicely. They bloom for a few weeks, easily the longest blooming indoor bulb. They too stretched in our low northern light conditions but they do not seem to mind. Three pots of three plants each massed together on a side table make a grand winter show.

Seeds again

2009-01-04T20:13:00.000-08:00

Another free catalogue arrives. This one is from Lindenberg Seeds, 803 Princess AV, Brandon, Manitoba R7A 0P5. This catalogue is notable for its large selection of vegetables and flowers. Everything northern is here including the fine pie pumpkin "Sugar", the fast growing Sugar Baby Watermelon and other quick growers that we must have in Northwestern Ontario. On page 86, they give their picks for the best and hardiest varieties for the prairies and, as we all know, if it can grow in Manitoba, it can grow here. The list includes such stalwarts as Detroit Dark Red Beets, Nantes Carrots, and Homesteader Peas. They offer the entire list of 20 varieties on sale for $28.95 regular $32.32, a super deal. I'm buying the package.

Meanwhile the amaryllis are just starting. Christmas tree out to the recyclers and Amaryllis in flower to brighten the winter. I had no luck with my poinsettia this Christmas. It seemed peaky from the time I brought it home from the A&P. The leaves drooped and dropped off. I put it in the sun but it just curled up the more. It is sitting in the snow. If I could get out to the compost, I'd toss it in. One more snow fall and I may lose sight of the compost entirely.

Christmas Gifts

2008-12-09T09:49:00.000-08:00

Canadian Gardening has an interesting gift list in the current issue. My fav is the following: "My dream gift for Christmas would be a young, strapping male with meaty thighs and a willingness to fulfil my every desire—but mostly to dig, dig, dig.""

Otherwise, consider the following.
1) A garden bandit or weed looper. Just a pole with a loop of metal on the end but oh, what a back saver and efficient weeder.
2) A kneeling stool which can also be turned over to use as a seat. This item is a knee saver and you will find plenty of other uses for it.
3) A pair of Felcro pruners, the best made.
4)A lovely indoor plant or selection of indoor herbs
5) A beautiful bird feeder.

Tip. If you are prone to achy lower back muscles , try this wonderful tip. When you feel the ache coming on, just stand and give yourself a good shake. Shake you fanny and your entire body. Magic.

Tand T Comes Through

2008-11-21T18:17:00.000-08:00

Just when the garden is sinking into winter and looking a bit bleak, along comes the first seed catalogue. TandT, a reliable Manitoba grower, first off the mark.

I get several catalogues and I have ordered from many but in the last few years I found all the seeds I need in Stokes and T&T. Stokes is so detailed and gives such good growing information that it is a must for anyone starting seeds inside. T&T provides the Manitoba favourites and if it grows in Winnipeg, it can grow here.

Most seed catalogues start with new introductions. For instance this year T&T offers a frilly petunia, a white egg plant, a striped morning glory and so on. I pay little attention to this section. These plants are for those gardeners who are interested in novelty. Many of these newcomers are never seen in subsequent editions of the catalogue and one wonders just how successful they were for the average home grower.

I seldom order plants from catalogues. I prefer to use the local nurseries and see the plant before I buy.

So what do I look for? Every garden is in flux; every garden changes from year to year. Each year I see new ideas, seeds to try for new conditions. Next year I want more sweet peas, more sunflowers and shorter lilies for border. I'd like to try ferns in the increasing shade of the side garden. I want to switch to a different variety of squash. In the past I grew Swiss chard and I'd like to grow it again. I have increased the size of the front garden bed and have no idea what to put in it yet.

And above all, I love looking at the pictures and dreaming of another season.

Tip. The loop weeder is the greatest garden tool for saving your back. It is just a loop of metal at the end of a long pole. No more bending, kneeling and hand digging weeds. Just swipe into the soil, chomp the weed and leave it where it lies. It is much more efficient and easy than a hoe. A great gift for elderly gardners.

Cue the snow, cue the storm, cue the howling winds

2008-11-19T16:07:00.000-08:00

Now that our gardens are slipping under the snow, it is a good time to take stock of the past year.

I congratulate myself on reaching November without a garden injury this year -no bursitis, no bad back, no pulled muscles. In the past, I have not been so lucky.

This year I was determined to limit my garden tasks and only work at each for no more than twenty minutes. Easy to say but when you work in a garden, time changes its character. It falls away and loses all meaning. You are always in the present so time does not move along at a normal pace. And there is always is the temptation to do a little bit more.

But this year I bought a garden clock, an item I believe is a necessity to preserve the health of gardeners. I limited myself to twenty minutes per task and the clock, way up on the wall of the garden shed, monitored the minutes. I suppose a kitchen timer would work just as well.

Dr. Charles Bryan, a local chiropractor, who has seen a fair number of gardeners' aching backs and repetitive strain injurues, says the first rule of gardening is to put a limit on each task. Gardening is an athletic endevour he says and just as most of us cannot run for hours so we cannot garden for hours.

Garden clocks or exterior clocks showed up in garden centres two years ago. At first they were expensive but the price dropped this year. My clock is made of scrolly iron work and takes two A batteries. I think it is an attractive garden feature.

The snowless area

2008-11-16T19:28:00.000-08:00

Snow to the east and snow to the west but nothing to speak of in Thunder Bay. Deep grey clouds sail over but no drama. A friend, a long time resident, says she can smell approching snow but she does not smell it yet. She says there is a hush, as if the trees were holding their breath, but she has not tuned into this either.

I make a trip out to Vanderweese to look at the wonderful Christmas displays. I am also hoping to find dwarf ameryllis but no luck. I note their bulbs run from 13$ up, at least five dollars more expensive for similar bulbs in the supermarket.

At home I put out water for the birds and every day I thaw ice in the big plastic plant saucer with a kettle of hot water. The birds are on the hunt for water these days as the usual supplu slowly freezes over. Several years ago I bought a bird bath heater but it did not work well in deep cold. I will use the kettle method until the big freeze sets in.

A downy woodpecker, which I have seen in this urban neighbourhood before, shows up for some suet cake. She is a female, as shown by the lack of the red spot on the back of the head. The downy is the most common woodpecker found in the city. This small upright black and white bird sometimes gives a high squeaking call.

A gang of starlings are eating the crab apples. Darn! I was hoping to attract cedar waxwings but no, the short tailed speckled guys with their long bills are stripping the fruit now that the frost has softened it.

On the patio, the juncos look like sparrows dressed in tuxedos. They are black with a white tummy and when they fly you can see their natty white outer tail feathers. Sometimes they give a funny little hop. They also make clicking noises, probably to keep in touch with each other.

snow, lovely snow

2008-11-09T06:43:00.000-08:00

A light snow is sifting down. The juncos leave birdy tracks on the patio where they are feasting on black oil sunflower seeds. The resident chickadee pecks at the bird cake in its holder. The grey squirrel arrives to steal what it can.

The garden is settling into winter. The gardener is still washing pots inside. She had a pleasant gift this week, ten big plastic bags full of leaves. She drags them to the compost and empties several over the remaining pile and turns out one bag over the daphne bush, a tender plant still holding on to its variegated leaves.

But in the back garden all leaves are fallen. Only a few berries remain on the high bush cranberry and nothing on the mountain ash. The lamium, alive yesterday, is frozen today. In front, the mullein still blooms in the sharp wind and blowing snow. It must be the world's toughest plant. It has been blooming since August.

I should have brought the hose in earlier, thinks the gardener, struggling with a frozen 100 feet of ice.

Now is the time to plant the indoor bulbs. The amarylis have arrived at Vanderweese and other stores. Nothing is more cheery in the winter than this marvelous indoor flower. Every child in Thunder Bay should have an amarylis to plant and watch it stretch into bloom.

High Park Toronto

2008-11-03T16:38:00.000-08:00

Some years ago, the decision was made to change Toronto's High Park from a typical urban manicured space into an ecological wilderness. What a delight it is. From downtown you take the Queen Street East street car to Park Drive. You can walk the trails around Grenedier Pond and up to the restaurant where you can get a nice hot chocolate. Native trees and plants attract plenty of birds: ducks, trumpeter swams, cormorants, Canada geese on the ponds and gold finches, sparrows and late warblers in the trees. There is also a small zoo hidden in there somewhere. Thunder Bay has few oak trees but here there are many. In October they are a deep copper colour, beautiful alongside the bright red maples.

Even in late October Toronto gardens are interesting. A few roses bloom on. Many small downtown front yards have eschewed lawn for rock/plant/shrub compositions. I saw plenty of lamium and lots of spreading allysum.

Oh Natural!

2008-10-24T17:11:00.000-07:00

From the corner of Balmoral and Central Avenue, turn west past Robins's and the car wash place. A little farther along, on the right side is the Central Natural Enviromental Garden, a nice place to stop and walk about or sit for a while. A picnic table provides one of the few places to eat a picnic in the inter-city area. There is a small parking area at the back.

A set of wild flower gardens unfurl under the willows, spruces, pines and two lovely small gold tamaracks. Even in the late fall, there is lots of interest as the natural plants hold out their seeds and the birds arrive.

Evening primrose, prairie sunflower, pearly everlasting, golden rod, dame's rocket, brown eyed susan, anise hysop, mullein, hawk weed (also called devil's paint brush), pinks, flax and other wild flowers are identified by well-made signs. This is a good place to check out the looks of the wild plants that you might want to use in your own garden.

I was interested to see a pile of wood chips at the back of the garden and note the use of wood chips between the groups of plants. Wood chips make a great weed repelling mulch, much more attractive and enviromentally friendly than plastic or weed barrier cloth. Also I some of the paths are just made of mown grass, a very nice way to create a path in a heavily planted garden.

Garden, stil going on.

2008-10-23T15:47:00.000-07:00

I cannot believe things are still blooming in the gardens around town. Today I was amazed to see a Stella d'oro day lily arrive with a few fat buds ready for the next few days. Stella is not my favourite day lily. It is not very florifierous and it is small. But if I ever fulfil my dream to make a garden room entirely of day lilies and Asiatic lilies, Stella would be there if only because it is tough.

The marigolds are amazing around town. My tiny yellow ones, (a variety called lemon gem grown from seeds fromT&T) may bloom all winter. They pay no intention to the frost at night. I gave away a lot of lemon gem plants which are blooming merrily where ever they were planted. They make balls of small yellow flowers and, in fact, do not look like marigolds at all.

Also hanging around are the bachelor buttons and a few Marie Bugnet roses. Don't these plants know it is almost Hallowe'en?

Is it my imagination or are the leaves also slow to fall this year. I am ready for them. I rake them into a tarp, gather up the corners and toss them on the compost. I also like to get a few clear plastic bags full of leaves to put on the compost as a sort of insulation. They rot a bit inside the plastic. In spring I use them to layer up with greener compost material.

I will spread compost over the garden now. I know that the garden magazines say to spread it in the spring, but these magazines are written in wussy Southern Ontario, a place where you can put a garden fork into a compost pile in April. We are lucky if we can clean out a compost pile in June without hitting ice. So I spread the good stuff at the bottom of the pile now and replace all the half rotten stuff for another year.

Bringing plants inside

2008-10-15T18:38:00.000-07:00

What can thrive inside and what can't. Many herbs can make the transition to a sunny window. Some herbs such as the perennial, rosemary, do well indoors. The parsleys do fine but my basil falls apart. Maybe this Mediterranean herb does not get enough light as the days shorten.

Last year I brought pansy plants inside, sheared them back and hoped they would bloom again. They did do so but with such small short-lived blooms the experiment was hardly worth the effort. I remembering giving one pansy plant as a gift to be told later that blooms fell off and in a few days the plant died. Not a great gift.

This year I have brought in a few geraniums and they are starting to set buds already.

Ever since I had an infestation of aphids in the plants of my back porch, I have been very cautious about bringing in the outdoors. I was able to defeat the aphids with Safer's Trounce but recently I heard of a woman who brought in slugs (or the eggs) and they crawled around her basement. Yikes! Before I bring a plant inside for the winter, I pull it, shake off the excess soil and give it a quick bath in warm soapy water. (Soapy water kills aphids. ) I rinse it off under the hose and replant inside using a sterile soil mix such as Pro-mix. The plants survive this rough treatment surprisingly well.

Last Tea in the Garden?

2008-10-13T19:25:00.000-07:00

It takes five minutes for the garden to arrive. When you are out there with your cup of tea or your lunch, your mind, for the first five minutes, continues to huffle along with its indoor thoughts: tasks to do, the upcoming elections, the book you are reading, the state of your life generally. But at the same time you are looking around and the garden world is permeating your brain and then it "arrives" and you feel yourself part of your outdoor place. You notice everything within view and the greenery becomes part of you.

I love variegated leaves on plants and in the fall the entire garden is variegated. There are many gold leaves among the green. The hostas glow golden as do have the leaves of many bushes. A few red leaves show on the high bush cranberry and the peonies. Tiny dots of blue mark the last bachelor buttons. A lone pink cosmos shines against the fence. The spikes of monks hood and delphiniums are brown. But the main colour now is green, dark green grass mixed with autumn leaves.

A Bird in the Hand

2008-10-12T10:04:00.000-07:00

I once saw a chickadee eating from a baseball glove. The glove was on the hand of a friend. She had set up a sort of stick man and fed the birds from the glove attached to an arm stick. Later she held the glove and the chickadees gradually came.

Another friend tells me how he enticed the whiskey jacks. He put dog food on a small table outside. As many dog owners in the country are aware, whiskey jacks love pet food. My friend sat on a chair at some distance from the table. Gadually he moved the chair closer. Finally he was sitting at the table. Everything good comes in small steps. An arm on the table. An arm with an open hand with food in it. They hop right up. Now when he walks around his country property, he has to load his pockets with dog food.

The sad news is that few of us in town are lucky enough to have whiskey jacks come to our feeders. The good news is that the juncos, those weed seeding eating fiends, have arrived.

Trees and Landscaping

2008-10-09T11:02:00.000-07:00

The south end of Syndicate Avenue looks lovely with its new pavement patterns and healthy small trees. Other places around town, particularly the down town areas and the west end of Bay Street are enhanced by small trees which one day, and not far off, will produce inviting streetscapes. Of course, once you move away from the business streets and into the residential areas, you find shady walks, lovely gardens, interesting landscaping.

But alas it is not enough. Our city planners and local businesses have busied themselves this summer dumping tar everywhere. Not on drive or walkways where asphalt is needed but any other place possible. On earth spaces where bushes, plantings and small trees could go, we in Thunder Bay get more black tar. It stretches along side sidewalks, on road medians and corners, around businesses and apartment buildings with, often, a dumpster or a pile of tires to complete the landscaping creating an instant slum look on our major streets.

Anything, anything, any monstrosity it better than planting something or pulling a weed. It seems odd to me that business staff can be asked to sweep a parking lot or pick up trash but cannot be required to remove a weed or water a planter.

I know that many of our local business owners would never consider paving their front lawns at home and adding a rusty fence or a dumpster or a garbage can or several large pot holes or a dilapidated sign. They would no more consider it than they would stand on their heads naked on their own roof tops. But the same owners turn their business into a slum and ruin our city. The idea that Thunder Bay will attract tourists is laughable after you take one drive along Memorial Avenue.

Half a Frost

2008-10-06T21:16:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday night, after a family dinner, I said good-bye to the garden. I walked around in the dark zero degree air and said good-bye to the big hosas, the cosmos, the lavatera, and the nicotania. The next morning I saw a half frosted garden.

It was interesting to note what survived and what lived. The plants close to the fence and the shed fared better than those exposed in the centre bed. The front yard was not touched at all nor was the side garden between two houses. But an area in the back a slight bit lower that the main section was badly hit. Usually the hostas are most susceptible to frost but this year it was the cosmos.

Today I pulled out black cosmos. They were the biggest and toughest cosmos I have ever grown. Many plants were over 6 feet tall with stalks like small trees. I also continued weeding and emptying pots. I empty pots the easy way by pulling out the plants and then tipping the pot into the garden and spreading the soil among the perennials. This is easier than shovelling into a wheel barrow etc.

PUTTING THE GARDEN TO BED

2008-09-29T08:59:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a wonderful day to work in the garden. Every warm and sunny day is precious now. As I puttered about the white-throated sparrows sang their autumn song composed of a few faint whistles quite diferent from the spring song of I-love-Ca-na-da,Ca-na-da, Ca-na-da. The autumn song is a faint echo but like many Canadians the white throats will spend the winter in warmer places.

I cleaned pots and boxes and planted the Orienpet lilies deep in a spot near the patio. All summer they grew in a big planter box and produced large flower heads. But as pot plants they were not entirely successful. They leaned this way and that and the blooms were down facing so you could not really see them unless you were close enough to peek under the petals. I have to think what to put into the big cedar box next year.

I see the lavatera is about finished for the year but the tiny lemon gem marigolds bloom magnificantly on. The tall nicotania is really coming into its own now. A spindly plant all summer, it sprang into bloom about a month ago and still carries on. This old fashioned variety sports thin white trumpet shaped flowers. During the summer, I vowed never to plant it again but now I am rethinking.

In spite of he heavy rain of a few days ago, the compost in the black composter was dry. The lid keeps out rain and that does not encourage what we want - i.e. rot. The lid comes off for the season.

A friend in the country cut down her lovely apple tree. Every year it was attacked by a bear who left behind broken branches and no apples. In the city the apples attract the apple maggot fly and in the country, bears.

This year I bought grand apples at the farmers' market, my favourite Saturday destination. And I am not alone. The place is jammed at the opening bell at 8 a.m. I got another basket of blueberries, perhaps the last of an excellent season.

AUTUMN GARDEN

2008-09-27T07:40:00.000-07:00

Becky Klein McCreary is a poet and gardener in the tiny town of Ouray, Colorado. Her poem expresses the sadness we feel when the garden disappears for the winter.

Autumn Garden

I am not ready
to put you away from chilling winds
into darkness
or slice into the stubby cuttings
for next year’s garden
or let trespassing deer
bite your tall, green crown
down to the brown soil
or stuff you into clay pots
that by mid-April
I have begun to dislike
Because you are too needy.
Lime green hostas
orphaned on our porch
grew plump this summer
in Box Elder’s shade
Thorny cactus, carefully cut
from ragged New Mexico ditches
lean out of terra-cotta pots.
Peppermint, lemon balm
chocolate mint, apple mint
garnished summer fruit bowls
and glasses of iced tea.
Oregano, thyme, and parsley
gathered into faded rag ribbons
drying for winter pasta dishes
cascading catnip, out of reach
sends kitty into a frenzy
while green-red hens and chicks
playfully tumble off the rocky roosts.
Feathery, copper fennel
waves in a wisp of wind
and daisies, coneflowers, yarrow
bow in their final performance.
I don’t want to put you away.

Serendipity

2008-09-25T10:26:00.000-07:00

As I was writing the post below about bulbs, a neighbour dropped by. He had been cleaning out a basement and had several dozen clay flower pots and plant saucers to give away. I was out of the house like a shot.

