Always Learning

I am always learning about gardening. I consider myself an expert flower gardener, having been doing that for over 20 years now. I still find out new things about old plants that surprise me. I think that is part of what I love about gardening. I am always learning.

Vegetable gardening is relatively new to me. This year will only be my third year at trying them. I have grown previous crops in my flower garden, between the flowers and also in containers. This will be the first year for me to have a proper kitchen garden and the crops I am planning are much more than I have tried before. It is a lofty goal for a flower gardener.

Organic Gardening has a wonderful article on succession planting which is a concept I plan to try next year. This year, my kitchen garden is new and I am not yet certain where or what size it will be so making a plan for succession planting feels beyond what I can accomplish quickly. But there was a fantastic tip in the article that I plan to use:

• Vegetables that belong to the same plant family (such as cabbage, mustard, and kale) share pests and diseases. It's wise to keep in mind what family a vegetable belongs to and avoid planting one member, say tomatoes, in the same spot where a cousin—peppers, eggplants, potatoes, or tomatillos—grew in the previous 3 years.

This is a great tip for me because potatoes and tomatoes are among the crops I have grown in the past and my tomatoes were wiped out by blight. Now I know that no matter where I have my new kitchen garden dug, I want to plant the tomatoes in a different place than I grew them last year. I would love to be able to eat my crop this year!

Organic Container Gardening

 

I love containers! They are one of my favourite things in the garden. I have been known to turn anything into a container and I continue to use all my broken pots to grow plants in. The more they are broken, the deeper they get placed.

Containers are easy to do organically. I start with an organic potting soil and add a little bit of my own compost, making sure to keep the mix light. Heavy soil will compact. Do not plant containers with soil from your garden. Garden soil is too heavy for containers and becomes compacted over the season with weather and time. Roots need oxygen.

The compost I add to the potting soil helps to feed the plants over the season but containers need to be fed regularly throughout the season as well. There are a lot of organic feeding options such as fish emulsion or seaweed extract. I use compost tea. It is easy and free to make by steeping my own compost for a few days in a covered bucket of water placed in the sun. The resulting tea can be used weekly to feed my containers.

In Saskatchewan, we have long, hot, hot, hot summer afternoons that make containers a challenge. It is very hard for containers to survive without daily watering. Daily watering makes me feel guilty about my garden so I have developed a two step trick for watering containers. Step one is heavy mulch. I use straw. It can look a bit messy in early spring but the plants will completely cover any mulch long before they are full grown. The mulch prevents evaporation from the top of the pot and helps keep the roots of the plants cool. Step two is to water completely through twice each time I water. When I water my containers, I water until the water is freely running out of the container bottom and then I move on to the next container. Once I have done them all, I do it once more. I go back to the start and water until the water runs through. This doubles the time the job takes each time I do it but it reduces the number of times I water from daily to once a week, with the exception of the very small containers that I toss water on with the watering can almost every time I walk by in the summer. This trick has allowed me to plant far more containers than I could have managed if I was watering every day or even every second day. I am a lazy gardener at heart. Watering daily would reduce the amount of time I have to smell the roses!

Who doesn't want more flowers?

I couldn't let this article from Organic Gardening go by without posting it. The title says all you need to know... Five Simple Steps to More and Better Flowers. Now who doesn't love that? Simple steps usually means I can accomplish them despite my lazy gardening habits. More and Better flowers sounds divine. A couple of them were good reminders and one of them would have saved my fern patch two years in a row. Worth the read.

Starting Seeds This Season?

I keep going back and forth on whether I am going to start seeds inside this year or not. I would rather not but we have such a short growing season, the list of what I can't grow is huge. I am still undecided but that can't last much longer - spring is coming!

If you are planning on starting seeds, there is a good article that contains a simple seed starting plan at Organic Gardening. It also has how to instructions for making your own seed starting mix and newspaper seedling pots.

