My Favourite Hosta

 

I love hosta. All hosta. Never met one I didn't like. But if I was forced to pick a favourite, 'Sun Power' would be it. The lime leaf colour is outstanding and the leaves themselves are huge. It stands tall and has a very pretty flower. It is reliable, beautiful and sits in a prime location outside my dining room window where I can see it all the time.

The Season of the Rose

Here are all the reasons I love roses today.

 

Morden Blush

 John Cabot

John Cabot (closer) with friend

William Baffin

unknown rose, saved from the trash at my aunt's garden

Marilyn's rose

That is going to look awesome once those buds open along with the baby's breath behind them. Plus, I can't even begin to describe the scents as I wander through them all!

Lament for Lost Plants

It doesn't seem to matter how well I garden, every new gardening season brings a few losses. This year I lost a garden staple: my centranthus ruber (aka red valerian). It was a centrepiece in my back centre garden since we built the garden. See the red patch below:

While this garden has changed a bit the last couple of years, I expected the red valerian to remain. It's beautiful dark pink blooms started in June and continued all summer. Now that it's gone, I'm discovering that apparently it's really quite common - so common in fact that I can't find anywhere to buy it!

Another loss this season was our agapanthus which, despite being zone 7, had survived for 6 years and bloomed for 2 of them.

Maps!

I have a myriad of notes and records of my gardens. I have more than one notebook, stapled together stacks of sketches, drawn maps with legends and plant lists plus a folding file of plant tags by category... each with a description of location planted and date notation. Yet, with all of this over-achieving record keeping, I can never find the map I am looking for. So this is my new map option. In hope that I can find things easier if they are handy on my computer and I can see where the plants are exactly. My sketches never do that for me. I hope this is finally the solution or I will soon be buried in maps of many varieties.

Battling Slugs

It's not a very exciting picture but what it represents is very exciting, at least for us. I've posted about our problems with slugs in the past and about a solution we tried with some success last year. This year we're trying coffee instead. Apparently slugs don't like coffee so we've been saving our used grinds and spreading them around the dahlias. Not all the dahlias are up yet but the ones that are show no signs of slugs at all. Since our dahlia selection has dropped from 20+ to 7, this is great news!

Mini Botanical Tulips

Puchella Easter Star

Of all the early spring bulbs, mini botanical tulips are my favorite. In zone 3, spring bulbs have a difficult time of it. They tend to try and come up when the snow is still everywhere and often do not bloom until they are well established. My puchella was planted in 2010 and this is the first bloom I have seen. It is a single bloom but gives me hope for the future.

Tarda Patch

My tarda, on the other hand are very well established and seem to be the one variety that I can count on to bloom every year, no matter what. They form huge patches very quickly here for me. As an example, I divided the boardwalk garden patches last year and they still doubled in size in that single year. I was commenting yesterday that I might need to divide them again! Not only reliable, they are real stunners. With a pale purple translucent bud that opens to a bright yellow flower with white tips. They look great with turkestanica, which has the opposite colouring. One caution though... turkestanica is much taller than tarda in my garden so it is best to plant them in patches beside each other rather than all mixed together. Puchella and tarda are the same height and could be planted together to form bright patches of multi-colours. I don't plan on trying that until the puchella are much more abundant here so maybe check back in 2050!!

Turkestanica

First Food

The first food is ready to come out of my 2012 garden! Rhubarb 'Strawberry Red' is up and almost completely red. I planted two in 2010 but today I can only find one. One is enough for us though and the second was really bought as back up. I plan to make rhubarb vinegar, rhubarb freezer jam and if I am really lucky, rhubarb crisp. Of course, that is all assuming I can get the stalks from the garden to the pot without eating them all. Hmmmm, maybe I need to look harder for the second plant after all...