Many people do not like ceramic flower pots. When filled with soil and plants, they are heavy. The large ones are chiropractor's dreams. Clay pots cannot be left outside in our winter because you end up with clay shards. It is a chore to empty the large ones, lug inside, scrub them and store. Plastic is easier, cheaper and preferred nowadays.

However, the old fashioned clay pots have virtues. They are often more attractive than plastic, with fancy colours and embosssed designs. The terra cotta colour gives a traditional look to the garden. They are a better bet for indoor forcing. They retain moisture better than plastic and, more importantly, if the tulip or daffodil stretches, they do not tip.

I sanffled up a tall pot, perfect for amaryllis. These plants are notorious tippers as they stretch in the low light conditions of mid-winter. I also took four six-inch pots for my hyacinth bulbs and a squat pot with saucer to match, perfect for forcing crocus.

Four large plant saucers were a bonus. Two became bird baths, replacing the plastic saucers that have been chewed up by the weed whacker. Two will go under the palm tree and the fig in the porch, once I get around to repotting these monsters.

Tip. If the clay pot breaks or cracks, recycle. Throw it hard against something so it breaks, gather up the shards and use them for drainage when planting pots. I have a small shard collection in the basement to use when planting bulbs for forcing and a larger collection in the back shed for next spring. I also recycle any broken household dishes for drainage shards.

THE BULBS ARE HERE

2008-09-24T08:06:00.000-07:00

On Sunday I took a trip to Vanderwees to check out the fall bulbs.

Usually I buy Darwin tulips from the bins but, alas, no Darwins in the bins, only Triumphs. Darwins are the hardiest tulips for fall planting in the North. They are tall big-headed plants in many colours and, in other years, Vanderwees has offered two or three varieties in bins, running about fifty cents (or less) a bulb, significantly cheaper than the packaged Darwins which can cost up to a dollar a bulb.

Triumph tulips are shorter (usually) and good for forcing. This year I am concentrating on hyacinths for forcing and so I purchased a four-pack of Delph Blue. Nothing can surpass the gorgeous colour of blue hyacinths or the scent. A hyacinth makes a good, long blooming gift unlike tulips which pot out quickly. Hyacinths are not cheap and run about $1.75 a bulb.

Lily tulips intrigue me. They usually bloom late in long pointy flower heads. I bought a pack of sixteen mixed colours. ($9.99 or about 65 cents a bulb). These are fairly short tulips at 20 inches and so will probably come in at 15 inches in our climate. Unfortunately, lily tulips seldom return in future years – a one-off plant..

My main aim was to get allium gigantium bulbs. From experience, I know these sell out fast. This ornamental is a must for northerners. In the early spring, before most perennials have gathered themselves together, a tall flower spike emerges reaching 100 centimeters of more. Pale purple florets create a flower head bigger than a soft ball and long lasting too. I planted my first alliums in 1992 and they are still alive. Every year I add a bulb or two. The bulbs are not cheap. Vanderwees has them on sale for 4$ each, the best price I have seen for a while. I have seen prices as high as $8 a bulb. I bought four bulbs at this good price. I will set them at the back of the perennial bed with a good deep stake to mark the spot. Tip: There are many different types of allium but only the variety “gigantium” creates the tall spikes. Other alliums are floppy short things.

Vanderwees’ flyer advertised blue poppies, an intriguing idea and I bought a package of twenty-five ($6.99). I’ll plant then in a big clump and put another strong stake to mark the spot.

My final purchase was a pack of muscari also called grape hyacinth. I love the little bulbs and the blue muscari are as reliable in spring as the mosquitoes. This new variety, Spring Smile, promises flower heads a little larger than usual.

Vanderwees threw in a pack of King Alfred daffodils. I usually have zero luck with daffs, even this old-timey variety. However, this year, they go in deep, deep with a good mulch of leaves.

But for now, the bulbs go into the cold room until mid October. It is still too warm to plant them

Tip: When marking fall plantings use a strong stake or short metal pole and hammer it in. Keep notes of what stake marks what. The frost ejects plastic plant markers and the north wind erases written labels.

Autumn Tips

2008-09-22T19:43:00.000-07:00

A reader, Anne Marie, wants to add some advice on mouse proofing a garden shed for the winter. She says to remove all rags or paper products that mice could shred to make a nest. She once left a roll of paper towel in her shed and the mice reduced it to tiny scraps. They also shredded up some plastic bags.

James Z. mentions that skunks target garden sheds. City skunks often hibernate in a burrow dug under a building. A row of bricks around the base of a shed or garage can prevent then from digging in. If they are a smelly nuisance, you might want to leave a light burning outside all night. Skunks do not like light.

I pull up the veggie garden and find more cucumber, squash and zucchini. I bring them inside, wipe them dry and set them out so that they do not touch each other. I'll give some away, if I can, and make soup with the rest.

On a trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan I was startled to see shredded cypress bark on sale as garden mulch. The Audubon Society is requesting that cypress bark be banned. They urge gardeners to boycott cypress bark mulch. Huge sections of southern Louisiana cypress forest are being cut for bark. Cyprus is a native tree in the south. It withstands hurricanes very well and prevents hurricane flood surges. Several large chains including Wal-Mart have discontinued cypress bark. Home Depot however still carries it.

Grackles have arrive in my garden and it is as if the biker gang of the birder world has dropped by. The smaller birds, chickadees, sparrows and goldfinches, sit in the lilacs and stay out of the way. I have to remind myself that grackles eat slugs and I cheer as they patrol the flower beds. Soon they will bully their way down south. Still I prefer the gold finches. Chipping and white throated sparrows join in with the house sparrows at the feeders. A fox sparrow scratches the ground with both feet together, digging up edibles. Only the chickadees and the house sparrows will stay around for the winter. I have never seen a whiskey jack in my yard even though they appear at feeders in gardens close to McVicar's Creek. The blue jays of last week seem to have moved on.

Winter energy cake for birds. Ingredients: equal parts corn meal (from the bulk store), lard and peanut butter. Melt the lard and peanut butter and stir in the corn meal. The mixture should be thick but still runny. Drop ladles of this mixture on to waxed paper covered cookie sheets and put in the freezer. When the "cookies" are frozen, put in a bag or container and keep in the freezer. Jam a couple of cookies into a wire holder. Birds love this fat cake and this recipe is cheaper than buying the commercial bird cakes. I look for lard and peanut butter on sale and buy in bulk.

The bulbs are back!! I trek out to Vanderwees and buy. More next post.

Love those Roses and other Autumn Thoughts

2008-09-21T07:33:00.000-07:00

The joy of roses. The Morden Snowberry is covered in floppy white blooms, the inestimable Winnipeg Parks is still producing one hot magenta rose after another and the Explorers bring out a few pink blossoms every week. The rose hips will attract birds later in the winter but for now the bright red hips of the Red Leafed Rose are as brilliant as flowers. Around town, many Hansa Roses are still blooming albeit weakly. Their leaves will be the last things to drop with the frost, expected any day now.

This is also PG Hydrangea time. These shrubs are aThunder Bay fav. and every garden should have one just to pick up the spirits this time of year. Many people buy Annabelle hydrangeas with their enormous flower heads but they need winter protection and even so....

My garden is full of birds plus the odd squirrel. I heard that a Thunder Bay guy has been trapping the big black squirrels and releasing them out of town. Is this legal? I hope so. I prefer the tiny native red guys over the muscle bound Toronto newcomers.

There are so many birds around I've set up a fourth bird bath. By far, the birds prefer baths on the ground and they like the blue ceramic saucer the best. Perhaps the colour attracts them. My new bath is a child's snow saucer, purple in colour. I have also bought a device that keeps the water moving in a bird bath. This repels mosquitoes who lay eggs in stagnant water and attracts birds who are attracted to moving water.

I have started to move the bird feeders closer to the house so that they can be seen from the porch window in the winter.

I will also put out the bird bath heater and leave it for a few months. But once it gets really cold (below minus fifteen or so) the heater will not work and the bath freezes solid. Even a kettle of boiling water doesn't do much good.

I have made some high energy seed cakes to put out in the special holders once the frosts sets in. Recipe next post.

Tip: If you believe in prayer, say one to the goddess of gardens for early and deep snow for all northern gardens. Perform a hex to keep away the devil's work - no snow and the mercury deep down in the thermometer's socks.

Cooking with your garden produce

2008-09-18T10:14:00.000-07:00

Here is a delicious and simple soup that uses either cucumbers, squash or a mixture of both. It can be eaten hot or cold. I prefer hot.

Barbara B's Cucumber Soup
Take a few garden cukes, peel and chunk up. You can use the pickling cukes if you grow them. or chunk up some peeled squash of any sort. Chop up a big onion and put all in pot and add broth to cover. (I use non-salt veggie cubes to make broth but Barbara uses chicken broth cubes)Simmer until cooked. The cooking time depends on what combo you have in the pot but about 15 minutes should do it. Salt and pepper. Add a bit of fresh dill. if you grow it. I added a shake of cajun spice. Cool the soup and puree well in a blender or food processor. Place in a container and put in fridge. This is your basic soup.

To serve, take out about two thirds cup for each person and combine with a third cup of bettermilk. Serve hot or cold. That's it. How easy can it get?

Tip. We often get our first frost on September 20. Last year it was much later. Often the perennials bloom on, tough guys that they are. All the annuals which turn to black pulp have to be pulled and composted. I just leave the other plants alone. I empty my large ornamental ceramic pot, rinse it with the hose and bring it inside and scrub it. Slug eggs can hide in the rough ceramic material and so a good scrubing is needed. Ceramic pots will not survive outside in out deep freeze winters. I also pull the blackend annuals out of the large plastic pots and window boxes. Then it depends how much time I have. Sometimes I have emptied these containers on the compost but in a hurried autumn, I just leave them alone.

Mice are Not Nice

2008-09-07T09:59:00.000-07:00

There is no such thing as one mouse. If you spot one, many others are lurking nearby. This time of year, the outdoor mice are looking for a winter berth, preferably one with food. It may be your back shed or it may be your house!

Last Christmas I bought large cans of popcorn on sale at Superstore, threw the popcorn in the garbage and kept the cans for bird food. These are stored in the shed and so far the mice have not nibbled into them. A friend stores her black oil sunflower seeds in a new metal garbage can with a good fitting top. Another stores her seeds in a big plastic pail with a flat lid held in place with a brick. I also sprinkle Critter Ridder (available at Canada Tire) around the shed floor. This is mainly to deter squirrels who also can nest in a shed.

Mice are notorious for getting into a building through a tiny crack or hole. Once in, they can do a lot of damage by nesting in the insulation or chewing on the electrical wires inside a stove. Mice can live under a dishwasher or under the kitchen floor joists and enter the kitchen at will through a gnawed hole in a lower cupboard.

The moral is to get rid of them at once.

A cat is best. I borrowed a cat the few times I have seen the droppings or heard the scritching in the evening. Other people rely on poison (not great if you have babies or pets around) or traps. I have used the live traps with success, baiting them with peanut butter. But the cat is the answer.

The Heat Goes On

2008-09-02T11:15:00.000-07:00

The tomatoes should ripen in this heat even though the nights are cool now. I bought two plants, the variety called Early Girl, a lucky variety for me. But the rainy June and July held the plants back and the tomatoes are not even setting red yet. The rain did not harm the zucchini however. I was wise to just plant one plant. The corn (variety Northern X Sweet, from T&T seed of Winnipeg) is the best I have ever grown. I have been eating the cobs for two weeks now. The kernels are pale, straight and delicious. The cucumber is delicious too. For years I have grown the old fashioned eating type called Straight 8. The acorn squash is very small but I’m hoping it will plump up before a hard frost kills the leaves.

I am planning to raise my small veggie bed next year. I have plenty of compost to fill up a small area bordered by 2X6 planks. Even an inch or two of height gives protection from the frost.

I never liked the yellow potentilla bush but a few years ago I planted the white flowering variety and later the pale pink, each placed in the centre of a perennial bed and both blooming their hearts out now. Potentilla is as tough as an old boot and a lot prettier. It is one of the few plants that will winter over in a raised bed. Also deer do not eat them. Banff, a city plagued by elk, is awash in potentilla, the one garden item those huge pests do not eat. (And we think squirrels are a problem!).

The Lasagna Method is used to carve new garden spaces from the lawn without removing sod. The web provides everal recipes but the simplest is to put down several layers of newspaper and cover with compost and leave for a long time. The grass dies and you plant right through the paper which composts under the soil. I intend to try this out this fall and leave all in place over the winter. My front grass covers a impenetrable tangle of maple tree roots but maybe lasagna can give me some usable garden space. I am hoping the newspaper will stop the tree roots from taking over the compost as well as kill the grass. A small patch first, I think.

Tip. If you worry the shasta daisies will spread throughout your garden, be sure to pull off the flower heads before they set seed.

Labour Day Weekend

2008-08-29T19:31:00.000-07:00

The end of summer is here but the garden is perky - ready, aye ready to carry on into fall.

The phlox blooms on as do those stalwarts, the bachelor buttons, the impatience, the lobelia and the pinks. The cosmos are tossing out flowers from five foot high plants. The lavatera shines a silky pink.. The Asiatic lilies look seedy but the orienpets are magnificent, large and brassy. A cross between an Oriental and a trumpet lily, Orienpet lilies blossoms are huge and as ruffled as a ball gown.

The crab apple tree flaunts bright red fruit; the sea lavender, a late bloomer, presents a cloud of fluffy buds. It will be another week before the tiny flowers open.

The sweet peas dot the back lane fence with white and deep purple flowers. Sweet pea makes a long lasting bouquet, almost as good as the godetia, another great cutting annual.

The mountain ash and the high bush cranberry are sporting bright red berries but not for long. The birds will soon devour them. But the birds will not touch the crab apples until late in the winter when the fruit softens up and sweetens with the frost.

Meanwhile the longed for rain arrives flattening several plants. These will have to be staked up tomorrow.

On a trip south into Wisconsin, I saw fields of tansy, once a cultivated species but now growing wild. An old fashioned plant, it can be seen in a few gardens around town. Tansy is a tall plant with blazing yellow flowers and it will grow just about anywhere although it seems to prefer dry places. I even saw a patch growing along a bit of rocky shore of Lake Superior.

Further south, I ran into prairie flowers such as blazing star and the wonderful prairie sunflower. This small flowered plant also can be found in local gardens. At Crex Meadows, a wildlife sanctuary near Grantsburg Wisconsin, the wild sunflowers covered acres of prairie in brilliant gold. The grasses were marvelous there. I found some bluestem well over six feet high.

How Come?

2008-08-25T09:08:00.000-07:00

A friend asks why her hosta is so small? Was it the rain early in the season or the heat in August? The fact is that the hosta is a dwarf variety, made small for edging walkways. Unfortunately my friend did not read the label. Her tiny hosta cost as much as the giants. Often hostas on sale are the tiny type so it pays to check the size,

I note here that my favourite hosta is the large variety sum and substance, not only for its pale chartreuse colour but also its resistance to slugs. I further note that the slugs are having a hard time in our perpetual rainless heat this August. Do I feel sorry for them? Nah!

Speaking of small things it is worthwhile to note that many plants come in various sizes. Last year I was asked why the nicotania in the garden was overshadowing the near by plants. Nicotania is another plant that comes in various sizes. There is also a small cosmos, confusing because it is orange or yellow in colour and not the expected pink and white of the tall type. To me it looks like an entirely different plant.

Speaking of rain, we need some. The weeds are cemented into the soil. Hot weather makes the last perennials turn pale and set seeds fast. You can run the hose but when the soil gets this dry, the water does not penetrate or spread far. If you scrape the damp surface you find the soil is dry a few centemeters down.

Tip. Check out The Key (delivered to all houses in Thunder Bay or available at the library). Page 111 tells you how to get a city tree for your boulevard or other public space. But, if you do take a free tree (or pay for one - both options are available) be prepared to protect your baby. Water and keep kids, bicycles and vehicles from damaging it.

Buried in Marigolds

2008-08-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

It is useful to keep copious garden notes. And even more useful to read them over from time to time. My notes from last May detail the planting of the patio pots and boxes. On May 19, I planted two large pots of acidanthera surrounded by lobelia crystal palace (the only lobelia which does not fry out in the heat) and pink dianthus. The two big cedar boxes received orienpet lilies with an edging of pansy, lobelia and dianthus.. The notes mention the cedar box of feverfew and a decorative pot of marigolds surrounding evening stock, not a successful pairing because the strong scent of the marigolds wipes out the sweet scent of the stock. I planted a long box of geraniums and various pots of herbs. Two small boxes of nasturtiums grace the top of the fence

But what is this? A big pot of white geraniums surrounded by tiny yellow mariglds? I had forgotten all about this arrangement. I go outside to check and see that the supposedly dwarf marigolds had grew ten inches high and filled the pot from rim to rim. . I push them aside and spot, cowering in the middle, three tiny geraniums barely alive. Quick action is needed. One pitiful plant has even set a bud trying to make a flower even though buried in marigolds.

Out they came and sit in individual pots on the back steps. By nightfall, they’d perked up. Not a moment too soon.

The cedar waxwings, birds that wander the continent, are in town. They’ve probably come for the mountain ash berries but in my garden they are eating the lilac seeds. Every once in a while they scarf down a bug even though they are not primarily insect eaters They always travel in flocks and keep in touch with each other by whistling a high call noe.

Tip. Hot and dry weather. Time for the soaker hose. Or use the regular hose to trickle water here and there. Less water is evaporated with this method and the water gets to the roots rather than settling on the leaves.

August and the Annuals

2008-08-15T18:59:00.000-07:00

This is the time of year when the annuals strut their stuff. The ample rains in the spring sent the cosmos growing. Some of the plants are over six feet. These, the most useful of annuals, produce soft green feathery leaves which fill in all the spaces now that the perennials have finished blooming. The other annual, planted in clumps in the perennial bed, is the pink lavatera, now unfolding in satin cups. The bachelor buttons (Jubilee Gem, a true blue) are blooming under the roses.

In spite of all this bounty, I was not able to find enough blooms to cut for the house. I like to run a continuous bouquet inside. I put the vase on the kitchen table where the flowers scent the room and are in full view. Roses, peonies, shasta daisies or lilacs married with the goat’s beard or baby breath make stunning displays but these plants have finished blooming for the season. Several perennials are not suited for cutting. The delphiniums and the monks hood do not last . Others, like the true geraniums, have floppy stems. Phlox releases hundreds of petals. Some of the smaller plants such as lily of the valley and the pansies make charming nosegay bouquets in a small vase but they too have come to the end of their time. Sweet William lasts well inside but mine are right by the patio and I don’t want to remove them.

So how to get a bouquet together. The sweet peas and the sea lavender, the best flowers for cutting, are still not ready. I planted no sunflowers this year. A vase of these look great as Van Gogh’s famous painting shows. So I pick a few of the emerging cosmos blooms here and there. Their stems look fragile but they are really quite wiry and so they stand up in the vase. I add a few bachelor buttons and monardas but the bouquet is skimpy indeed. So into the back lane I go to pick the ox eye daisies and this fattens up the group well enough to fill up a vase. I vase of daisies with a few colourful extras now sits on the kitchen table.
Tip. It’s not too late to plant day lilies and Asiatic lilies which are on sale this week

The Dew is Gleaming on the Grass

2008-08-12T07:43:00.000-07:00

In the early morning the garden is very quiet. I hear only the honking sound of a nuthatch in the Manitoba Maples next door. The usual morning sing-a-thon has ended for this year. The birds have finished nesting and no longer sing to signify the boundaries of their feeding territories. (If only we humans could resolve our boundary disputes with a morning song!).