Garden Time Saving

 
I came upon Organic Gardening's 11 Time Saving Tips and was going to post it here. Then, as I was reading, I realized that most of us have already heard we need to make a plan, pile on mulch and keep tools handy and close to the garden. The idea that was new for me was a good one though. It was wash your harvest in the garden. What a great idea! Saves bringing in all that dirt to the kitchen. They suggest you collect your harvest in an old laundry basket which will act as a strainer in your garden when you hose it down. This is definitely a great garden idea I am going to use. Thank you, Organic Gardening. It is always great to find new ideas I hadn't heard before - especially if they are going to save me time!

The other tip I found interesting was one I first discovered in Ruth Stout's Gardening Without Work. The tip was build soil in place. The idea is that you compost between rows all spring/summer and then dig in after harvest in the fall. Ruth advocated just planting in the between rows next year and build the soil where the vegetable rows were this year, next year. Ruth's garden philosophy, as advertised, was for the Aging, the Busy and the Indolent. I wish I would have met her. Her book is well worth the read and was published when she was 76 years old. She was a wealth of information and I have used many of her methods in my flower gardens. I must confess however, that I do not employ them all because I am rather fussy about the look of things in my flower gardens and no work does mean a bit of a messy looking garden. Beautiful, big, healthy flowers but messy overall with informal composted paths. This year, I plan to use all or most of her methods in my new kitchen garden. In my vegetable patch, paths are not required other than to walk on to weed and what it looks like is secondary to the harvest quality and size it is producing. Ruth and I are going to be great friends this season. I think I will go pull out her book now.

Fall Seed Sowing

Hardy perennials and self-seeding annuals in your zone can be sown in the Fall. The advantage to Fall sowing is that your plants will get a head start in the Spring, bringing you an earlier display the following season.

With hardy perennials, they should just be dropped where you want them. The key is to wait until it is cool enough that they will not start germinating in the Fall or to sow them early enough that they can germinate and set root in this season. You do not want them starting germination but not able to set root before your winter. Seeds require specific light, water and warmth conditions before they will germinate so once your weather turns cool, you are usually safe for Fall sowing. Just remember many perennials will not bloom their first season.

With self-seeding annuals, you know the seeds will survive the winter. In this case, you can get a jump on Spring by sprinkling the seed in your garden in the Fall, the same way the plant would release the seed on its' own. You can let the plants do this for themselves if you want to repeat them in the same space or you can harvest the seed and drop it in any new garden space you would like the plants to grow next season. The seeds will germinate in your garden often earlier than you would consider sowing them in the Spring, bringing you flowers earlier in the season. Another advantage of this schedule is that you need not worry about Spring weather. This year, for example, my garden was too wet to walk in long after seeds should have been sown.

If you collect seed, garden experiments are free of charge and are the best way for you to discover what works in your season, your soil, your garden. In my zone 3 garden of largely clay soil, I have had success with Fall sowing of Marigold, Hollyhock, Delphinium, Viola, Pincushion Flower and Forget-Me-Not. This year I am trying Hollyhock again because I want a new patch in a new space and I am leaving the Marigolds and Calendula to drop their own seed in hope they will appear in the same space next year.

Lift in Fall - Dahlia

The biggest problem with gardening is that advice is often contradictory. This is a function of two things: 1) each plant is often treated differently from zone to zone and 2) often more than one method will work for a single plant. Geranium winter storage is a good example of this, having several methods that will produce very similar results. Although I have lifted Dahlia before, I did not have a quantity that made me feel like I needed to over think the process and also felt that if I lost the few I had, the consequences would be minimal in my garden. This year, my Dahlia stock has become very important to me. The result is that I have been reading Dahlia lift in Fall instructions for a week now. As usual, the advice is endless and contradictory. I have decided to pull the recommendations that make the most sense to me from a gardener's point of view and will be using the following simple 4 step process.