Favourite Spring Combo

dicentra spectabilis with brunnera macrophylla 'Hadspen Cream'

One of my favourite combos - bleeding heart and variegated brunnera. The bleeding heart is just starting to open. The two are planted side by side and grow together as they continue to bloom, with the hearts arching above the tiny cornflower blue brunnera flowers. These two like a bit of shade from the afternoon sun.

Perennial Containers

I love containers! Eventually, almost anything sitting long enough in my yard becomes a container. I have many that I fill with annuals and move around as the season progresses. Containers are great for moving around for a shot of colour as my perennials stop blooming.

I would need more than double my annual budget, or to start more seeds (which is work and consequently, never happens here) to fill all my containers with annuals. Years ago, I learned that perennial containers are the budget friendly way to go.

Almost all perennials will do well in containers. I wait until I see what is coming up that needs thinning or dividing and dig when they are small. I transplant them into containers and leave them for the season. Shade containers full of perennials are fantastic for filling up spots under trees where you want a garden but there is nothing left in the soil to support the plants. Soil under my trees is all dry and root filled - impossible to plant it and expect the plants to do well.

Next time you are thinning and dividing your perennials, look around and see if you can't find something to pop them into and sit back to enjoy the display!

dwarf iris, golden creeping jenny and hens & chicks sedum 2011, all of these survived the winter in this container so this year, it is coming up again, a nice bonus

Surprise!

Just when I start singing the praises of spring, we get hit with winter! It has been snowing for two days now. Not much snow and not that cold but it is cold enough to form icicles and not enough snow to cover the plants. I am getting a little worried about the tarda but so far they seem to be holding their own. We have better weather forecast soon so I am just going to hope they are right... and keep my eye on the green bits outside.

The Excitement of Spring !

In spring, I always say that spring is my favourite time of year. Then comes fall and again, I would say fall is my favourite time of year. But this year I am sure... spring it is! At least for now. The excitement in a new season for me is always the same - finding out what comes back that was new last year. In zone 3, new plantings are always most vulnerable over their first winter. The monkshood patch that came from Judy's yard when we relocated her patch, has returned and looks like it is going to be a healthy size. As I expected, there are already 5 or 6 delphinium coming up that need moving and by the time this season is over, there will be ten times that I am sure. Delphinium have gone crazy here and this is the year I am going to tame them! Ha! All these big plans. Easy to say when everything is 2 inches tall. I might feel differently when the delphinium are 6 foot plants!

Little Spring Bulbs

Scientific Name: Puschkinia libanotica
Common Name: Striped Squill

They may be small and common but I just love watching them pop up everywhere. I have little patches of this squill all over the place. They are second to bloom (after my heaths), along with crocus and lungwort. Next will be the blue and pink chionodoxa and that's just starting to open.

Heaths in Bloom

My heaths were swarming with bees all day so I decided to tidy the rock garden on another day. Some bloom late summer through fall, others later in the spring, and these two together early spring. Heathers and heaths are best planted together in groupings because you need to keep the soil much more acidic than other plants like.

Happy Spring!

This is the time of year that I can be left wondering why I ever chose to be a gardener in Zone 3. Everything seems a panic, it is wet, dreary and cold outside. I have been waiting so long for the garden to be uncovered that it is hard to resist the temptation to start working in it. I have learned that you do not want to dig too early in our soil. The excitement of spring is in the air and the bugs are starting to arrive along with all the garden magazine newsletters. They are urging me to start seeds indoors (which I hate doing) and get to my spring garden to do list (which I love doing). I am a list person so making my spring to do list is all kinds of fun. It is getting the list completed that is the struggle. Add 9 dogs with paws just like Moxie's above and it can quickly seem overwhelming. Good thing I am a lazy gardener. I will probably not start seeds indoors. I will think about it and maybe even talk about it but I won't get around to it before I can plant in the ground. I will get the important things done on my to do list - and even some of the not so important things. I will never get everything on the list done. It is the curse of a list maker. The list is a dynamic, ever-growing being. It isn't meant to be completed. I can't wait for the flowers so I have an excuse to stop and smell them. I still love spring!