It may surprise some readers to learn that the migrating birds are now preparing to leave. Once the fledglings are out of the nest and independent, the time arrives to feed up and head south. Most of our migrating birds head down the Mississippi, and many carry on to South America. We now know that migrants move from one "island" of habitat to the next. In a world of urban sprawl, they are seeking brushy areas with water. I hope my garden provides what they need. Last spring, a few warblers, including a red start, stopped by for a rest and a drink. Many migrating birds are not looking for feeder food. Warblers, for instance, eat insects. The redstart worked the perennial garden for a day, eating bugs, and then it flew off. There were not enough insects in my small patch to entice it to nest.

Some of the migrants hang about to molt. This does not take long. An American goldfinch turns from hot yellow to delicate greenish yellow in ten days. The new feathers push the old feathers out. Gold finches are seed eaters who demolish the weed seeds in a garden.

With the abundant mosquito and fly population this summer, it has been a good year for birds, signifying reproductive success. The warblers come north for the bugs and we gave them a good feed up this summer.

I like to do my weeding in the early mornings. During the warm afternoons, the earth resists the trowel but in the dew-soaked earth, the weeds are easier to dig. The trowel attacks the dandelions and other deep rooted plants, but I also have another efficient weeding tool. I do not know its proper name but it is a simple thing, a loop of metal on a handle. It scrapes a layer of soil pulling out the plantain, the chickweed and other shallow rooted interlopers.

By eight o'clock the female ruby-throated humming bird swings by to hit up the delphiniums for nectar. It is possible that she nested in one of my trees but the nest is so small, the size of a thimble, that I'll never find it. She''s a migrant and feeding up for the voyage.

The bees fumble the monks hood. This is a stately blue and white plant, a short blooomer, which takes over the back of the perennial bed as the delphinium stalks slowly turn to seed. White monks hood grows in my front garden along with the true blue variety. This is one of the toughest customers and always survives the winter but it needs to be wired to a tall stake or it buckles at the knees.

A friend suggested I pull out the campanula, the robust blue bell flower that is growing in all the back lanes and here and there among my garden beds. I will do so once they set up their seeds but for now the bees love them dearly and I love and need the bees. Strangely the bell flower only grows flowers on one side of its stalk. This plant also spreads by creeping root, so Iwon't be able to eliminate it entirely. I'll just keep it in check.. I note here the bees also love the mullein. Another reason to accept native plants.

The same friend also wondered why I let the arabis creep through the garden around the perennials. Perhaps I should cut it back? But arabis is a tricky plant. It can be killed over the winter, especially if we have no snow. So for now, I let it spread and fatten, knowing that a lot of it may not survive by spring.

I can't believe I am still pulling meadow rue, dame's rocket and forget-me-nots, trying to yank them out before they spread too many seeds. For an unknown reason, the policeman's helmets (or Himalayan impatiens) did not seed into by garden this year. I miss it.

Tip. On hot days, get out early for easier weeding.

August in Bloom

2008-08-09T08:03:00.000-07:00

Sedum Autumn Joy. This tall sedum grows in the laneways and ditches around town but that is no reason to scorn it. In early August, it produces flower heads of an old fashioned purple-pink colour. A long bloomer, it is one of the last to die with the frost. In September, when all the garden is browning and few cut flowers are available, Autumn Joy makes a fine bouquet to bring inside along with other tall late-blooming flowers such as baby breath, late sweet peas and sea lavender.

Phlox. The abundant rain has given me abundant phlox. The white admiral has never been so bushy. The amethyst phlox will have to be divided for the first time in its life. Its bright mauve flower heads will gradually fade to an old fashioned pastel. I love the mown hay scent of phlox. However, as soon as it starts blooming, a greyish white talcum powder develops on the leaves. This is powdery mildew which can attack delphiniums, small fruit trees and even lawns. I have a sulphur powder to sprinkle on the plant. Unfortunately, it too is white in colour but one application usually defeats the mildew and the next rain washes off the powder.
I do not cut down the phlox when it gets mildew but I cut and destroy any other plant that gets a disease. Something is browning the leaves of a red leafed rose (rosa glaucous) in the front yard. For safety’s sake, I will cut it back. This plant is so hardy, it can take the cut.

Climbers. Canary Vine (also called Canary Creeper of Canary Bird Flower) is the fastest growing annual vine I know. It clambers over the nets on the back shed and sets starry yellow flowers in August. The Dropmore Scarlet Trumpet Honeysuckle climbs the lattice fence without benefit of a net. For the first year in its six year existence, it creates a show. No flowers, but it is alive and thrives. Patience is indeed a virtue with some plants.

Goat’s Beard. Even though the fronds of white flowers are now finished, the tiny petals do not drop but stay on the plant in graceful curves. This is a magnificent plant for the shade. At three feet tall and three feet wide, this mass of dark green leaves with beige- white panicles gracefully arching above fills a dark corner. Also, it is a toughie. Nothing seems to eat or defeat it.

Bugs days. In August, many perennials have finished blooming and are fattening themselves up for winter, stretching roots and leaves and taking over any available space. At the same time, many plants cease producing the chemicals which are their defence against bugs. They become vulnerable to chewing, biting and cutting insects. . Yesterday, I heard the familiar sound of a grasshopper, a sound like a little wind-up toy, and I know somewhere, I will find the bitten leaves. This year I have had no aphids in my garden – yet. They are out there on the breeze and one day they will blow into town. The Safer’s Soap is ready. Also the slug families are at their most numerous. Lots of dark places lure them to hide away in the day. In the early morning I see their slime trails on the patio bricks. I found a slug nest under a rhubarb leaf that was drooping on the ground. As usual I ran for the “Spritz of Death,” a mixture of vinegar and water that I keep in a spray bottle in the shed.

Tip. Now is the time to prepare for bug invasions. Keep the bird bath filled and the feeders primed in order to attract the first line of defence against bugs - the birds. They are so effective you might never have to spray.

The Beauty of the Lilies

2008-08-04T14:12:00.000-07:00

Lilies here and lilies there. On Matthews Street a hedge of lilies, at the Magnus Theatre garden, a swath of orange, white and red lilies, on High Street, a brassy bed of hot coloured lilies. Even the old fashioned tiger lily is happily blooming on Secord Street. If we keep up our love affair with Asiatic lilies, we will rival Neepawa, Manitoba, the Lily Capital of Canada. Neepawa is awash in lilies in the summer and a great place to stop if you are driving through.

Wild and lovely. Want to see a real wild flower garden? Drive along Banning Street. On the western slopes the wild grasses and wild flowers create a changing canvas. Right now, the purple campanula is in bloom but the golden rod is in the wings. The grasses are long and billowy, reminding me of the many vacant lots in the Thunder Bay of my childhood.
These slopes are steep, too dangerous to cut with a mower. In other years they have been scythed creating an unsightly stubble. They are much more lovely left alone.

Midsummer Garden A pile of top soil, a few trees and tiny planted areas combine to start a new public garden. Stroll behind the Hoito on Secord Street and see the beginnings of the Midsummer Garden on land owned by the Hoito. Once slated for parking, the area will eventually beautify the Bay Street area. A path of stepping stones will meander through. The organizers are seeking perennials. If you are dividing your plants and want to donate, you can contact the co-ordinator: Taina Maki Chahal, at tainacee@yahoo.com

Tip. Now is the time to divide the Siberian iris. (see past post on how Martha Steward divides an iris and the Thunder Bay response).

WHAT’S IN THE BLOOMING GARDEN?

2008-07-26T06:28:00.000-07:00

The time of peonies and roses is past. Cue the lilies and delphiniums.

Perennials. Shasta daisies, white potentilla and the pink Grutendorst rose with its small carnation-style flowers, add lovely side notes. The monk’s hood will bloom in early August with the phlox. I have pulled all the rue which was loaded with seed. It would take over the garden given half a chance but I love its fluffy mauve blooms. I am still finding the odd forget-me-not plant tucked here and there. It gets pulled and composted too.

Lilies. First come the Asiatics, the hardiest of the lilies. My favourite is the early cream -coloured Roma. I also have some good strong yellow Connecticut Kings, reliable and brassy. I do not grow Oriental lilies because they are not hardy but I have a small collection of trumpets which bloom in August. A few years ago, when a neighbour moved, he gave me some lily plants. The blooms are orange with dark brush marks. I believe they are L.A. hybrids. I was a bit taken aback to have the colour orange in my garden, a bit of a clash - but the lilies are so gorgeous I kept them. Five years ago, I dug a clump of lilies near an abandoned farm field. As far as I can tell, they are Asiatics called Pirate. They are tough red guys. I have several other Asiatic cultivars scattered here and there. You can't have too many lilies.

The day lilies will arrive just as the Asiatics are dying down although the small yellow Stella D’oro has a few blooms already. The golden species day lily finished up two weeks ago.

Roses. The roses were marvelous this year. The Morden Snowberry with its flat floppy white flowers, blooms on. It was not attacked by black spot this year although the other Mordens suffered from this nasty leaf disease. Poor Adelaide Hoodless, a Parkland Rose, which barely grows in the dry conditions of my front yard, managed a few bright red blooms. If I could get this rose untangled from the roots of a nearby maple tree, it would do well. But I cannot dig in the rooty soil and so it struggles on. With Heritage, Parkland and Explorer Roses, location is everything. The Bugnet roses have finished a first flush of bloom and should send up repeat flowers later. The Hansa and The roserie de l'Hay will also put out magenta flowers from time to time. Usually I do not dead head roses. I like to leave the rose hips for the birds in the winter. Besides, it would take hours just to dead head the two big Explorers, Jens Munk and William Baffin.

Annuals. Most of the annuals that I grew in my basement last winter are in flower with the exception of the lavatera which is an August bloomer. Bachelor buttons, schizanthus, cosmos and pansies are all out. Strangely, the schizanthus is purple and not pink as in other times but I remember I bought the seeds from a rack because T&T nursery did not offer them this year.

The nicotania (old fashioned fragrant) which was supposed to grow five feet high has started to produce flowers on plants as short as 12 inches. The catalogue promised “an old fashioned fragrance” but I cannot smell a thing. Long ago the scent was bred out of nicotanias and even out of some varieties of sweet pea. I was hoping to discover the famous nicotania scent mentioned in various novels.

Pots. The lobelia (crystal palace) was doing poorly until I gave it good doses of fertilizer. I usually do not fertilize much with commercial fertilizer but rely on my compost and manure. The tiny yellow marigolds (lemon gem), the geraniums (maverick) and the dianthus (raspberry ripple) are crowding the pots.

Flops. The sweet pea is spindly. The nasturtiums, planted in a small window box, were eaten up by an unknown predator although the few seeds I tucked beside the patio grew into fine plants now creeping across the bricks. The godetia, usually a reliable plant, seems to have disappeared entirely.

Veggies. In the back corner, the few vegetables are doing well. The corn, if not as high as an elephant’s eye, is three feet tall and a good looking cucumber entwines it. Zucchini and squash flouish nearby. The tomatoes (early girl) could be bigger and I blame the cool weather and especially the cool nights.

In my dry front yard, the mullein has exceeded expectations by producing a five foot spire loaded with pure yellow flowers. The non-stop begonias are living up to their name. However I planted several bulbs labeled "white" and I am getting many red and a few yellow blooms but no white. Just another garden surprise like the purple schizanthus. The begonia like their window boxes. They are slower to bloom when planted on the ground.

The garden is thick and bushy this year and the warm weather brings out the laziness of the gardener who has a number of good books on hand as well as a good place to read. The weeds are out there, and I’ll get to them after a rain when they are easy to pull. But now, another cup of tea.

Tip. This is a good time to fertilize perennials. Also annuals in pots can be fertilized up to frost.

This is the Key to the Kingdom

2008-07-25T17:11:00.000-07:00

The Key to the Kingdom, says the old nursery rhyme, is a basket of flowers. And this month, all northwestern Ontario is a breathing basket of wild flowers.

On a recent trip to Rock Island Lodge outside of Wawa I saw sweeps, dreams, charms, floods of flowers along the roadside and in the deepest bush. I do not think, in a long northern life, I have ever experienced a season of such amplitude. I noted with pleasure, the towns of Wawa, Michipicoten and Rossport have not cut down all their wild flowers (as we do in Thunder Bay) but let them bloom in clumps here and there.

Lupines lead the way, swathes of them all along the highway. They were joined by:
· Ox eyed daisies
· Hawk weed (startling reddish orange)
· Mullein, tall fuzzy plants with a yellow stalk of bloom
· Evening primrose (tall with yellow blooms that open in the evening)
· Many varieties of wild pea and vetch
· Bunchberries (four petals, usually in shade)
· Wild strawberry flowers (very late this rainy year)
· Wild roses, some bushes laden
· High bush cranberry (white panicles of flowers)
· Saskatoons, choke cherry and pin cherry
· Wild honeysuckle (a small shrub with yellow flowers)
· Wild asters, white and blue
· Wood lilies, (Always a pleasant surprise)
· Wild iris or blue flags (all along the Michipicoten River)
· Harebells (purple ding-dongs)
· Twin flower (tiny double bells carpet deep bush)
· Queen Ann’s Lace
· Yarrow
· Cow Parsnip (our local giant up to eight feet tall)
· Meadow rue (white lace)

To name just a few. What a cornucopia! Thank you, goddess of the wild places.

Tip. If you visit Rossport, check out the garden at the Serendipity Café

WHATEVER COLOURS YOU HAVE IN YOUR MIND

2008-07-23T06:46:00.000-07:00

When I first started my garden, I had a vision of white. I wanted a white garden like the famous one in Sissinghurst in England planted by Vita Sackville West. At dusk, she said, the white flowers glow in the lengthening shadows creating a romantic, moonlight ambience.

The White Garden. I bought white peonies, white lilacs, white Sir Galahad Pacific Giant delphiniums and two white apple trees as a start. The white flowers, especially the arabis, did glow like lanterns in the magic hours of the long Thunder Bay twilight. Unfortunately, Vita forgot to mention mosquitoes. They too emerge at dusk, the time when northern gardeners are not strolling about but moving briskly, hands flailing. During the heat of the day when I was enjoying the garden, the white flowers seemed monotonous and insignificant among the greenery. I longed for some drama, some eye candy.

I decide to go colour. However, my work was not lost. The white perennials gave me a good start. White must be part of any garden, not only for its evening glow but because it brightens and sets off other colours. Traditionally, two other colours are added to white to create a palette.

Hot or cool? There are hot gardens and cool gardens. The hot gardens use yellow/orange/white or red/yellow/white or any other hot duo plus white.. I went cool, choosing a pink/blue/white combo. (Some gardeners go so far as to make a distinction between the two shades of pink, the yellow-pink of bleeding heart and the red-pink of peony. It is at this point I think that a garden becomes an exercise in aesthetics rather than a living and changing work of art)

A Walk to Hillcrest. A blue/pink/white bed of annuals planted at Hillcrest Park caught my eye. This park is a good place to muse on colour combinations. It seemed to me that blue/pink/white produced a dainty feminine feeling. I thought the yellow/blue/white grouping was homey and cheerful; the red/blue/white brassy; the orange/yellow/white used too many marigolds. This is all subjective stuff. Colours affect everyone differently.

The Pinks. I added pink peonies, lilies, tulips, roses and a big bleeding heart to my back yard. I learned that there are an unlimited number of pink plants including pink lilacs, pink delphiniums and many, many pink annuals such as lavatera, godetica, and sweet william. One year I went wild with pink pansies. I also learned that many plants sold as pink are really magenta!

The Blues. I planted blue KIng Arthus Pacific Giant delphiniums to go with the white ones as well as blue true geranium and many Siberian iris. I learned that many plants sold as blue are really purple!

White is easy to add to a garden. I added white lilies, sea lavender, campanula and Shasta daisies and many white annuals. Generally, plants sold as white are really white.

I worked on my colour scheme for eight years and I was pleased with the results. But it all but came to a crashing halt one dreadful winter when the garden was destroyed but that is another story.

Tip. Place the lighter coloured flowers at the end of the garden. Put the big white blooms (goats beard, peony, white phlox ) back there where they can be seen from the house.

Trees, Trees, Beautiful Trees.

2008-07-09T06:38:00.000-07:00

I went into my back lane and my eye was caught by something growing between my compost and my fence. Oh oh! A Manitoba Maple sprout as thick as my little finger. I ran around, dug into the compost and yanked it out. This determined baby tree may be only a few weeks old but it was heading for the sky.

Manitoba Maples are great trees, large, happy Thunder Bay denizens beloved of birds. But, like many trees, they produce millions of seeds. A tiny seedling can bulk out in a few weeks to a thick whippet of a branch that is tough to remove. I have seen a Manitoba Maple take down a fence. A friend had one grow unseen between a fence and a shed and in a season, it was a full blown tree.

All trees shed something – cones, catkins, fluff or seeds. Maple trees send off dry helicopter seeds that can sprout in a garden. I have pulled out many bitsy maples over the years. I gave a three inch sprout to a friend and voila, with good care, a tree in a couple of years.

All gardens, even small ones, need trees. My fav is the mountain ash but I also have a white blooming crab (Dolgo Crab) plus three Brandon pyramid cedars, fine thick trees that create – slowly- a privacy fence. If I had room I would plant the Native Wild Crab Apple for the magnificent blooms. Every spring they bloom along North Rockwood Avenue. The cedar waxwings love them as much as I.

I had an apple tree but I cut it down. This was a Goodland Apple produced by Morden of Manitoba. For the first three years, it produced medium-sized fruit, sweet and good for cooking. But the apples became infected with apple maggot, and unless I wanted to start on a serious schedule of spraying, I would have hundreds of apples that had brown streaks in them and which turned to pulp in a few days. For a few years I tried the various organic remedies but nothing worked. The fly that produces the maggot inhabits the city. Apples in the country are not infected. It is difficult to spray in the city with kids, dogs, and neighbours close by.

I also cut down my Shubert choke cherry. This was a fine tree with nice white spring blooms but it developed an unsightly black lumpy fungus. Slowly the fungus took over the tree. I note that many chokecherry trees around town and in the bush have the thick black growths. The spores are in the air so the best plan is not to plant chokecherries. It's heartbreak to cut down a tree.

The most important thing with trees is to site them properly; preferably on the north side of the garden to block the winter winds but not the sun. Our storms usually come from the northwest and so a few cedars at that corner make a nice wind break.

The Thunder Bayer of old had no air conditioning and did everything to prevent the sun from blasting in the windows. The people dressed in heavy fabrics with multiple petticoats and high collars so they used trees to keep the houses cool. Also, at the turn of the century, upholstery fabrics and wall paper faded badly in sunlight. For these reasons, we see the older houses in town surrounded by very large trees, tall spruce or many birch. The interior of the house was dark but they liked it that way.