1) Begin the process after the first couple of sharp frosts have killed the tops of the plant off. Above ground plant material will be black when you start. Cut the black, frosted off tops down to 6 - 8" and leave the tubers in ground for a week or so.

2) Dig the tubers, shaking all excess soil off them and removing any obviously damaged root. Label and store upside down for the first few days.

3) Upright the tubers and let them dry in a tray with an open weave bottom. As they dry, inspect regularly and discard any damaged or soft material.

4) Pack and store them in a cool, frost free location until Spring, being sure to keep them dry.

Leaving the tubers in ground for a week or so after the tops are frost killed makes sense because success is always increased with plants if you do not shock them too much at once. Each change in conditions for a plant can put the plant into shock. Pruning, dividing, transplanting, changing water conditions... all of these can cause some level of shock. So one would normally not want to make too many changes at any single time. My thinking is the week allows the tubers to recover from the tops being gone and put themselves into a dormant state. That week has passed in my garden so I will be digging today.

Labeling is very important and only takes a minute or two extra. You can tie a label on the remaining stock, label the container you ultimately store them in or write with a Sharpie directly on the tuber. Any way you choose is fine but you will regret not labeling in the Spring if you don't take the few minutes when you lift.

Drying the tubers upside down for the first few days makes sense because the stems are hollow and will have water in them. Keeping tubers dry is key when winter storing to prevent rot and mold. The upside down position will allow the stems to drain and dry. If I was using one of the methods that would have me removing the entire stem, I could skip the few days of upside down storage.

Finally, packing and storing can mean different things. I will put the tubers in pails, buckets and boxes and will not add vermiculite or peat between them to keep them dry. They will be stored inside my house in the coolest area of the basement and I should not have to worry about humidity level. Our winters are very cold here and we have forced air heat. Humidity is never a problem inside in a Saskatchewan winter. If I lived in a higher humidity climate, I may consider extra packing. The key is too keep them cool and dry in a dark space. Wish me luck and the photographs next year will tell the story of my success, or lack of it.

Hosta

Everyone knows the advantage of Hosta in the garden as a foliage plant or groundcover with most varieties hardy down to zone 2. The range of colours and variegation patterns seems endless. Less often do the flowers get noticed. In fact, I know gardeners that cut the flower stalks off rather than let them bloom. I don't think Hosta flowers are given their due. From the bicoloured bud of 'Captain Kirk' (above) that opens to a little white bell with a lavender stripe, to the more pendulous bells of 'Sun Power' in much darker lavender tones, they are almost as varied as the foliage. Some varieties have their flowers all bunched at the top of the stalk like 'Halcyon' with is blue toned buds and others have their flowers spaced out along the stalk like 'June' with her dainty, pale buds that open to almost white flowers. Hosta is easy to grow, requiring minimal care. As long as it is planted in the right spot, it will generally get bigger and bigger until it outgrows the space and needs division. Dividing Hosta is also an easy task since it is very forgiving of the process. The key, in my garden, does seem to be finding the right spot where it will thrive rather than simply survive. Hosta are good at surviving. When deciding on where to plant any new Hosta, a rule of thumb is that the bluer the leaf, the more shade it needs and the lighter the leaf, the more sun it can take. In fact, 'Blue Cadet' will turn green in sun, despite its' name. There are exceptions to this rule such as 'Blue Mouse Ears' which likes a lot of sun so always read the tag. But if you are like me and find yourself often without tags, the rule of thumb will come in handy. Additionally, blue leaf hosta are said to be more slug resistant than their light leaf cousins. Despite their over-use in the building landscape arena, I highly recommend Hosta as an addition to every garden. Their reliability can always be counted on.

Waiting for the Storm

We are expecting Hurricane Earl to hit Nova Scotia tomorrow morning so I headed out to stake my glads this morning.  Perhaps it's optimistic to think that stakes will actually make a difference!  I've also been out taking pictures because I'm sure the scene will look quite different by Sunday.  It's a little sad to think that I may not even see many of my glads and dahlias that are yet to bloom.  Having seen the effect of Hurricane Juan, I'm trying to be realistic.