Aloe

For those of you who remember my little aloe rescued from Judy's breakfast table, you will be happy to hear it did not die! It is having babies!!!

Tying it all Together

Our front yard was becoming a mishmash of gardens as we expanded to add new plants, so 3 years ago we decided to turn the whole thing into a garden, except for a 24' circle. We measured the circle using a metal stake and rope, then marked the whole thing with old hose hammered down with long nails.

front circle before

Kelly lugged in all the stones from back in the woods and lined them up along the hose. Then he dug out all the areas outside the circle to about 2' deep. Next came a big load of garden soil and, of course, plants. We preserve some larger sections at the front for dahlias and glads, which all have to be dug up and replanted yearly.

front circle after

Oh, the weather!

 

There are days when I wonder how I became a gardener in Zone 3. How can I love something so much that is so dependent on the weather when I live where it is winter forever, it seems? I have been busy reading about how to diversify my greens in the kitchen garden, advancements in urban gardening and now, most importantly, how to protect my early flowers from frost. I have been doing all of this reading in preparation for the coming garden season and in anticipation of spring. Little did I know that winter is just arriving! We have had the most wonderful, mild winter in Saskatchewan this year. Last week the snow finally arrived and has not stopped since. The temperature is beautiful though so we have been in a cycle of melt, freeze, melt, freeze, melt, freeze.... which is great for ice photos of the trees but not so great for the spring flowers. I think they are likely getting confused. I hope I don't lose too many of them. The freeze/thaw cycle here can wipe out whole gardens if the temperature drops at just the right time. I am ready though. All of my sheets are steps away from the garden if I need them after the first buds pop out. This is a year when the Boy Scout motto is well advised - be prepared!

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!

Compost Simplified

The first few years I was gardening, I fed my plants with mixes I bought. I was diligent about buying the right mix for the right plant. African violet food, rose food, food for annuals and food specifically for perennials. Some were liquid you mixed and watered with, some were granular for mixing into water and some were granular for mixing into the soil. Slow release. I spent a small fortune in the two years it took me to realize that the same three nutrients are required by all plants and the balance of them in the plant food really didn't matter that much.

Plant nutrition can be really complicated. There are micro vs. macro nutrients, essential vs. beneficial elements, and soil pH. This can be further complicated by soil pH, in that if the pH is less than 4, the phosphorus will be chemically locked in the soil which makes it unavailable to the plant. Thankfully, I have found it can be simplified. What we need to remember as gardeners is that the plant uses nitrogen for stem and leaf growth, phosphorus for flower and fruit growth and potassium for roots. So if you are feeding flowers, you want a higher phosphorus number and if you are feeding root crops, you want a higher potassium number.

Over the long haul, I have discovered that making my own compost solves every problem I have had in the garden. If you use a good balance of different things in your compost, you end up with a good balance of nutrients in your soil. The trick is to keep the compost material diverse. When I first started composting, I had trouble keeping it free flowing and easy to stir. Everything I added, it seemed, was wet and heavy. That too, is easily solved. Keep your compost a good balance of wet and dry material and you will find success. I use a layer of green (wet) and a layer of brown (dry) material and just continue to build and stir, always leaving a dry top layer.

A few other tips: keep the top layer a dry layer to eliminate smells coming from the compost, grass clippings can be green or brown depending on the level of moisture in them, do not compost meat or bones if you do not want insects or smells but all waste vegetable material are excellent additions. If you have never composted, do not let the complications scare you. Just try it. A good compost pile does not smell and produces black gold for your garden that has no chemical substitute that will perform as well. If you are just getting started, Organic Gardening has a good, brief video to help you select your compost ingredients. I encourage you to jump right in and try it. I know I was sorry I waited so long once I spread the first results in my garden soil and witnessed the difference good compost can make. Much better than buying something in a bottle and environmentally friendly too - no chemicals and less landfill. Happy composting!