Now we want our trees away from the house. It is an expensive proposition to cut down a full sized large tree so the placing of the tree becomes crucial. Smaller trees, mountain ash, nanny berry, the various crab apples, Medora juniper, the Preston lilacs, Morden tower poplar, are favoured now.

Trees have a high mortality rate and need care the first two years. You often see dying baby trees around, so sad. They need water, the right spot, and if they are in an exposed place, a guard to protect them from people, dogs, bicycles etc. Plant the biggest healthiest specimens you can buy (or dig up) to give them a good start.

Peony Petals and Rose in Bloom.

2008-07-08T05:11:00.000-07:00

The first peony to release its petals is the big Festiva Maxima, one of the greatest of all peonies, a pure white double peony with carmine flecks on the tips of the petals. This is also the first to bloom closely followed by the pale pink Sarah Bernhardt.

I try to cut the peony heads before the petals fall. One bloom releaeses hundreds of petals which stick to the leaves and turn an unattractive brown. On the ground they create an unsightly brown mat. You can tell when the bloom is finished by gently pulling on a petal. It is comes away without effort the head is ready to cut.

I try to cup the blossom in one hand and snip with the other so as to catch as many petals as possible. After I have cut off the old blooms, I brush and shake the plant to get as many petals as possible off the leaves.

The beautiful rose, Winnipeg Parks, is now in full red bloom. The rose was developed at the Morden research Station in Manitoba. (Worth a visit if you are in the province.) It is one of the few tough Canadian roses with long buds like a hybrid tea (which are not hardy here).

My other Parkland Rose is Adelaide Hoodless, named after the founder of the Women’s Institute. This rose struggles to grow in my dry front yard. I wonder if it will even produce a bloom this year. In a better spot, this is a lovely floriferous red rose.

My two Explorer Roses, Jens Munk and William Baffin have burst into pink bloom. These are big bushes, very thorny and covered with blooms in July. They will both continue to produce flowers up to the frost. But they are tough guys to handle. I have to use goat skin gloves to prune them or tie them up. The smaller Explorer, Henry Hudson, seems to like the dry conditions in the front yard and responds with many double white flowers.

The Bugnet Roses are well on their way. I have two Teresa Bugnets, good sized bushes with pink pompom style flowers and a Marie Bugnet, with white blooms. Both are very hardy and need no winter covering. They are considered heritage roses as is the Hazeldean Rose, now sporting double yellow flowers.

My Morden roses did not do well. Winter killed the Morden Snowberry and the Morden Centenial is struggling.

The good old Hansa rose, a Thunder Bay favourite, will bloom from now to frost.

COFFEE GROUNDS AT CHAPTERS

2008-07-08T05:04:00.000-07:00

Thank You Chapters

Chapters bags and gives away used coffee grounds, great for the soil but excellent to repel slugs around your hostas. I wish Tim’s would give away grounds as well - what a boon for local gardeners, what a great way to recycle.

I Fought the Worms and the Worms Won

2008-07-06T07:53:00.000-07:00

When I came home a week ago from a trip to Colorado, I saw a few leaves on the high bush cranberry were damaged by worms. These are the same critters who lunched there last year, short black guys who hide on the underside of the leaf and eat all but the veins, leaving an openwork lace design behind.

Unfortunately, I did not immediately take action and only a few days later, they had seriously worked over the bush, damaging over half the leaves. These worms do not appear to move much but they certainly got around when I wasn’t looking.

Two days ago I sprayed vigorously but the bush still looks pathetic. These worms also attack apple trees so be prepared. The spray contains Bacillus Thuringiensis or BTK, a bacterium that kills all sorts of caterpillars by infecting their digestive system. The stuff is safe for animals and people although I would not want to test this out. I spray when no one is around and no kids or pets will be visiting. I would not spray near bird baths because this mixture can contaminate water.

I use Safer’s BTK concentrate costing about 11$ for a small bottle which contains enough concentrate to last me for life. I keep it in the fridge as per the directions on the bottle to keep the stuff cool.

This stuff really works but you have to get it under the leaves. Surprisingly, you can’t often see the little pests at first but when you stoop to see under the leaves, you see three or four black stripes per leaf. The spray makes them stop feeding and then later, they fall off, thank heaven.

Last year I vowed I catch these guys early this year before they did much damage. I was not prepared for their lightening-like ability to strip a bush in a day or two. Next year, I will catch these guys before they do much damage, before they do anything at all. I’ll start spraying is I see one hole in a leaf…

My List of the Five Worst Garden Pests

2008-07-04T17:50:00.000-07:00

1. The mosquito. The worst year ever. The peonies and lilacs send out heavenly scents but I can only smell my perfume, Eau de Off. Sometimes I wear Minuit de Muskol.

2. Cats. They eat the birds, dig holes and use the beds as a litter box. Usually, they are my number 1 pest but, this year, the mosquito surpasses them for pestiness. I have a beautiful Siamese cat hanging out early in the morning and a black and white big kitty comes along from time to time. If I get them, they go to the pound.

3. Wild life. – Bears, deer, skunks, ground hogs and other denizens of Thunder Bay. The magazine Organic Gardener usually contains many letters on how to control these pests. One gardener out in the country leaves a radio playing in the garden day and night. She swears this deters the deer.

4. The slug. I use Safer’s Slug pellets and coffee sprinkled around the target plants such as hostas and pansies.

5. Neighbours who play music so loud you can’t read in the garden. Unfortunately no applications of Off or Slug Pellets work. I usually put on Luciano Pavrotti at top volume. This seems to do the trick.

Hint: if you are driving out to Sleeping Giant Park or Silver Islet, stop at Karen's Kitchen Restaurant and check out her garden. Her rock garden is especially nice. (food is good too).

MARTHA STEWARD DIVIDES AN IRIS

2008-07-03T09:29:00.000-07:00

I like Martha and I’ve picked up a lot of good info from the gardening portion of her show. However, a few years back, my eyes goggled when she demonstrated dividing an iris.

She put a garden fork under the iris and out it popped. She placed the plant on one side and gently pulled in it into sections using two garden forks. I gave the TV screen a raspberry.

What wussy iris they have in New England!

The Thunder Bay Siberian iris in my garden never let go without a death grip struggle. First you cannot dig them up – don’t even try unless you have a front end loader handy.

To break off a chunk of iris I have used the following: two hefty grandsons, a tough pruning saw, an ax and wedge and, for the Kaministiquisa iris, a chain saw. The process is messy, sweat inducing and full of bad language.

Still and all, they are fabulous garden plants and I have several varieties blooming madly. When the blooms die down, I will martial the troops, have the gin and tonic handy, and charge in to the fray.

Every Seed That Ever There Was

2008-07-02T19:45:00.000-07:00

The rain has caused every dormant seed in my soil to leap into life. Plants from the past have popped up, including white pansies I planted three years ago.

I usually get a few forget-me-nots here and there. I like them very much but I try to pull them before they go to seed. This year they are everywhere and have not only set seeds but a second crop of new plants is on the way. Fortunately they are easy to remove.

Lady’s mantle is dotted in every bed when formerly a bit of it grew in one back corner. It is a tall phlox like plant with a pretty mauve flower. It too is easy to remove before it sets seeds. The species clematis against the house has always produced more vines than the supports can carry.. This year they have over reached and moved into the roses as a first step to take over the world. Today I removed armloads of the soft viness with the lovely cup shaped mauve flowers.

Each section of the garden has its resident weeds. Plantain rules the sun garden. This is an interesting plant, originating in Europe, and called “the white man’s foot print” because it has spread all over the world with European travelers. It has medicinal properties. If you get a rash on your hands from stinging nettles or other plant, pick a handful of plantain leaves, crush them with your hands and rub the pulp on the skin. Will it work for poison ivy? I don’t know. But I remember on a canoe trip, walking in a field of ferns and getting a terrible red itch on my legs. Plantain cured it immediately.

Chickweed tries to take over the shed garden. The dandelions in the lawn are getting desperate. Having been chopped down by the mower several times, they are setting their flower heads lower and lower. Who says plants can’t think.

Grass has snuck into the fronds of the iris and into the arabis. It is easy to remove from the arabis because this spreading plant can be folded back and the grass exposed. However, it’s tough to get grass out of iris and the only sure way is to divide the plant.

Meanwhile, while I am fighting the weed battle, the peonies have started to bloom. The Siberian iris - the light blue “Sky Wings,”, the darker “Caesar’s Brother,” and the lovely mauve “Sparlin’ Rosie”- are all out in full fig. The hansa rose is bursting with flowers as is the red leafed rose. The latter has a spicy scent. The two large Preston lilacs are covered with flowers as is the white Mrs. Casmir Perrier, a double French.

Tip: Now is the time to buy perennials while they are on sale. Consider getting a few pots of lamium “Nancy White,” a variegated leafed plant that looks good along the edges of gardens in partial shade.

What’s Growing on in My Garden?

2008-07-01T06:51:00.000-07:00

The abundant rain has acted like athletic steroids on my perennials. The golden species day lily has expanded so widely it has wiped out a small Japanese peony and a few annuals. Note: next year get a cage on the thing early. Instead, last night, I tried to tie it to a stake.

The ferns in the shade garden, usually about knee high, are, this year, waist high. They look lovely, like a rain forest.

The high bush cranberry, which is trained to arch over the side path, has burst all bounds and now blocks the way. I am not sure it it can be tied up or needs to be pruned.

The caragana hedge is turning into a row of caragana trees. Trimming needed at once.

The bleeding heart added a foot in diameter and covered the daphne bush and two hostas. Since it has finished blooming, it will be brutally reduced.

The Siberian irises are mega size. If there is any garden task I hate, it is dividing Siberian iris. But I will do it after it has bloomed. The only thing to do now is remove the annuals they are smothering and plant them in blank spaces.

The arabis, the most lovely of all creeping plants, is creeping everywhere it can.

Other surprises. The giant hosta is now the monstrous hosta.. The skimpy astilbe has added girth. The peonies are tall, most close to five feet. The mullein has become, against all expectations, a bushy, lovely plant. A Morden Sunrise rose, given up as winter kill three weeks ago, has put on leaves. The Morden monarda is running wild and last year’s seeds are sprouting in various places. Last year I planted one spurge and now a second large plant has appeared five feet away. A tiny red leaf rose sprout has shot up three feet. I saw a garden yesterday where the shasta daisies are making a break for the hills.

However, the rain also created standing puddles on the edges of the beds here and there. The water wiped out a few nicotania and other annuals. I like to have a nice clean cut and a little trench between the beds and the lawn but the water destroyed my edges. Also, my little plot of dark blue bearded iris was rotted out by the standing water and all that is left are the rotted corms. A loss. The evening stock, just starting out, was also destroyed by rain.

In spite of the wet weather, there is little slug damage but I know they are out there somewhere. Slugs hate coffee - liquid or grounds. I am also putting slug pellets around the hostas as a precaution.

Evil Daisies

2008-06-28T18:45:00.000-07:00

I spent a week in Ouray Colorado and learned that a neighbouring village has outlawed field or ox-eye daisies. The village officials consider daisies to be weed in that mountainous area and residents are required to remove any they find on their property. However, my hosts at Main Street Bed and Breakfast in Ouray boasted a daisy garden that took up the entire small front yard. The daisies are interspersed with clumps of perennial poppies. It is hard to imagine demonizing daisies, but then we do the same to dandelions.

Daisies are invasive, I was told. However, many common garden plants spread widely given the right climate and enviroment. On the coast of California, I was shown great patches of alyssum which had spread into the wild. Here, gout weed is probably the nastiest invader but both lily of the valley and forget-me-nots can get out of hand. I have seen articles warning people against all sorts of plants: sunflowers, bachelor buttons, lupins (lupins!) and violas.

Many of the garden flowers in Colorado, Nebraska, North and South Dakota are identical to the ones growing here. Lovely bridal wreath spirea, rugosa roses, dark blue bearded iris and of course, daisies. People use a lot of bark chips around shrubs and planting. The midwest it is the land of the cedar chip.

The Neglected Garden

2008-06-27T19:53:00.000-07:00

This is the first June I have left my flower garden for so long - three weeks! What a jungle it is out there! Everyone tells me it rained and rained while I was away but my garden thrived except in the areas that sat in puddles. The soil is still heavy with water

Today, I started on the weeds. Grass is the main culprit, sprinting up to seed through the iris and the arabis. I am not only weeding but adding compost as mulch as I move through the beds.

The yellow rose I planted last year is showing buds for the first time but! the buds are pink. Instead of a Harrison Yellow regosa, I think I have a mislabeled Hansa. I do not blame the nursery for mislabelled plants. I think customers sometimes lift the labels to read them and then put them back in the wrong pot.

An article in the New York Times states that flowering plants thrive when growing in groups rather than set off out their own. Plants like their own kind. When set beside unfamiliar neigbouring plants, they put out chemical signals that say "go away." This process uses precious energy. Most garden books suggest planting perennials in groups of three or five but plants feel at home and thrive in larger groupings.

I find this interesting. Last year I planted a cluster of columbine, seven or eight in one area. I had the best columbine ever. Was it because they were happy together? Maybe I have a clue to my poor luck with astilbe. I bought one plant a couple of years ago and it has not expanded or plumped up. It has a forlorn appearance. Perhaps, it hates to be alone. If I had an astilbe group, would I get a better show? I definitely think hostas like to be together. The most beautiful hostas I have ever seen were at the Montreal Botanical Garden where they were clustered along paths in a shady garden.

Tip. if you are on River Street, take a look at the elegant plantings at Westminister United Church, corner of Madeline and River across from A&P. A beautiful row of bridal wreath spirea lines the walk, all in wondrous bloom. This Thunder Bay favourite has never looked so lovely.

Magnolias in Thunder Bay??

2008-06-03T05:28:00.000-07:00

Margaret Rose Cunningham saw her first magnolia in Sudbury. Her own tree in her Ottawa garden has waited six years to bloom, springing forth only this year. She writes that magnolias dot Ottawa, and, she adds, that they might survive in Thunder Bay. An interesting idea!

WHAT IS SO RARE AS A DAY IN JUNE?

2008-06-02T08:47:00.000-07:00

June at last. The leaves on the trees arrived a week late in this most cold and rainy spring of 2008. But the garden glows with arabis, muscari and tulips in bloom. Even the few vegetables I planted seem addled with sun. The gardener plans to take it easy, go on a trip, drink tea and read on the patio.

News of the new. Earwigs, previously unknown in Thunder Bay, were common last summer. They get into the house after dark. However, they avoid bright light so an outside light at night may deter them. Skunks, which prowl at night, also dislike bright light. They dig under sheds and garages but they are not very strong and a row of bricks along the edge of a building will stop them. Raccoons have been seen here and there. They are garbage eaters and scatterers. You need a good fitting lid on your garbage can. They laugh at plastic garbage cans but are stymied by metal ones. They are known for nesting in chimneys, garages, even attics.

The lawn needs cutting again. Of course it is full of dandelions. The Thunder Bay gardener has to make a decision. Attack the dandelions on your hands and knees with pointed tools spending hours perfecting the lawn or give up and enjoy life. I opt for the latter course. More and more, people are side-stepping the problem by limiting the lawn area.

But grass has its place. Nothing is stronger for foot traffic, for children's play areas or more lovely for setting off the garden beds. Unfortunately many business owners dispense with grass by paving the area with asphalt. The city also has an asphalt addiction and spreads the stuff liberally over boulevards, verges and traffic islands, blackening the landscape like an early Victorian city.

Our asphalt habit has given Thunder Bay its reputation as an ugly city. I love to drive the residential streets. At this time of year, people are planting trees and shrubs to create, in many cases, stunning gardens.

I try to avoid the asphalt streets that run like pustular scars through the city- Arthur, upper Red River Road, Memorial, Fort William Road. Unfortunately these are the streets that visitors see. Memorial Road makes me cringe. A few businesses ease the eye with plantings but they are a drop in the bucket of blackness. It makes me mad to think the banks, for example, which make millions in profit, cannot even spit out 25 bucks for a hanging basket.

Tip. Now is the time to walk the lanes and residential streets. You can pick up a lot of garden ideas on a walk.

Propping

2008-05-31T10:31:00.000-07:00

Prepare to prop. Why? Some plants lean to the light. They lean so far they sometimes fall over. Daisies do this as does phlox. Lilies are leaners too. Sometimes the entire garden leans. The larger plants at the back lean forward tilting the guys in front and so on. Here is how to put a stop to this insidious habit.
Take a strong stick about 16 inches to two feet long. Jam it into the ground at an angle. The plants lean on the stick. If necessary, jam in another so it runs the opposite way, making a wide X. This is the quickest way to prop. Bushy plants like shasta daisies, asters, and phlox hide the sticks quite well.
There are many types of plant props available. I bought some metal stakes with sliding loops on them. These work well for lilies. I also bought a group of metal bars that link together to form a cage. These turned out to be more trouble than they are worth. I could not take the trouble to arrange everything at just the same height so that the links would join.

TIP. Collect propping stakes now. They must be strong enough to ram into the soil. A half broom stick (unpainted) works well hammered in. A broken down clothes horse provided me with many strong wooden stakes.

WHAT A WEEK

2008-05-30T05:08:00.000-07:00

Two nights of below zero, two evenings covering my annuals, two dawn forays to water away the frost and then, the reward--two fabulous days of paradise. Only the geraniums and one begonia were badly frost damaged. They are alive but addled looking.

This is the time of year for plant sales. I dropped into the Labour Centre last Tuesday to check out the sale for the Arthritis Society. The usual perennial customers were there, the splits off the hardy plants of the city. If I were starting a perennial bed, I’d start with this kind of sale.

Ice cream pails held chunks of the golden orange day lily which nothing can kill. The dark purple bearded iris sat next to a row of goat’s beard, a great find for a new gardener. Pots of the world’s hardiest hosta, a green with white edges, took up one end of a table. Fifteen minutes after the doors opened, the stock was going fast. I was delighted to scoop up four columbine plants at 2$ each and a big shasta daisy for 6 bucks. These plants replace my winter losses. I was tempted by the lamium, a variegated creeping plant that makes great edges and the Virginia creeper.

Meanwhile in the garden. I’ve planted all the annuals. I’ve swept out the garden shed and hosed down the plastic trays and containers. The squash, zucchini and cucumber plants are sitting in the sun, ready to be planted after I arrange the weed barrier over the small area I call a vegetable garden. Nothing to do but get a book and a cup of tea and watch the birds. What a week!

TIP: check the yard sales listing in the newspaper for plant sales this weekend.

STAKING DELPHINIUMS AND MONK'S HOOD

2008-05-29T08:41:00.000-07:00

Monk’s hood. This plant buckles at the knees but prevention is easy. The plant is composed of several long, hollow, rather weak stems. A heavy summer rainstorm with a strong wind can fell the stalks. I put a tomato cage on the small monk’s hood. If necessary I use a piece of wire to enlarge the cage. (see the post on peonies). Mature plants need larger cages. Last year I bought a metal plant support which works as well as a cage. It is a half circle of metal held up by legs which are pushed into the ground. I use it for a plant that is growing against a fence. I also take a long piece of wire, twist one end around the fence and circle it around the plant.