There are a few things you can do to help prepare your garden for a storm:

• wrap up and put all your hoses inside
• move anything loose inside, such as ornaments, empty pots, watering cans, buckets, tools, garbage cans, green bins, patio furniture, BBQ
• take down and store portable gazebos, tents, awnings
• move potted plants to a sheltered area or inside
• stake anything tall

Things blowing around can do a lot of damage in your garden!

Slug Solution that Works

In follow up to my previous post about Slugs:
I am happy to report that Kelly and I have been using the ammonia solution with success.  The formula is:  7 parts water to 1 part ammonia.  I read about this in a gardening magazine at some point.

Kelly is spraying early morning; I'm spraying less regularly in the evening.  The solution melts slugs on contact - I'll refrain from posting a picture of this!  It also seems to be a good deterrent.  I can see that if we start early next year, we'll be able to keep the population down right from the start.  I'm hoping it'll make a difference with other bugs as well.

Gladiolus Thrips II - Corm Storage

Further to my earlier post on Gladiolus thrips, here is my latest update. This is a new bud on my 'Hunting Song' which were right beside the infected 'Velvet Eye' of the last post. I have been spraying them down twice a day but I got to them too late at the start. This is obviously better than the 'Velvet Eye' opened so I am trying to be happy about that. I have removed the foliage on all other Gladiolus in that front house garden but I left this single patch of 'Hunting Song' because I am anxious to see them. I received some great advice for treating the infected Gladiolus for storage and Spring planting from one of my bulb suppliers and here is what she said....

"Store them over winter in a cold dark location but not freezing. Before storing them for the winter we recommend you soak them in a mixture of 1 ½ tbsp of Lysol and 1 gallon of water for a half hour at least, let them dry and then store. When you remove them from storage and go to plant them next spring do the same thing but after soaking, plant them while they are still wet. I have read that they can be soaked for up to 6 hours but we don’t find that to be any more successful…"

This is exactly what I am going to do. Then, next Spring, I am going to plant all the Gladiolus that were infected this year on their own, away from the Sun Gardens. Even the damaged flowers of this year made me see that they are worth one more try so I am going to put some effort into it. Wish me luck.

Time to Divide

I'm pretty sure the rule is:

• early blooming - divide in fall
• late blooming - divide in spring

I'm not sure where that leaves those things that bloom in the middle of the summer!  I have read that hosta can be divided fall or spring but not sure about the rest.  Besides, I'm not much good for following rules so we move and divide as the mood hits us.  I don't remember having any casualties but I'm sure it was a real struggle for a few of those plants.

Slugs, Slime and Solutions

This year the slugs are everywhere in our garden.  I'm not seeing so many of the big fat orange ones, but hundreds of little small grey ones that love dahlia.  There are lots of things in my garden that eat leaves and flowers but slugs leave behind a distinctive silvery trail of slime that shimmers in the early morning sun.  This is the first year we've had problems with slugs and dahlia - maybe because we have so many dahlia this year.  And we've discovered that Stoke's aster is their all-time favourite dish on our garden.

The best thing I've used is Corry's Slug & Snail Death.  My sister left me an opened box when she moved to Bermuda.  When I circled the emerging dahlia with it, they actually grew instead of being chewed to nubs. Unfortunately I ran out and can't find any in the stores (yet).

I've tried other slug baits and they don't seem to do much and leave a mess in your garden. I even tried sprinkling slugs with salt. That works but assumes you can find every slug in your garden! My husband's solution is to pick them off using a little twig. It solves the immediate problem but is just plain, well, yucky.

Here are 3 different solutions that I've read about and plan to try:

1. ashes
2. crushed egg shells
3. diluted ammonia (1 part ammonia with 7 parts water)

Perhaps some of these will deter the snails and caterpillars too.