Delphiniums. The short variety stakes up the same as the monk’s hood. The large Pacific Giants are another matter altogether.

These are the world’s most annoying plants. They grow six feet or more on long, hallow, weak stalks. If I get them tied up well they look great even after a storm. If they are not tied up well, the flower heads snap. A Thunder Bay summer storm will also break the stalks, flatten them to the ground and generally beat them up. Even tying them up tries the patience because they snap or bend when you work with them. Why do I go on? Because, tall dark blue delphiniums lift your heart to the skies.

I use the tallest biggest plant cages for the delphiniums. When I run out I use peony cages. The cages just protect the first few feet of the plant. I put a very long metal stake inside the cage to prevent the cage from toppling over with the weight of the growing plants. I use an eight foot stake but when I run out I use six foot stakes. I need the tallest stakes to tie the blooms on.

As the plant grows, I use the wire loop method (see peonies, below) to support the stalks. Delphiniums are deceptive. They look strong in the early stages but, as mentioned, any good wind will flatten them. Eventually, the stalks produce a run of florets that often end in a graceful curl. These sway in the breeze but in actuality, they are as weak as water. I have to use a small kitchen stool to reach the flowers. I hook a wire from the metal stake up and around, making a protective circle around the flower fronds.

When the flowers die down, I let them go to seed. Some books recommend cutting them back to get a second crop. I found this a lot of work for little return. The second crop of flowers was spindly, insignificant and even weaker than the first. I just leave the plants alone. The birds like the seeds and eat them all winter. I do not cut the stalks down in the fall because they catch the snow and insulate the roots. This way, I’ve never lost a delphinium to winter kill.

A few more notes on delphinium. Some of the Pacific Giants are named after the knights and ladies of the Round Table. My favourite is King Arthur, a bright purple. Sir Lancelot wears blue and Galahad, white. Queen Guinevere is dressed in pinkish mauve. Delphiniums are long blooming plants, blooming longer than the monk’s hood. They are also easy to start inside from seed. Local yard sales invariably offer them at a good price. If you are not interested in the staking exercise described above, get the shorter variety (Bluebird is good) and put a tomato cage around it.

Fighting the Freeze

2008-05-27T10:22:00.000-07:00

Ice coated the birdbaths at 6 this morning when I got up to see how my planted annuals fared in the below-freezing temperatures. After gardening at this address for nineteen years, I know which areas are most susceptible to frost and which areas ride it out. I know the front yard is the warmest and the north west corner of the back yard the coldest. Even one degree can make a difference. Usually the highest elevations are warmer than lower. So I started spraying water on the plants in the vulnerable areas. I removed the pots, pans and even two waste paper baskets I had put over the bigger plants. I pulled off the space blankets (survival blankets) that I had spread around last night using rocks, tools and any damn thing to hold them flat from the wind. I took a break and came out and sprayed the flower beds again, this time doing the front garden as well. Later, just after sun rise, I sprayed again.

The results. All the annuals that were covered survived well, even the geraniums. Plants with big flat leaves like geraniums are the most susceptible to frost so I'd been worried about them. The begonias which were covered with the wastepaper baskets did better than the one that got no covering at all. It will lose a few leaves, I'm afraid, but it will survive.

Some people cover with old bed sheets and this works well. Many years ago, when I lived in Kaministiquia, we covered vegetables with clear plastic but I would not recommend this practice. A bright dawn sun can burn the leaves through the plastic. Besides, plastic sheeting is awkward and heavy and flattens plants. A few years ago, I had a stroke of luck, a sale at Canada Tire of space blankets for a buck each. I bought ten. They have served me well. I also have an old row cover or frost cover and it protected the nicotania on the northwest corner. Plants by a house will survive a frost better than those in the open garden. So, new gardeners, I suggest you watch carefully in the fall to see where the frost hits first. This knowledge could save your garden.

THE MERCURY IN THE THERMOMETER”S SOCKS

2008-05-26T13:29:00.000-07:00

We interrupt this discussion of cages and propping. It is cold out and supposed to get to minus 3 in the night. Emergency measures needed. I am putting a pot or cover over all the recently planted annuals. However, with this high wind, plastic flower pots may blow away. The perennials can fare for themselves. I carried all the flats of annuals into the shed and have hooked up a small heater which I will switch on at midnight. I’ll get up before dawn and water the entire garden to wash the frost off. That’s the plan and I’ll let you know the results. The sky is cloudy, a hopeful sign. When you get a clear sky and dropping temperatures, watch out.

PEONIES, TIPS AND TRICKS

2008-05-25T11:01:00.000-07:00

These lovely plants produce large flower heads that seem to be too heavy for the stalks. When it rains the flower becomes heavy with water, like a sponge. Then the entire stalk sinks to the ground. If left unstaked, the plant will sprawl in the soil.

IMO the best way to prop up a peony is to start with a large cage. I place it upside down with the three wire spikes pointing up. The peonies will grow much taller than the cage and need the extra inches these spikes give. I then drive a long metal stake into the ground just inside the cage. This will prevent the plant from tipping the entire cage as it grows. The stake is also useful in the tying up process.

The plant grows inside the rungs of the cage and soon grows outside them. Soon the flower buds emerge growing on their own stalks higher than the leafy branches. At this point, I use light wire, like picture wire, to enlarge the cage. (note: you can get picture wire in the Dollar Store). I cut off a long piece of wire, twist one end around the spike at the top of the cage and make loops of wire to hold up the heavy peony flowers. Light wire is easy to work with and much less fiddle than tying individual stalks up with twine. You can use the same wire year after year.

If necessary, I use more long pieces of wire to make loops part way down the cage to catch up any stalks growing outside the cage. Of course, I do not wrap wire closely around the stalks; I use the wire to make loops that the stalks can lean on. The wire is almost invisible and even the cage cannot be seen once the plant grows around it.

Some of my peony plants are so big, they tilt the cage over even though the cage is staked to the ground. A few times, I have had to put a couple of bricks or rocks on the bottom rung of the cage to hold it in place.

After a few weeks, peony blooms shrink and desiccate. In some varieties the flower opens to show the red heart in the centre. The petals turn brown at the edges and curl. If you give a petal a gentle tug, it comes away in your hand. At this point, it is a good idea to cut the blooms off. Peony blooms are composed of hundred of petals. When the bloom dies away, the petals are released. Most fall into the plant. They stick to the leaves and turn an unsightly brown. They create a brown mat on the ground. It is best to get the fading blooms off before this happens.

A word about stakes. I originally purchased bamboo stakes because I thought they were the most aesthetic looking. However, they break easily. I switched to the dark green metal stakes but I don’t use many. I also have a collection of sticks and bamboo lengths for propping up leaning plants.

Watch for tips on caging and propping.

CAGES - part one.

2008-05-25T04:11:00.000-07:00

There are three sizes of plant cages available, the small “tomato cages” the tall cages like tomato cages on steroids and the big fat peony cages. All are inadequate for the northern garden where our large plants soon outgrow them. Nevertheless, now is the time to start putting a few cages around the fastest growers because you cannot easily get them in place once the plants take off, which will happen in a couple of weeks. Our long hours of sunshine and cool nights with abundant dew just send the plants leaping skywards.

The three plants which must be caged are the 1) delphiniums, 2) monks hood and 3) peonies. Other large plants such as phlox need little or no staking or tying up. I put a cage over my huge bleeding heart just to keep it from flowing over its neighbours, but bleeding heart usually does not have to be supported. The Japanese peony, a smallish plant, is happy with a peony ring, a hoop of wire on a metal stake. These are close to useless for full sized bombe type peonies. I also cage the big goat’s beard.

Stay tuned for tips on caging your peony

SURPRISE! SURPRISE!

2008-05-24T02:23:00.000-07:00

The end of May always brings surprises and not all are good. For instance, there is the shock of finding a big clump of shasta daisies has disappeared over the winter. Of course it might have migrated and could be close by. The concept of migrating plants is unknown to southerners but it happens in the north.. We know that rocks move in the winter, and new rocks appear, and houses, sheds and fences shift and so it makes sense that plants migrate too. I once had a lily move over a few inches to land up tucked against a peony. For some reason, a large allium is growing in the back of the veggie garden, four feet from where it was planted.

But there have been winter losses. Only one columbine came back from the cold. Four or five others did not make it. I cut off a third of a cedar bush, unalterably dead. The daphne struggles on.

But good things happen as well. Today, not only did the evening grosbeaks show up again but American goldfinches, like yellow ping pong balls, arrived and bounced around the garden. However, the greatest surprise was the appearance of a hermit thrush slipping out from behind a rose bush to take a drink.

Another wonderful surprise was the hot weather. I went from bush jacket to sweats to long sleeved shirt. This is as good a time as any to remind gardeners to use sunscreen. Keep the container by the back door to remind you to put it on every time you go out to do garden work. It is no fun at all to have pre-cancerous lesions burned from your face. That is the kind of surprise you really, really want to avoid.

THE BEST DRESSED NORTHERN GARDENER

2008-05-22T05:59:00.000-07:00

A vision of loveliness, the northern gardener steps out. She’s wearing ratted out jeans with the Stanfields showing through, Nipigon nylons, Canada Tire duckies, several layers of sweats topped by a quilted bush jacket, and a toque. On her hands are mismatched rubber gloves. Perrrfect! But she is as happy as if she were wearing Prada. It’s going to be a nice day and she can do a little planting, puttering and pottering.

Yesterday, I planted a second flat of cosmos and a flat of marigolds. I also planted a long box of geraniums and pushed it under the back steps to get the plants out of the wind. This was my first attempt at growing geraniums inside and the results are heartening - big, fat, healthy plants. The highlight of the morning was the arrival of two evening grosbeaks, the first I have seen in my yard. They drank at the bird bath (a large plant saucer on the ground) and sallied on.

Today I am moving more flower flats outside and putting all the veggie flats (cucumber, squash, zucchini) and herb pots in the back shed.

ICE COLD BLOOMERS

2008-05-21T04:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, it was so cold, it was unpleasant to walk though the garden, much less sit outside and drink tea. Nevertheless, slowly, a garden is coming into bloom.

The crocus have been in flower for two weeks. The arabis is beginning to bloom. And the little bulbs, so reliable year after year, are popping out for the first real spring colour.

Unlike tulips and other large bulbs which can break a Northern gardener’s heart, the little bulbs never let you down. Here come the deep blue Siberian squill (or Scilla), the long blooming grape hyacinth (or muscari) the intense blue of glory of the snow (or chionodoxa) and my fav, the blue puschkinia. The garden bed by the house is alive with species tulip (tulipa tarda), a short plant with wide-eyed yellow flowers. If you plant these bulbs in the fall, plant in drifts of twenty or more to get any kind of show in the spring. Alone each flower is small but en mass, they look grand.

Let it blow or snow, still they grow.

Meanwhile, I plant three flats of impatiensin the sheltered shade garden. I have the marigolds outside shivering and awaiting a warmer day.

NOT SO FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

2008-05-20T18:26:00.000-07:00

What to put in between plants to keep down weeds. There are really two types of gardens, thickly or thinly planted. I try to plant so thickly, filling up all the spaces, that the weeds have no room to emerge. That’s the plan although not all the weeds have signed on.

Other gardens consist of carefully spaced perennials. The new non-grass lawns consist of an arrangement of shrubs, plants and large rocks or other garden features. But, what to put in between?

First, on no account use gravel, even coloured gravel, unless you want to explore the far reaches of insanity. Gravel tracks in the house, shoots from the lawn mower, allows weeds to push though, migrates everywhere. Also do not use sheet plastic covered with rocks stolen from the pebbly beaches of the Big Lake. Plastic is death to the soil (no sun, no rain, just slugs). The style looks good only in Arizona where they can’t help it.

Instead consider weed barrier. Martin’s Nursery Land has weed barrier in various widths. I imagine the other nurseries around town sell it too. It is easy to spread. Sun and rain seep through maintaining a healthy soil. Cut a big X where you want your plant, fold back the points and plant. The weed barrier is held in place with special pegs or piles of soil or attractive rocks and it does stop weeds.

Bark chips are a good option. They biodegrade but slowly. One bag goes a long way. I saw a garden path made of bark chips, attractive and soft underfoot. This long winding path through a veggie garden required one new bag of chips every year. Other natural materials such as cocoa hulls are becoming available.

I visited a perennial garden in Manitoba which used thick mulch chopped by a shredder. This looked so attractive that, for a while, I was tempted to buy a small shredder but stopped myself when I realized my yard was so small I had nowhere to put it. The Manitoba shredder was hidden behind a set of cedars. The gardener fed all her garden waste, leaves, small twigs, and grass clippings into it and it chuntered out a fine product, easy to spread. If I had a bigger garden, I would definitely buy a shredder.

NOW IS THE HOUR

2008-05-19T12:35:00.000-07:00

This is the time to thoroughly weed the garden. The soil is soft (not baked summer hard) and, if you weeded last October, weeds should be few. Of course, it is cold and wet out there so I use rubber gloves, not the cotton type.

But every gardener has to face a couple of unpleasant truths. . First, the more fertile your soil, the more abundant the weeds. If you spread manure or compost or fertilizer in your garden beds, your flowers thrive but the weeds also enjoy the pleasant accommodation. This fact alone could make one drop gardening to take up drinking.

Second, the root-spreading weeds have a nasty habit of breaking off at the soil line. This habit evolved in the wild so that the plant root could continue to grow even though the leaves were pulled by a deer or other plant eater. So you cannot yank out most weeds. You have to dig using some sort of long thin tool. I use an old screwdriver and also a special thin trowel.

The late, beloved gardener, Lois Hole, whose books give great advice to Thunder Bay gardeners, had a trick to keep down weeds. Whenever she finished working in one spot, she swept the side of the trowel across the top of the nearby soil, slicing away a thin layer. This discombobulates any tiny weeds that are just starting up.

LILACS LOVE THUNDER BAY

2008-05-18T15:59:00.000-07:00

best shrubs for Thunder Bay? My first recommendation would be lilacs. Many varieties thrive here. When lilac time arrives in June, you can walk around the older areas of town drowning in the scent.

The most widespread lilac in Thunder Bay is the heavy scented syringa vulgaris,(or common lilac). Single or double flowered heads, in mauve, white, purple or magenta, grace trees ranging up to eight feet in height. Common lilac is often used for hedges. Although all lilacs prefer the sun, vulgaris can be seen around town growing happily on the north side of buildings. This variety produces suckers which means the hedge fills in quickly but grows wider and more tangled as the years go by unless trimmed vigorously. If you have the space, it is a great choice.

My small back garden has room for several lilacs. The two large Preston lilacs both over 10 feet tall are not as heavily scented as the vulgaris or my French lilacs, but they are hardy, beautiful, non-suckering and covered with blooms. Coral, a pale pink, opens the season and its neighbour, Royalty, a dark purple, follows.

A selection of French lilacs range along the fence. The French lilacs are about 6 feet high, non suckering, with a strong, traditional lilac scent. My three favourites are Sister Justina (white), President Grevy (blue) and Mme Casim Perier (a large-flowered white).

Tall Japanese lilac, Chinese Lilac, Manchurian lilac, Amur lilac and others appear from time to time in local nurseries. As long as a shrub is hardy to our zone 3, it will probably thrive. Even a tiny space can hold a lilac. The little leaf or Korean lilac, a small bush only one metre high with fragrant pink blooms, looks good in the new grassless front gardens.

I never cut the spent blooms from my lilacs and yet I have a heavy crop of flowers every year. I cannot reach the top blooms and I am not about to set up ladders to do this useless task. The birds enjoy the seeds over the winter. In spring, the lilacs always burst forth.

Snow, Rain, Wind and all the Jazz

2008-05-18T06:30:00.000-07:00

You have to be tough to be a perennial in Thunder Bay. Especially this spring. Yet, in spite of freezing nights and icy winds, slowly they grow. Even some of the annuals manage. I planted a flat of cosmos yesterday and it braved the snow this morning without a qualm. I've planted the sweet pea seeds and all the bulbs, but hope for warmth. Please, weather gods, give us gardeners a break!

There is a moral here for us Northerners. Never plant anything unless it is hardy for our climatic zone which is 3 (or lower). If you take a chance on a zone 4 plant, put it in your warmest, most sheltered spot. My Daphne is a zone 4 -er and it is struggling. A few years ago I was heart broken to see my neighbours come home from a local plant-selling place with three trees labelled for zone 6. Of course the poor things died and I blame the seller, a chain store, for bringing in unsuitable plants. Our local nurseries are, for the most part, very responsible and sell only what will grow here. So read that label or ask a clerk. If the clerk does not know, ask the owner of the business. Or buy from Manitoba mail order houses like Boughen, Morden etc. where they grow their own stock.

BIRDS GALORE

2008-05-16T06:09:00.000-07:00

Early this morning, about 6 a.m., I stepped out the back door to hear an astonishing sound —the song of a hermit thrush. The high sweet notes always make me shiver. The song is the most ethereal of all the boreal birds. Yet it is seldom heard in the city. However, a friend in Fort William reported a hermit thrush in her garden last week, a rare sight. My hermit thrush sang from high in the neighbour’s spruce tree. This bird is robin size, brown with a spotted breast and reddish tail. It is often seen on the ground looking for grubs and worms.

My garden is alive with birds these days. The sparrow tribe is well represented: chipping sparrow, white throated sparrow, junco, white crowned sparrow and, of course, the resident house sparrows. The junco and the white crowned are just passing through. The others have come to nest if they can. Sparrows are voracious seed eaters and they make regular patrols through the garden beds.

A ‘sweep, sweep’ whistle announces a group of pine siskins who love the Niger feeder. I am looking out for gold finches but so far they have not paid a visit. A friend in the County Park area has evening grosbeaks at her feeders. A robin sits in my crab apple tree and clucks and laughs. Few people know that a robin can laugh but it can. It also sings “cheer-up cheer-up” but it often throws in a few laughs to confuse the listener.

A red breasted nuthatch honks from the tall Manitoba maple next door. These trees are often considered too big for city gardens but birds love them. A woodpecker of some kind lives in there too. A friend complains about the persistent drumming of the local flicker. May is mating time for all the woodpeckers. The males often drum maniacally trying to attract a mate. Like all love frenzies, it will pass.

The usual city customers come by. Blue jays squawk even when they fly overhead, starlings mob the feeders, grackles patrol for slugs and grubs. Crows often hop down to see what they can find and gulls wheel over head.

I am hoping the ban on pesticides and herbicides will help the birds. And it is encouraging to see so many city people planting trees, bushes and lots of greenery, just the stuff birds love.

COMPOST AND LILIES

2008-05-15T04:47:00.000-07:00

Some tips on compost from friends and readers.

Mulching the leaves with a mulching mower or a shredder makes the compost work better.

Place leaves in black plastic garbage bags and leave them for two years. When you open the bags, they are pretty well composted. Add to pile.

Put big sticks upright into the compost in the fall and it will not freeze as solidly.

Use a compost mixer to stir up the compost in the fall and it will not freeze.

General agreement that the black composters are not very good.

And thanks for this tip re: my frozen compost. Let the hose trickle for a couple of hours and that should help unfreeze the compost pile. I am going to try this today.

More tips welcome.

LILIES
Even though the spring has been cold and wet so far, I am tempting fate today because I'll start planting today. First the bulbs, then the perennials and finally, next weekend, the annuals. Lastly the vegetable plants.

I have three sorts of bulbs: lilies, acidanthera and crocosmia (also called montbretia). I started all these bulbs inside two weeks ago and all have put out a tiny tip. Six of the lilies will go in big pots and get replanted in the garden in late August. The crocosmia and the acidanthera will mainly go into pots. Left overs go directly into the garden. The acidanthera is a one-off. It will not over winter outside and I have no luck carrying it over inside. I grow it for its scent.

Lilies are a miracle of beauty. The best kind for Thunder Bay are the Asiatics. The oriental lilies do not winter well in the garden although some people dig them up and winter them inside. T&T Seeds offer a hardy trumpet lily which winters well. The martagons are marvelous too but very slow and expensive - maybe next year.

Lilies, like tulips, have to be planted deep, deep. You have to get them down eight inches at least. I'll put some MYKE bulb granules in the planting hole.

However, I have a new worry. Those big black squirrels which had invaded Thunder Bay have sometimes shown up in my yard. I have heard that in southern Ontario, they dig up tulip bulbs and so I worry about lilies. The problem with squirrels in the city is the lack of predators. No wolves, hawks, foxes or coyotes to keep down the numbers as in the wild. So they thrive. In the Toronto area, they are as numerous and pesky as black flies.

Last summer, a squirrel invaded my back shed. I bought a product at Canada Tire called Critter Ridder and sprinkled it everywhere and it worked! Great item to have on hand because it repels skunks too. But watch out Thunder Bay. One of these days, racoons will show up in numbers. They were seen in the city last summer.

WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH THE FROZEN COMPOST?

2008-05-13T00:13:00.000-07:00

As mentioned before, I have a large open compost pile behind the garden shed. However, right now, it is frozen solid. Yesterday, I removed its overcoat of stalks and leaves to find icy black soil half way down. Grandson Marc arrived to fill the big flower pots but I had no compost.

This is a typical Thunders Bay problem. In a week, the garden will be ready to plant but the compost will not be usable until the end of May. We solved the problem by using the soil from the vegetable garden. Marc mixed it up with some manure (bought) and the remains of the Pro-Mix to lighten the mixture a bit. When the Pro-Mix ran out, I brought out some peat moss I had stored in the shed. He filled several pots and flower boxes.

At the end of the month, I’ll shovel thawed compost into the veggie plot before I plant the vegetables.

While Marc was filling the containers, I dismantled my black plastic composter to see if there was anything useful in there. Nothing after two years! Another typical Thunder Bay problem. I found layers of greasy half rotted leaves, a slimy mess of garbage and, plenty of dry foliage still intact, a two-year collection of undigested garden waste. In all, about an inch of top soil had been produced. The manure I’d tossed in there had not started the process working. Why do I get wonderful compost from my big open compost pile but nothing from this unattractive, hi-tech, black plastic container?

Perhaps it was set in a spot that was too shady. I dismantled the thing and set it up in the sun.

Here are a few Thunder Bay compost concerns.
1) Critters. I have skunks prowling my neighbourhood. Other people have bears. I heard of someone who got rats. Rats! That is why I put no food scraps in the uncovered compost. Sometimes, I liquefy food leftovers and pour it in as a liquid.

2) Slow, so slow. In the heat of summer, steam rises from the compost pile. If you put your hand into the centre, you can feel the heat. Bit in winter, nothing happens. It takes over a year to make decent compost.

3) Frozen just when you need it (see above post).

4) A compost pile needs lots of room, at least one metre by one metre. Many small gardens do not have an inconspicuous spot or a large enough space.

The unpottables

2008-05-11T12:52:00.000-07:00

My unpottables .
Coleus. I have grown it from seed and also bought it from local nurseries. I love the variegated leaves but outside the plant does not thrive for me for any length of time.
Dahlias. An experienced gardener told me that dahlia just do not like pots.
Sweet peas - skimpy
Moon flowers – did not bloom before frost.
Evening stock.(also called night scented stock) I am not giving up on this plant because the scent is so wonderful and I want it on the patio. But, it does not like to be transplanted.
I hate dracaena. An ugly spiky thing. The typical Thunder Bay arrangement is a dracaena in the middle surrounded by red salvia. It looked great in 1965.
Leaf Lettuce - not great results. Perhaps the wrong variety.

SOME PICKS FOR POTS

2008-05-10T04:36:00.000-07:00

Some plants are at home in pots and others are not. The seed catalogues often indicate which plants love a container.
1) Begonias. I like them better in window boxes or big pots than in the garden bed. The hanging varieties are not as floriferous as the regular. Begonias like semi shade and local begonia aficionados buy special fertilizer for them.
2) Geraniums – old favs for window boxes and containers.
3) Lobelia – is there anything more lovely than a pot of dark blue lobelia? For the shade or semi shade.
4) Pansies – OK, they have to be deadheaded and, as July wears on, the blooms get smaller and smaller. But I put them with the begonias and by the time the begonias are in full bloom in late July, the pansies can be pulled. Pansies are just so appleaing and a window box full of pansies is a joy.
5) Nasturiums – easy to grow from seed so even the kids can do it. There are hanging varieties that work well in a window box or on the edge of big pots. For some reason, they and begonias do not get along – chemistry I suppose.
6) Roses. See past post on sleeve roses.
7) Hostas look good in pots and in late August they can be transplanted in the garden.
8) Wave petunias are great (but expensive) as are the miniature petunias which do not have to be dead headed.
9) Many, many small annuals that do not have to be dead headed. such as dianthus, ageraturm, alyssum, impatiens, gaillarda, Dahlberg daisy etc. Check you nursery catalogue for suggestions.
10) Acidanthera (see post)
11) Herbs. I like herbs in pots near the back door where they are handy. Most herbs are slow growers and, if you put them in the perennial bed, the other plants walk all over them. My daughter makes up a big pot of mixed herbs – dill, basil, cilantro, parsley and oregano. They all clump in together and grow well on her deck. I put the various pots in a window box on the railing outside my back door. On the other hand, you might want to leave the herbs inside in a sunny window.
12) Pitiful plants. Perhaps you see a neglected perennial at one of the temporary nurseries set up around town (Wall-mart, Canada Tire, Zellars etc). By late June, the left-overs are a pitiful sight. But they are on sale! Rescue it, put it in a container, give out with the TLC and plant in the perennial bed in early September. If you put a weak, droopy, broken-down plant in among your healthy perennials, the chances are the patient will not survive. Nearby healthy plants will steal all the sun and suck up all the nutrients and the patient cannot defend itself. It’s war out there. So, first, pamper it in a pot of its own.
13) Feverfew. This intrepid volunteer, growing wild all over town, does well in pots. A back lane freebie. Wild ox-eye daisies or black-eyed susans are other free pot plants.

THE FULLER THE SUN, THE BIGGER THE POT

2008-05-09T15:58:00.000-07:00

I like big pots full of blooms. This year I am going to do big lilies in a couple of pots. I have often put in roses (the miniature rose called “the Fairy” looks lovely in the centre of a pot) and I love a big pot of acidanthera on the patio. The scent is wonderful.

But take note Thunder Bayers. In the very long hot days of June and July, small pots dry out fast. When you have blazing sun from 4 a.m. until after ten at night, small pots of flowers do not stand a chance. All containers need lots of water but the bigger pots hold it better. It can get so hot in Thunder Bay that you simply cannot water a small container often enough. Twice or even three times a day won’t do it. If you want pots of flowers on your sun-lit patio or deck, use the biggest pots or boxes. (The fuller the sun, the bigger the pot.) Conversely if you have a hanging basket or a small decorative pot, try to place it in the shade.

I use plastic containers for the convenience. The big ceramics are heavy and have to be put inside in the winter. Wooden boxes are nice but they rot – even the cedar boxes. All pots need drainage holes and some do not have them. You have to punch them through yourself, not always an easy job. Many long window boxes do not have enough drainage holes and you have to punch extra. You have to cover the holes with some shards, shells (at last a use for all those shells you brought back from Florida!) or large stones, set so that they keep the soil from clogging the holes when the pot gets soaked as it surely will during one of our famous thundery summer storms. Before I fill the pot, I set it up on to two or three bricks placed so that the bricks do not cover the drainage holes. This ensures good drainage.

I also put some Safer’s Slug granules under the pot between the bricks. The evil slug tribe can hide under a pot and even nest inside the drainage holes among the shards. In the dark of night, they emerge, climb up the side of the pot and munch, departing with the dawn. (For further hints to stop slugs, stay tuned to this blog). The problem with slug granules (besides the expense) is the requirement to replace them after a rain. However, a sprinkle under a pot lasts a long time. You can also put coffee grounds under the pot. Slugs hate coffee so if you are a coffee drinker, you might want to start collecting the grounds now. Chapters also gives away free grounds.

PRUNE THAT THING!

2008-05-08T08:34:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I start to prune. There are many rules for pruning but the following are the main ones.
1) Do not cut away more than one third of a bush or tree. I cut much less.
2) Prune now, before the leaves come on the trees
3) Prune now because you can take the waste to the dump this week for free.
4) Use sharp clean tools. At the least, you need a good pair of secataurs for small branches and a good sharp small saw for larger ones.
5) Cut any branches that cross or rub each other or are rubbing on a fence or the house. The bark on these branches will rub away allowing disease into the tree. Remove all dead, broken, rotten, pulpy branches and all water shoots (soft pulpy branches that grow straight up). Take out any branches that slap you as you walk your garden paths. After a rain or a heavy dew, these branches can be annoying.
6) Don’t be too quick to pronounce a rose or other shrub as dead. Often they are slow to leaf up and many do not finish until June 1.
7) When removing larger branches, make a vertical cut close to the trunk.
8) Never “top” a tree. It’s a death sentence.
I'll prune my Preston and French Lilacs and snip off all the tangled branches on the Highbush Cranberry and the Nanny Berry. The crab apple and the mountain ash seem OK this year. Indeed the mountain ash is the neatest of trees. If you have a lot of trees and shrubs, it is worth checking out a book on pruning from the library. A recommended book is Northern Gardens by Brian Andrews but there are many tomes written on this subject. I learned to prune from my father. IMHO, the best way to learn is to watch someone who knows what they are doing.

FEEDING THE BIRDS

2008-05-07T21:14:00.000-07:00

There is no doubt that birds are messy eaters. They do not clean their plates. They drop seeds on the ground. Sloppy eating is an advantage in the wild. The seeds flung on the ground produce more plants and thus more seeds.. However, in a small garden in the summer, the seed fallout can be a mess. The accumulation of sunflower hulls and excess seeds can make a thick carpet under the feeder, so thick it wipes out small plants. So if you put up a bird feeder, especially a large bird feeder, you have to find a spot where the excess seeds and hulls can fall without too much hassle.

It takes the birds a few days to find a new feeder. They like to have a bush or tree near-by to perch on while waiting their turn at dinner. Most birds are polite, feeding a few at a time. However, hummingbirds, the most feisty bird in birdland, love to battle and chase each other away. They will drive off other hummers even after they have eaten their fill.

Hummingbird liquid, made with 1 cup white sugar and four cups boiling water, should be kept in the fridge. The feeders need to be cleaned out from time to time and the best way to do this is with a long bottle brush.

Hummingbird feeders often attract ants which crawl up the tree or the feeder hook to get at the sweet liquid. When ants get trapped inside the liquid, the hummers reject the feeder. The only way I have found to repel ants is to paint the feeder hook (or the branch) with a sticky paste called Tanglefoot, available from the nursery. The ants crawl up but once they hit the Tanglefoot, a few get stuck and the others back away. A bit unsightly but this is the only method I know that works.

HARDEN THEM OFF? HOW?

2008-05-06T10:22:00.000-07:00

“As the weather warms up in early May, move your seedlings outside to harden off.” So says the article, written for the wussy southern Ontario gardener. As the weather warms up! Please! It may do so in the afternoon but after dark the temperature falls below freezing, death to any seedlings left outside.

Even during the day, we have to contend with cold drying winds that can desiccate tiny leaves turning them a sickly white colour. In fact, the wind can be more dangerous to tender plants than the cold. Plants with largish leaves, like geraniums, are particularly susceptible to wind damage.

I find the hardening process the most difficult part of growing plants from seed. It is a lot of work carrying flats of plants in and out morning and evening. Too much work for me. As soon we get nights above freezing, I put some flats on a table in my unheated back shed. This gets them out of my basement and I can start cleaning up down there. The shed protects the plants from the wind and they get a good western light from the windows. In the middle of the month, I will put some of the hardiest (cosmos, bachelor button, marigold) outside beside the house in a spot sheltered from the wind.

However, when flats are left outside, rain can be a danger as well. A heavy rain can flood the flats so that the packs are sitting in water. It is best to remove the under tray and place the packs into mesh trays so that rain water can drain away.

Some people may say a green house is the answer but heating a green house through our cold nights is an expensive proposition. Nor does it seem sensible to build a greenhouse to be used for only two or three weeks a year. In my case, my garden is too small for even a tiny greenhouse.

So my plants do not get hardened off as the advice books suggest. A few days before planting, I set them outside in a sheltered spot and that is the only introduction to the wide world they will get. After that they are on their own. In most cases, they do OK.

PERENNIAL LIST

2008-05-04T20:38:00.000-07:00

I like plants that are tough and long flowering and put on a show. I know that in Toronto, muted colours and ornamental grasses are the rage but, in Thunder Bay, I get enough muted colour all winter In summer, I want glow and show.

Day lilies – Catherine Woodbury is my fav. But there are hundreds of lovely varieties.

Arabis – the best edging IMO. Brilliant white flowers cover spreading green leaves in the spring. Lamium makes a good edging in the shade.

Asiatic lilies Hundreds of varieties, many colours, a rainbow of choice. Note: Orential lilies are not reliably hardy here.

Peonies, bombe type such as Festiva Maxima , carmine flecks on white blooms or the mouthwatering pink of Sarah Benrhardt.

Siberian iris – these almost grow much too well and always seem to be ready to divide, not an easy task. I have ‘butter and sugar,” “Casear’s brother,” “sparkling rose” and many others. I like Siberian iris better than bearded iris – longer bloom times.

Sedums of various types especially Autumn Joy for the fall

Delphinium – I grow the Pacific Giants, the very tall ones that need aggressive staking but the shorter varieties such as”blue fountain” and “bluebird” are nice too

Aruncus or goat’s beard for the semi shade

Monarda or bee balm. Daisy-like bright magenta flowers.

Sweet William. I think this spreads itself by seed. But even so, it has a lovely spicy scent and lovely variegated pink flower heads.

Hostas. I love big dramatic hostas with wide leaves. The small hostas are hardly worth the effort. I like lime coloured leaves or the varieties with cream centres or cream edging.

Columbine (Aquilegia). For shade

Bleeding Heart , pink. For shade.

Monkshood (Aconitum napellus)

True geraniums such as Johnson’s Blue

Sea Lavender. A soft cloud like baby breath. Blooms in August.

Shasta daisies (Chrysanthemun maximum) Is there anything as lovely as a clump of big daisies? I even welcome the wild daisies that sometimes appear in the garden.

Phlox If I had more room I’d have more. I have white, lilac and magenta. Tall and tough with a scent like mown hay. They hit the garden in August and carry it to the frost. Absolutely necessary.

Allium gigantium. The bulbs, which are expensive, have to be planted in the fall. In late May, a tall stalk emerges to produce a perfectly round purple ball of flowerets. Starts the spring with a bang.

Meadowrue (Thalictrum acquilegifolium) Lovely ferny leaves and fuzzy fairy flowers. It spreads by seed but can be managed.

What I would not plant again
Lily of the valley – a root spreader
Astilbe – I do not have much luck with this plant – it lives but does not thrive
Species clematis – also spreads by roots. Just too vigourous.
Japanese peony – pretty but blooms for such a short time
Primrose – may emerge in spring, may not – too too fussy, my dear!
Day lily Stella d’oro – This is a short tough yellow day lily that is not showy enough for me.
Dropmore scarlet honeysuckle, a climber and oh so slow, years of inching along.
Lamb’s ears – kids like the fuzzy soft leaves but the plants do not add much to the garden, IMO.
Lupins – tried and failed.
Perennial asters – no luck with these either
Daffodils - nada
Jackman’s clematis – needs a warm spot near the house wall. I didn’t give it the right location.
Veronica – so-so stuff.
Huchera – I like it but it does not winter for me.
Violas – sold as perennials, but they don’t work for me.
Dahlias – my basement is too warm to over-winter the bulbs but I love them indeed, especially the dwarf patio dahlias.

PERENNIALS IN THUNDER BAY - ONE

2008-05-04T06:06:00.001-07:00

I have been asked to recommend perennials for local gardens and to do this, I start with a meditation on gardens of the past

OLD TIME THUNDER BAY
Contrary to what some people think, old Thunder Bay, the city of the 20’s 30’s and 40’s, was not awash in English style perennial gardens. Most people had a few flowering plants in a limited number of species.

My childhood home on Van Norman Street was typical. In our small front yard we grew two shrubs, a bridal wreath spirea and a Hansa rose, both city favourites still.

In the back, a long narrow perennial bed stretched beside the fence. The usual medium-tall delphiniums resided there along with a couple of monkshood. Both are still seen all over town.

Like everyone else, we had a peony. Ours was “Festiva Maxima” and today the same plant routinely produces over a hundred blooms each year even though it must be over 75 years old. A bleeding heart, an orange spotted tiger lily and a large chunk of dark blue bearded iris rounded out the garden bed. Some lily of the valley grew in the shade of the honeysuckle bush at one end.

Aside from cleaning out the weeds once or twice a year, no special care was given to any of these plants. They were never pruned, tied up or fertilized. In 1950, my father was given a small pink rose bush (name unknown) but this was the only addition to the garden bed in twenty years until a few amethyst phlox were added in the early 70’s.

My parents did not grow the two most favoured Thunder Bay flowers, gladiolas and dahlias. The reason? Our small basement was too warm. At one time, dahlias bloomed all over the city, but with the onset of oil heating and finished basements, the cold storage room disappeared so it was difficult to over-winter the bulbs. Glads met the same fate and both lovely plants have declined dramatically here.

In those far off days, few people bothered with annuals. My mother bought a pack of nasturtium seeds and planted them in the wooden boxes beside the front steps. When new cement steps and an iron railing were constructed, the nasturtium planting ended.

I will mention one other common perennial of old. In a narrow strip between the side drive and the house, a tall pink-flowered plant grew vigorously. Most people then called it Policeman’s Helmet, but today, the same plant is given other names such as Himalayan impatience, wild snapdragon or Betty’s orchid. Tall as sun flowers, with reddish veined stems, this toughie flings up hundreds of small pink snapdragon-style flowers and, after a time, pops out thousands of black, very fertile, seeds. With a little effort, the seedlings can be held in check and in the right place, this is an attractive tall plant.

Stay tuned for a list of personal favourites plus a second list of perennial flops.

STAND WAY BACK FOR MANURE TEA

2008-05-02T15:50:00.000-07:00

To make this excellent fertilizer, you need a big plastic garbage pail with a good fitting lid. This is the most important feature. Put the pail in a shady inconspicuous spot. Put in one gallon of fresh or old chicken manure. Fill the pail with water. Let sit. When you open the lid, hold your breath. Pour the liquid around the base of your plants. It is better to work at night when everyone is inside and not when the neighbours are having their yearly garden party. Fill up the trash can with more water and carry on. You don’t have to add more manure. One bucket of chicken manure does the entire summer. This is the cheapest, the smelliest and best fertilizer going. Do not fertilize perennials after August 1 but planting boxes and annuals can be fertilized until September. The smell dissipates quickly, thank heavens.

HOW TO START A GARDEN FROM SCRATCH

2008-05-01T05:55:00.000-07:00

In 1969, I bought a small house on Lyle Street and decided to start a garden. The back yard consisted of a square of grass so I picked a small area close to the back fence and dug out the sod. Then came the first problem. What to do with the sod? I piled it up beside the garage in an unsightly matted heap intending to haul it away if I could find someone with a truck to help me do it.

The soil in my new garden was stony and infertile looking. What to do now? I did not have a place to put the sub soil and I had no means to haul it away. I owned a Volkswagen bug, too small to haul in top soil. My garden plans were rapidly disintegrating. A week later, I broke my leg and that was the ignominious end of my first garden attempt. The next spring I sold the house but not before noticing that the ugly pile of sod had turned itself into beautiful compost. Lesson learned and remembered.

Here, IMHO, are the first five considerations if you plan to start a garden from scratch.

1. Get out the compass. All vegetables and most flowers need sunlight so you want to pick spots with maximum light. Now Thunder Bay has an advantage here. In June, the sun rises in the north-east (not in the east as in other places), crosses the sky and sets in the northwest. (not the west). Our long days give us many, many hours of sun. Unless you have only a north facing plot or are blocked in by trees or buildings, you should be able to find ample sun.

2. Decide where you are going to put your trees assuming you do not have any yet. Even a small garden should have trees. In my small garden I have a crab apple, a mountain ash and three Preston lilacs. All are over 15 feet. You do not want your trees to grow up and block the sun. If possible put them on the north side.

3. Figure out where you are going to put the compost. You want it tucked away somewhere. My compost pile is behind the garden shed. The pile is eight feet long and three feet wide and the compost is superb. A compost pile should be at least a metre by a metre. (I also have a black plastic container which is called a composter and, one of these years, it may even create compost.) I throw all vegetable matter (grass, garden clippings, soil, manure) into my big compost pile but never garbage. Reason: skunks live in the neighbourhood. I have seen them sashaying by on summer nights. I don’t want to do anything to attract them closer. Start the compost off with the sod you removed from your garden bed. But before you pile it up, shake out and save the good top soil held in the grass roots and spread the sods upside down for a few days to kill the grass roots.

4. Figure out what you are going to do with the sub soil. It has to be dug out to a depth of a foot and some books say more. It depends on what it looks like. Is is black and loamy or dry and stoney? Most likely the latter here in the north. If only we lived on the prairies where the top soil goes on forever! Not here. If there are big boulders they have to be dug out and can be placed artistically here and there as garden “features.” The rest of the sub soil has to be disappeared and the problem is where. If you have a buddy who has a bush lot or an old gravel pit….? (Note the city frowns on spreading stuff in the back lane.)

5. Figure out how you will transport the top soil to your new plot. Several local nurseries sell excellent top soil. Also, in spring, ads appear in the paper. Go and look at the soil before you buy. It might be full of weeds (or worse, crab grass – my advice is not to get top soil from Kaministiquia because it is crab grass city out there) or, as sometimes happens, it might not be very good. You want dark crumbly stuff. Get some old manure too and put some into the compost as well as mix it in with your top soil. (or if you have a source of chicken manure, make chicken manure tea – recipe follows).

ATTRACTING BIRDS

2008-04-29T17:11:00.000-07:00

Even in this cold weather, the birds are patrolling my garden. I see the house sparrows moving thought the beds and the starlings checking out the lawn. They are eating seeds, thousands of seeds. They are the most efficient weed prevention machines known. A cranky nay-sayer may remark that the seeds are shat out the nether end of said birds but not all seeds. The seeds are food and so are digested, or most of them anyway.

I use birds as the first line of defense against insect pests and excess weeds. They don’t get everything but they get a lot. This means I keep spraying and weeding to a minimum. Here are five ways to attract birds.

1. Birds like thickly planted gardens, the English country garden style. I learned this on a bird watching trip to the village of Grande Isle in Louisiana, a town famous for its birds. As we walked around the tiny houses, birds were everywhere and I noted that few of the citizens did much in the way of gardening or landscaping. Bushes and trees grew thickly around each cottage. However, away from the village, in an up-scale suburb, where gardeners were manicuring the lawns and garden beds, no birds were to be seen. The moral is plain – birds like tangle, lots of different plants.

2. Birds need water. This is even more important than feeders. They like shallow water only a few inches deep. Mostly they like a bird bath on the ground. I have five bird baths. The blue ceramic bath on a stand is an attractive feature of the garden but it is the least popular with the birds. The plain old plant saucers filled with water are used all the time. I even use a scavenged snow saucer as a bird bath – perrrfect! If the bath is too deep, put a brick or stone in for the birds to stand on.

3. Keep the cat inside. Tell your neighbours to keep their cat inside. It is estimated each outdoor cat kills thirty-five birds per summer. It is illegal for cats to run at large in Thunder Bay. Mention this fact often in the neighbourhood. Take feral cats to the Pound. Cats not only chase away birds, they crap in the garden and dig up plants.

4. Birds like insects, seeds and berries. They like native plants but in my garden they are not fussy. The gobble all the seeds from my lilacs over the winter. They feast on the seeds of the delphiniums. They hide out in the cedar trees. They strip all the berries from the Mountain Ash, the high bush cranberry and the nanny berry. They wait until the crab apples are frozen into pulp and then eat them. The moral is to leave the seeds on the plants. I have seen birds chow down on the honeysuckle berries and pick off the aphids at the same time. Most bird species have their favourite food, but many are omnivores who will take anything. I have seen humming birds catching mosquitoes. I have noted chipping sparrows hanging around the outdoor light taking moths. (note – moths lay eggs which become caterpillars which eat my shrubs – so “Go Chippers!”)

5. A bird is a bird is a bird. Some people like robins and chickadees but hate crows or starlings or grackles or house sparrows. Black coloured birds are often disparaged as are blue jays, so pushy at the bird feeders, so noisy. Gulls are hated as well, even though, in Thunder Bay, they do a wonderful job cleaning up garbage. Without them, we would be up to our fannies in trash. Grackles, black iridescent beauties, eat slugs; therefore, they are my favourite birds. True they are not melodious, but I forgive them. Get those slugs, boys! Sparrows and starlings eat tons of seeds. Chickadees will eat anything, insects, seeds – even a dead mouse. Sometimes, visitors arrive. Bohemian waxwings visit my neighbour’s crab apple tree. Some people are blessed with evening or pine grosbeaks. I have had myrtle warblers, juncos, pine siskins and goldfinches drop in from time to time. The wonderful white throated sparrow sings in spring with it’s “I love Ca-na-da, Ca-na-da” song Birds and gardens go together like bees and blooms. They help create the living work of art which is a garden.

MEANWHILE, DOWN IN THE BASEMENT

2008-04-28T07:39:00.000-07:00

I am running out of lights and tables too. As mentioned before, I put the seedlings under regular shop lights set on tables. I use a couple of bricks at each end to hold up the light. The plants are very close to the florescent tubes but as they grow, I gradually raise the lights, first by turning one brick on its side and then turning both bricks.

Each shop light fixture contains one cool florescent tube and one gro-light tube.

Right now I have the following under lights. Vegetables: cucumber, squash, zucchini. Herbs: basil, dill, marjoram, rosemary, oregano, cilantro and parsley. Flowering annuals: nicotania, canary vine, dwarf marigolds, impatience, lobelia, lavatera, geranium, evening stock, schizanthus, godetia, cosmos, bachelor buttons, dianthus. Keen readers will note the absence of the wave petunias – they did NOT germinate nor did the hibiscus. Two flops.

Some of this stuff grows quickly but others poke along.

Now I must place a few flats sideways. I lift one light fixture three bricks high and put four flats of the tallest plants under sideways and use a foil space blanket thrown over the light fixture to help spread the light. Not the best solution but it is too cold to put the biggest plants in the garden shed. It is way too cold (snowing as I write this) to put anything outside, even close to the house.

At this time of year, the flats are bushy and thirsty, very thirsty. I am spending more time watering. I only water where I see dried soil. As noted before I put one drop of Damp-off in the watering can and I also put a tiny bit of fertilizer powder, the stuff special for seedlings. I buy Plant Prod water soluable starter fertilizer (10-52-10) for this purpose. One large container lasts a long time, years in fact. Pretty soon, I’ll switch to 20-20-20 powder, also by Plant-Pro. In the garden itself, I use chicken manure tea, brewed up in an old garbage can. More on this later.

THE SHADE GARDEN

2008-04-26T22:10:00.000-07:00

I am anxious to get a look under the fallen leaves in the shade garden to see what is alive. My so-called shade garden is just a strip about three feet wide running along the length of my small house between it and the neighbour’s place. Two columnar cedars, a nanny berry and a high bush cranberry cast lots of shadow.

The past two years I have planted ferns at the back of this bed but last summer I noticed some spreading by roots. This is always a worrying sign. Plants or weeds that spread aggressively by roots are usually more difficult to remove than those that spread by seed. Forget-me-not, sun flowers, feverfew and Himalayan impatience seed the beds with new plants but they are easy to pull out. Root speading stuff is not. So I will keep an eye on those ferns.

Best plants for shade IMO
1) Columbine (or Aquilegia) I love the flowers on this plant. They look like fairy hats in soft colours: white, pale yellow, rose and blue. Three or four in a clump give a lovely long-blooming show. However, this perennial is short lived, with a life span of only two or three years. So the plants have to be constantly replaced. Luckily they are easy to start inside from seed. I have been told Columbine is the only garden flower that will grow beside rhubarb.

2) Lamium – a creeper with variegated leaves. This stuff makes a pretty edging.

3) Impatience – the best shade annual. It comes in many sizes and colours and a snap to start inside. I grow Elfin, a dwarf variety, in mixed colours and weave them among the perennials.

4) Bleeding Heart – every garden should have this old fashioned Thunder Bay fav. It prefers semi-shade shade but will come along even in a dense shade. The usual colour is pink. The white variety is not as tough.

5) Monk’s Hood. Another favourite for semi-shade, this old fashioned plant grows all over town and is so tough it even thrives on the North Shore in places like Marathon where gardening is a mega-challenge. Monk’s Hood must be propped up or tied to a fence. I use a tomato cage around mine and then loop light picture wire around to hold the blooming stalks in place. If you don’t do this early, the plant buckles at the knees and eventfully a wind will take it down. Every part of this plant is poisonous.

6) Lobelia – for pots. It takes a lot of lobelia to create any kind of show in a bed but it’s a dynamite hit of blue in a window box or a big round pot all to itself.

7) Begonia. Three or four in a clump make a nice shade feature.

8) Hostas. In spite of the fact that hostas are advertised as perfect for shade, I find they prefer semi-shade. There are hundreds of varieties of hosta and it may be that I have not yet found the one that will thrive in deep shade.

9) Ferns. Can’t be beat for really deep shade.

Under no circumstances, plant Gout Weed. This hideous plant spends out aggressive roots in every direction. I have seen roots emerge from under a three-foot stretch of pavement to colonize the lawn on the other side. Don’t allow your neighbour to plant it either because, like the Black Death, you will be infected. Even worse, it spreads into the bush – check the walk along McVicar’s Creek. I believe this Voldemort of the plant world should be outlawed. If you try to dig out the roots, tiny bits left behind will quickly grow and spread again. The only way to get rid of this monster is to use Round-up - oh horrors! Irresponsible nurseries and catalogues still recommend this stuff for shady places. Note that some people in town call it by more up-scale names such as Snow-in- summer or Snow-on-the Mountain. Check carefully before you accept a chunk as a gift.

CLEAN UP CONTINUES

2008-04-26T21:59:00.000-07:00

The clean up is almost finished but I am stopped by the snow flurries and heavy rain. I’ve chopped the Siberian iris fronds, cut the dried peony leaves and pulled the hollow delphinium stalks straight up to remove them without taking out roots. I clear away last year’s leaves and the soft frons of the day lilies. I do not go near the places where the lilies are planted. One foot stomp on a lily nose and it will refuse to bloom this year.

There are few weeds under the tangle because I weeded well in the fall. I find surprisingly little winter damage but it will be a few weeks yet before I know for sure. I cannot tell yet if the roses or hostas survived. The worst casualty is the ailing daphne bush whose branches were trapped under the snow. It looks OK in spite of the necessary amputation of three main branches.

JOY ABOUNDING

2008-04-22T03:22:00.000-07:00

The first day out in the garden and the clean-up begins. Some perennials emerge from under the snow like Venus from the sea, fully formed and lovely. It is grand to see the green leaves of the arabis, the lambs’ ears, the bergenia, the Johnson’s Blue geranium and the sea lavender. Not all is joy. Dandelions also thrived under the snow. You have to try and get the entire root when you dig them out.

But other perennials are hiding down there somewhere. Hostas for example are slow to emerge, peonies just poke out pink noses and the delphiniums are lost in the tangle of stalks.

I gently clean away the leaves, stalks and winter debris. If, as the wise old proverb states, “the foot of the gardener manures the soil,” the hand of the gardener can damage the plants especially if you lean on one hand and inadvertently crush an emerging lily nose or a tulip tip. This is why I have flat stones here and there throughout the perennial beds. I can lean one hand on the stone as I reach to the back of the bed with the other hand.

As I work, I have to be mindful each time I set down my secateurs. As every gardener knows, there is a sprite in every garden who steals secateurs, sometimes it seems, right from under your nose. Occasionally, she steals trowels too. Later, you find the tools under a plant, or on the Muskoka chair, or on the back steps but sometimes they appear weeks later, ruined and rusty, in the compost heap.

Beautiful Sarah comes to sweep the sidewalks and plant the begonia bulbs in small pots while I clean out the back shed. I could stay outside all day. The front lawn gets raked, the compost, still frozen of course, gets heaped with dried leaves and stalks, the house sparrows pick up bits of grass for their nests, the Canada geese are flying over, the gulls are wheeling above, a red squirrel whisks along the fence top, the neighbours, out walking, stop by for a chat.

SOME PURCHASES

2008-04-21T10:19:00.000-07:00

I went to Creek Side Nursery to get more Pro-Mix and buy more Damp Off. Damp Off is a liquid that is used to prevent damping off, a nasty disease that slaughters emerging seedlings. It causes tiny plants to lie down on the soil and die which, at the same time, breaks the gardener’s heart. This disease (which is in the air, everywhere) is easily prevented with a drop or two of Damp Off in the watering can or in the water that you use to mix up the Pro-Mix. The small bottle costs $6.99 but lasts a long time. A necessary expense.

I also bought my Acidanthera bulbs. These come in a packet at $6.99 for 25 bulbs, a steal. I plant them in small pots now to get them started inside and later plant them out near the patio either in containers or in clumps at the edges. These bulbs create long strappy leaves and a tall stalk (about 16 inches) that ends in a lovely cluster of large white flowers with purple centres. The joy of acidanthera is the scent, a sort of tropical breezy fragrance that is strongest in the evening. To me it is the scent of August evenings sitting on the patio with friends. This plant looks good in the centre of a large container and certainly looks 100% better that the boring Dracena one sees in nursery arrangements. Acidanthera is sometimes called Murillae but I find both names impossible to pronounce.

Begonias. Creekside had no begonia bulbs but they did have small bushy begonia plants and Dennis Treveisanutto talked me into buying some (eleven actually). I bought begonia bulbs later at Vanderwees. Their bulbs are sprouting already and so they are on sale for $1.99 each. I buy hot colours for my front garden – yellow, red, orange and of course white because in every colour combo there has to be some white to pick up the rest. Last year I found begonias grew well in my very dry front garden as well as in window boxes and big pots.

MY PICK OF BEST ROSES FOR THUNDER BAY

2008-04-20T07:44:00.000-07:00

1) Hansa. This rose grows all over town. It is the big bushy guy with the glossy green leaves and the lovely scented magenta blooms. This rose was developed in 1905 and dozens must have been sold here very early on for I know of some bushes that are over sixty years old. No rose bed is necessary – people just stick them in the middle of a sunny lawn.

2) The Explorer Roses, Canadian to the core. Most of them are big, bushy, hardy and full of wicked thorns. I have Jens Monk and William Baffin, both big and pink and a little Henry Hudson, an icy white..

3) The Mordens, developed in Manitoba, always a good recommendation for Thunder Bay. My favourite is Morden Fireglow, 2 feet of hot red repeating blooms. I also like Morden Blush, Morden Centennial and Morden Sunrise. All the Mordens are smaller bushes than the Explorers. They are showy small roses that look good alone.

4) Winnipeg Parks. This rose needs protection but its red flowers are beautifully shaped, like tea roses.

5) Teresa Bugnet, another tough red.

6) Blanc Double de Coubert – nice fragrance and the bloom repeats all summer.

7) Polsjaman (or Polar Star or White Rose of Finland). I do not own this rose but I want it! In Thunder Bay people have passed on chunks of this rose to friends for years and it grows all over town.

8) Rosa rubifolia or rosa glaucous or Red Leafed Rose. This was the only plant, besides a peony, that was in my back garden when I bought my house in 1989. It looked like a pile of brambles in a back corner. I pruned and cut and the entire shrub stood up to create a lovely shrub with a pleasing umbrella shape. The leaves have a reddish tinge. It blooms only once a year, bursting out into open pink blooms with a spicy scent. This rose is as tough as Hansa Rose.

The best method is to get a rose already growing in Thunder Bay. Secret Garden Nursery on John Street has such roses. Friends and neighbours may give you a chunk of a favourite. The people who sell plants at the yard sales seldom offer roses. Sometimes the local nurseries sometimes have ‘own root” roses, the best for this climate.

MEANWHILE DOWN IN THE BASEMENT…

2008-04-18T06:42:00.000-07:00

All the seeds are planted, even the bouncy canary vine. I grow this annual to cover the back shed. It leaps up the net and in July puts out a mass of starry yellow flowers. Years ago, I grew sweet peas in the same spot. However, after I placed a perennial bed in front of the shed, the sweet peas sulked. Sweet pea does not like to be planted behind other plants – it wants all the sun for itself! I now grow it in the back lane as a cutting flower. I have also grown morning glory against the shed. Morning Glory ‘Heavenly Blue” is surely the most beautiful of the climbing annuals but oh, how it shrivels in a frost. Too heartbreaking if we have a late May frost.

I have started a few vegetables. My vegetable plot is very small so I put a few seeds in six inch pots and set them in zip locks until the seeds germinate. I grow a few plants each of squash, zucchini and cucumber. No pumpkin this year. I still have lots in the freezer. I also grow corn. (more about my funny little veggie garden later).

I now have twelve shop lights up and running for 16 hours a day. The warm back porch is full of things germinating, or I hope that is what they are doing.

SPRING, THE JOY AND THE BAD NEWS

2008-04-17T21:33:00.000-07:00

This is the first day that I have been able to take my morning tea out to my tiny patio. Half the back lawn is still under snow, but in the clear area near the house a few pale blue crocuses are in bloom - what a treat. The bare lawn is very soggy but so far the melt has gone smoothly without huge puddles or the underwater garden of a few former years.

Now comes that spring walk-about where you pick up all the flyers and papers that have blown in over the winter and try to see what is alive and what is damaged. I note the caragana hedge has been half pushed over by the weight of the snow. Still it is as tough as nails and will recover although it may need tying up. Caragana is wonderful stuff: tough, long living (there are hedges in town that are 100 years old), and provide good privacy. They do need pruning however, but that is about all you need to do with them. (unless they attract aphids but that is easily fixed.)

A small columar cedar in the shade garden has also been partly felled by the weight of the snow. I cannot remove it from its prison - still frozen in.

Alas, the daphne bush has a three broken stems. Other stems are still frozen into a drift but the stems that have struggled free are putting on leaves. Optimistic shrub! Daphne is wonderfully pretty shrub but on the cusp of hardiness for this area. Mine is in a very sheltered spot and has survived several winters but never seems to grow any bigger. I am not sure if can survive this winter's mauling.

I can see buds on the Adelaide Hoodless Rose, but the other roses are buried still.

As usual the garden is a mess in the spring. I do no fall clean up. I never cut back perennials in the fall. I want the stalks to hold the insulating snow. I have lost very few perennials using this method even in those terrible winters when the heavy snow comes very late and the temperature plummets.

SLEEVE ROSES AND OTHER STUFF

2008-04-15T12:11:00.000-07:00

I see the sleeve roses are back at the Home Depot and other places. These roses are encased in cardboard sleeves and the canes are heavily waxed with green wax to prevent sprouting. Most of them are tea or florabunda roses and thus not hardy to this area. Still people buy them and I often wonder if they are disappointed that the plant does not return the next spring. There should be a warning label on the sleeve.

Occasionally you find a hardy rose, such as a Canadian Explorer rose, in the pile. (for a list of hardy roses, watch this space). If you find a hardy rose, you have a bargain because sleeve roses are usually under 10$ while pot roses in the nurseries run 15$ and up.

Sleeve roses take ages to get going in the garden. The wax is heavy and retards the growth. They need a long season.

You can start one now in a large pot if you have a large, warm, indoor space. I have planted them inside the porch in Pro Mix (compost frozen still) and added a handful of Epsom salts, some rose fertilizer and some transplant liquid. I muscle the pot outside about the end of May and they will bloom before the summer ends. I have grown these varieties: Peace, Queen Elizabeth, Mr. Lincoln, Chicago Peace and Iceberg and they all have given excellent results. I put a few pansies and other annuals around the base of the roses.

However, at the end of the season, it is better to toss the rose on the compost. I have managed to carry non-hardy roses over but usually only for one more season and they do not give as much bloom the second year. At one time, I buried non-hardy roses in a four-foot deep trench and dug them up in the spring, alive and sprouting but still slow to bloom.

I have also used rose cones filled with peat moss and mounded up compost around them. (if you use a Styrofoam rose cone be sure to put a brick or rock on top or it will blow away. Also dogs love to chew them up, leaving you with a million styro pellets to pick up in the spring) After that, it all depends on the Thunder Bay winter weather. If we get lots of snow, you may luck out. The next problem is storing the styro cones because, if you put them in a back shed, the mice love them - ah the problems of a gardener!

Spring comes and you remove the protection around the not so hardy roses and stare at them, green stems and brown, mostly brown. What is alive and what is dead? In our climate, some will definitely be dead. Don't leap for the clippers too soon. Unless the stem is broken or damaged, give it a fighting chance, at least until the middle of June. Even a root may send up a sprout.

Some people love the challenge of the non hardy roses but I now stick to the tough guys, the Canadians, who can take the winter.

Schizanthus, Nicotania and Pot Shards

2008-04-11T07:43:00.000-07:00

The schizanthus germinated sulkily. A few thin stretched sprouts and a couple of tiny ones. Not only does this plant provide a poor germination rate but it germinates unevenly so you don’t know how long to hold it under the dark covers. I wonder why I plant it at all and then I recall the short stocky plants in the garden covered with pink blooms that go on forever. Only the godetica out blooms it.

A small dish slid out of the kitchen cupboard and hit the floor breaking into three or four pieces. Not a problem for the gardener. The china chunks are good for the bottom of pots as are ripped plastic pots and packs, broken ceramic plant pots, shells and largish stones. I never use packing foam or packing peanuts as some garden magazines advise – what a mess in the fall when you clean out the pots! The soil must be thrown away in garbage bags because the foam will not break down in the compost. Small stones and gravel are also not good for the same reason. At the end of the season, I want to be able to tip the pot in the compost and pick out the three of four large drainage shards. When I bought this house twenty years ago there was a mass of garbage piled in the yard including an abandoned toilet. I broke this up, creating great pot shards which I am still using.

The nicotania, which germinated in a six inch pot, is now very crowded and needs to be re-planted in packs. Last night I planted more cilantro, more parsley and the lavatera, another great annual. The variety is called Silver Cup but, contrary to the name, it is pink, The white lavatera is nice but not so floriferous . Lavatera, which looks like a hibiscus or a malva, is the premier annual in the garden in late July and August. It is about a foot high and does not do well in pots. It likes the open garden.

SOME ARE FAST AND OTHERS NOTSO...

2008-04-06T09:26:00.000-07:00

A few garden notes. Some seeds seem to jump out of the planting mix and emerge as teeny tiny plants. Now you don't see 'em; now you do. Such are the cosmos and the bachelor buttons. Both seemed to germinate over night in the warm conditions of my porch.

However, there are the laggards. The white wave petunia, planted March 24 has done nothing, nothing! It takes 21 days to germinate says the packet. Of course the schizanthus sulks as does the hibiscus. Herbs are slow boys too.

There is a moral to the story. It is important to put the date of planting on the name tag of the plant. If you do not do that, you may throw out seeds before they have a chance. A good grower should tell you how many days to germination. This information should be on the packet but, it is important to note, this information is only an estimate. And this estimate is made by nursery people who have optimum growing conditions. We home gardeners, trying to start seeds inside, must give our seeds latitude. But! if the tiny plants have not even shown up two weeks after the due date, the pot of planting mix and dud seeds are sent to the compost.

I use a code on my plant tags. On the wave petunias, the tag says Wave wt, M 24. (i.e. wave petunia white, March 24). I use home-made short compact tags that will not inadvertently get caught on something when I am moving the pots or flats and fall off. I like tags with rounded corners for the same reason. One old venetian blind provides a lifetime of tags. Just use scissors to cut off bits and trim the corners a bit. I use waterproof marking pens for the information.

WILD FLOWERS TWO

2008-04-03T07:17:00.000-07:00

The Wild Flower Garden – Two.

When I was growing up in the Port Arthur area, there were lots of wild flower gardens. They were called vacant lots. A lot of native species grew in these sunny grassy places: butter and eggs, black eyed susan, golden rod, yarrow, Joe Pye weed, mullein, pearly everlasting, various vetches and many others.

Of course there were also the travellers blown from near-by gardens. I remember finding a large rhubarb plant in one lot on Jean Street and in another, a lovely rose. Plants that we believe to be wild flowers but were introduced to the area long ago (example ox eye daisies) were abundant. We kids used to play in the long grass (today called “ornamental grass” in the seed catalogue) and found many small tiny flowers hiding there.

These vacant lots are all but gone and it is a treat to find one in town. I found a field of wild flowers on South Algoma Street two years ago, the site of the old Cornwall School. The native plants (and the introduced ones) had colonized the spot on their own and the number of birds was remarkable for such a small space. Native wild plants produce seeds acceptable to native wild birds. They also play host to native insects eaten by wild birds. Chipping and song sparrows sang on the day I walked though the area. I noted the plants were successfully breaking up the asphalt. “You go girls,” I said.

But alas. A letter to the newspaper demanded that these “weeds” be cut down. It is beyond my comprehension that a black eyed susan, sold in a local nursery, is a wild flower but when it grows wild it is a weed!

The city mowed the area to produce a field of stubble, for that is what you get when you mow wild grasses. It does not create turf. The song sparrow and the chipping sparrow decamped.

What I did not find in this vacant lot were the two “Toughies of Turf,” the dandelion and the plantain. These guys like mown lawn where they can spread their rosette of leaves, leaves so low the mower passes right over. Then, when no one is looking, they throw up a seed stalk and attempt to take over the world. They are very efficient plants. I believe that, in Thunder Bay, more money is spent on herbicides to attack dandelions and plantain than any other species of plant. Not only money but sweat and tears.

But the battle is pretty well over. The Ontario government, after hearing pleas from medical and environmental organizations, is planning to ban pesticides and that includes herbicides as well. Even after decades of war against the dandelion, the plant was never defeated and, after the ban on herbicides, its triumph is assured. So, Thunder Bay, time to get out grandma’s recipe book and learn how to make dandelion wine.

Crocos and cosmos

2008-04-01T18:35:00.000-07:00

Today at Vanderwees I met Louise Kondakow, who writes the Optimistic Gardener column in Thunder Bay Seniors newspaper. Louise talked me into buying some crocosmia bulbs, red ones called Lucifer. I have never tried these but hey - what can go wrong with such a recommendation? I'll put all ten in the pack into a big pot in the front yard.

Seven Reasons I Plant Lots of Cosmos:
1) I give away a lot of cosmos plants
2) Cosmos seeds are cheap like borscht
3) Cosmos seeds are large and easy to start indoors
4) Cosmos does not have to be staked
5) Bugs do not like it.
6) Cosmos blooms in August when many perennials are finished and carries the garden to the frost.
7) Cosmos dances in the wind but does not break
In short, cosmos is an unparalleled garden flower.

I am referring to the tall cosmos, not the short orange/yellow variety which looks completely different from the tall types. The tall cosmos produces open flowers in the pink range with some white and a few dark wine. The leaves are lovely ferny things.

Although it looks delicate, cosmos is one tough plant, the toughest annual in the garden. It can be planted behind perennials and it still will grow. Few annuals can do that. It gives no quarter. I plant cosmos in a swath in front of a bed of lily of the valley and this root-spreading lily does not cross. Without cosmos I would be drowning in lily of the valley.

I plant it both in full sun and partial shade and it does not seem to notice. One day last summer on a garden walk around Current River, I saw a hedge of cosmos, a line planted three or four deep all dancing. Fantastic garden moment!

ALL OVER THE HOUSE

2008-03-30T10:44:00.000-07:00

Plants in various stages (or no discernible stage at all) are all over the house. I have three florescent shop lights set up on tables in the basement holding flats, pots and cell packs with tiny plants – impatiens (two flats), geranium (three cell packs), basil ( a flat of cell packs), lobelia (one flat) and nicotania (one six inch pot – still too tiny to put in cells), godetica(one flat of teeny plants).

Also down the basement is a planted flat of cilantro seeds and two of cosmos all under plastic domes. Two six inch pots hold schizanthus seeds, the divas of the seed world and hell to germinate. The pots are inside ziplocks. The ziplocks are inside a green plastic garbage bag. This plant germinates in the dark, if it deighns to do so.

In the warm back porch sits a lone zip lock containing a six inch pot containing a few wave petunia seed. On a low shelf, a six inch pot hides under a draped tea towel, an attempt to germinate parsley seeds. The temperature there is 24 C.

Inside the house, at 20 degrees C, are two zip locks containing hibiscus and rosemary seeds – so far no action there. In the kitchen is a flat with a plastic dome containing dianthus seeds.
I keep running around the house with my thermometer to check if the temperature is within the required range.

THE WILD FLOWER GARDEN, part 1.

2008-03-27T17:23:00.000-07:00

I have been given a gift, a pack of wild flower seeds. A thoughtful present but I am not sure what to do with it. The seeds are packaged by OSC seeds, a southern Ontario nursery in Waterloo. Most likely the wild flowers are southern Ontario varieties and therefore, dicey for the north. If would have been helpful if OSC had listed the names of the flower species on the packet but they did not. Most seed mixtures like this one do not list the contents, therefore, it's a pig in a poke. The blurb says the packet contains a mixture of annuals and perennials and will reseed themselves every year. Well, maybe.

As a general rule, I do not like seed mixtures but I see they are sold all over town. I would like to hear from someone who has had success with them.

It seems strange that a Northerner, surrounded by thousands of square miles of wild plants, would attempt to grow southern Ontario wild flowers. Growing our own northern species is a good way to attract birds. The local nurseries offered a good selection of native plants last year. Last July, I bought two common mullein plants from George’s Market for my dry front garden. I’m hoping they’ll take to the conditions there. These biennial plants form a rosette of pale green hairy leaves the first year and the second year produce a six foot stalk with yellow flowers. Let us hope!

I know a very nice garden created from plants liberated from the back lanes of Fort William. The gardener also found a few plants at a gravel pit and along an abandoned railway. These dry-land plants are more successfuly transpalnted han the woodland varieties.

In Thunder Bay, lovely volunteers arrive in every garden, carried by those busy gardeners – the wind and the birds. From them, I received feverfew, ox-eye daisies, yarrow, black eyed Susans, sunflowers, tansy, Queen Anne’s lace, golden rod and campanula, (or bell flower, both purple and white). Many of these, such as the ox-eye daisy, are introduced species or garden cultivars gone wild. Such is common tansy, a fine garden plant. Others, such as the goldenrod and black-eyed susans, are native.

Some people bring in plants from camp or their bush property but it is a tricky business. The soil in the deep bush is acidic and the woodland plants need the right conditions to grow. Many native wild flowers usually bloom only once a year and only for a short time. However, some are quite showy. I see a lot of Joe Pye Weed around town. If you have a dampish spot, this big brawny plant may be a good choice.

So IMHO, if you want a wild flower garden, get plants from this area. Go slowly and see what will take to your city plot. Shrubs such as wild rose, high bush cranberry and mountain ash often do well. On your garden walks, check what is growing around town. Look at the back lanes and empty lots for ideas.

PLANT ON

2008-03-25T16:05:00.000-07:00

Today I planted one packet each of nicotania, wave petunias, parsely, rosemary, and hibiscus. All were alike in one respect, each pack had very few seeds, far too few to plant in flats. (I note here that you should never plant different types of seeds in a single flat. Each plant has its own special conditions for germination and growing. Some are quick growers, others laggards. Planting different things in a single flat is a recipe for frustration.)

I fill six inch pots with moist pro mix, plant the seeds as per instructions on the packet and place the entire pot inside a big zip lock and close the top. This bag acts as a moisture and heat retaining dome. The pot does not have to be watered as long as it is in the bag.

Note: no fertilizer is used at any stage so far. I do use a few drops of Damp-Off in a gallon of warm water to mix with the Pro mix.

A note about nicotania. This is a great annual flower and easy to grow, There are dwarf, tall and very tall varieties. Only the tall variety has any scent. There are also great colours – for example Stokes has a lime variety which looks great with the white. It germinates at room temperature and so the plastic bag sits on top of my computer. This year I am trying very tall.

I only planted one pack of Wave petunias. I find them tricky to get started and the seeds are expensive. (50 cents a seed!). I think the white waves look wonderful at the edge of pots. The white is almost luminous. These need heat to germinate and are in my warm back porch.

Hibiscus. This is the fist time I have grown this annual type. I was seduced by the description in the seed catalogue, not the first time this has happened.

LIGHTS! ACTION!

2008-03-23T07:33:00.000-07:00

I do not use light stands. They are expensive and not very flexible. The only valid use for a light stand, IMHO, is decorative, growing plants in an apartment living room, for example.

Florescent lights have to sit very close to the plants, only an inch or two above them. I use regular Canada Tire shop light fixtures (4 feet long) set up on a table using bricks. I buy the light fixtures with the square ends, attach a regular plug to the wires and put in two cool florescent tubes. I set each square end on a couple of bricks laid sideways. I plug the light into a light bar so that I can turn them on and off with a switch. I like to buy light bars with long cords so that they reach my sparse electrical outlets. I can set up four lights on one long table and plug all into a single light bar. Later, when things start hopping, I attach a timer to the light bar.

By the end of April, I have about thirteen lights set up, most in the cool basement and a few in the warm porch.

Note: Florescent lights are cool to the touch and do not burn the plants even if they touch the lights.

THOUGHTS ABOUT GERANIUMS

2008-03-23T07:19:00.000-07:00

The catalogue information on geranium Maverick white claims there are 10 seeds to a pack. I only count nine. I rip the pack apart but no lost seed. The pack cost $3.85 or over 38 cents a seed - a bargain really. In Thunder Bay small geraniums sell for a buck or more. Other plants are much cheaper. The lavatera pack holds 100 seeds at $1.95 a seed or just under two cents a plant. Wave petunias seeds are usually the most expensive annual seeds in the catalogue.

Sometimes it is difficult to tell how many seeds are in a pack. Some seed companies omit this important information. Sometimes it is in the catalogue and sometimes not.

Last night I took the wet paper towel packet with the NINE germinated geranium seeds and lifted them out holding on to the tiny leaves. They came away from the towel easily. I pressed them into the plastic four packs (saved from nursery purchases. Some of my four and six packs are so old they are held together with duct tape). Accordign to the directions on the packet, the four packs have to be left under lights continually for three days and then drop to 16 hours a day.

Jubilation! Germination!

2008-03-22T08:52:00.000-07:00

The impatiens showed their "milk leaves" or first leaves last night. I will have plenty of plants for the shade garden. The seeds germinated in a flat with a plastic dome - all set under lights. (following the directions on the seed packet). Tomorrow, after the slow guys push their way to the top, I will remove the dome, move the flat to the cooler basement and set under the lights there for 16 hours a day. More about the lights set-up later.

I planted some old basil seeds in a six inch pot and set the entire thing inside a big zip lock bag and put it in my warm porch in the sun. Old seeds usually have a poor germination rate but not these - the pot is crowded with tiny basil sprouts after only a few days. This is Genovese basil which I believe has the best flavour.

The geraniums planted in coffee filters did not germinate. The ones on the wet paper towel have sprouts. Moral - always follow the advice on the seed packet. I quickly moved the still dry seeds from coffee filter to warm, wet paper towel, folded them up into a packet about 4 inches square and put them back into the zip lock bags. Back to the warm porch. I will transplant all sprouted geraniums tonight. More info on that later.