Think Outside the Box

There are a million uses for a box in my garden; compost bin, plant stand, tool box, temporary planter, wood carrier, branch holder, flower holder, harvest container, impromptu chair - the list goes on and on. Then there are all the things you can make with a box shape; raised beds, cold frames, garden art framing, fences, A-frame climbers, shelves, gates and much more. So imagine my delight in finding this Mother Earth News article on 'How to Make a Box', it is a basic article to make a basic box that you can use to build a multitude of things in your garden. See what you can come up with.

Everything Cucumber

I have only grown cucumbers once, for a lot of reasons. First, they are a vine plant and need something to climb or somewhere to sprawl. Second, they take a lot of thought. You have to think about what you are going to do with them. Do you want to pickle or eat them fresh in a salad? If you are going to pickle, do you want big pickles or tiny ones, sweet or dill? There are so many kinds of cucumber and each of them, by claim, are best for each specific use. It seems so complicated when I am getting ready to plant.

This year, I am breaking out of that box. I have a kitchen garden chain link fence they can climb and all my years of flower gardening have taught me that it is really not necessary to do every single thing that is recommended to get a good yield. I have also decided that I will worry about how to deal with the harvest when it is harvest time. This year, I am not going to think myself out of cucumbers. If you want to join me in planting them, Mother Earth News has an article here on everything cucumbers.

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.

Protecting your Garden

I have often posted about the adventures of my pets in my garden. Although there is some work involved in having so many dogs and cats AND a large garden, it has been well worth it for me. One of the big benefits of all my cats and dogs is that wildlife, generally speaking, stays out of the yard. We get the odd gopher or two and Hannah brings me mice that are no longer alive but we are not overrun with anything in the rodent family. This year I am starting my new kitchen garden and it will have an 8 foot fence around it because I need to keep my animals out of it as well. Digging in my flowers is one thing, digging in my food is quite another!

If you have wildlife bothering your garden, Organic Gardening magazine has a good article here on protecting it from wild things.

Common Seed Terminology

Click to link through to an article on the Canadian Gardening website. If you are planning on planting seeds this year, there is helpful information on common seed terminology.

February To Do List from Organic Gardening

Click to link through to February "to do" list from Organic Gardening. It is organized by zone.

Technique: How to Repair a Hose

Click to link through to a good "how to" on the Organic Gardening website. If you are like me, there are lots of hoses around to repair. When the weather turns nicer for longer, I may have to make a day of it!

Snowy Owl

This afternoon, Sean and I were driving home from Weyburn when we saw a Snowy Owl. It was huge and beautiful. I could see it long before it landed but it did land before we passed. It perched on top of a power pole and watched as we went by. I have never seen a Snowy Owl that wasn't a photograph. We had a Great Horned Owl take up residence on our acreage for about 3 days one year but never a Snowy Owl. When I got home, a blog I read had a post about a Snowy Owl. That landed me at an article telling me that there have been unusually large numbers of Snowy Owls showing up in places they do not normally show up. Hawaii for example! I also did some reading to find they are daytime owls so that explains why we saw him in the afternoon. Normally, we only see Owls at dusk or night. It was a nice experience.

Creating Winter Garden Fun!

For 3 years now, I have been thinking of starting a local charity to promote a connection to nature in the Valley I live in. The plan is for garden based programs such as sharing fall harvest, seasonal clothing exchanges and free sharing workshops in home composting, growing a kitchen garden and organic garden methods for flowers and vegetables. The primary financial function of this charity would be to help the pets that live here too. We have been inundated with strays in medical need since we arrived and last year was the first that our pets did not grow in number. That was only because we had to say 'no'. We are full! Each time we said no, I had a little heart tug, knowing that for at least one of them, no from us meant euthanization. Both because of that tug and because it is winter here and no garden to play in, this year, I have started flushing out my ideas and put together the start of a website at naturalconnection.ca. There is a lot left to do and the hardest part, getting young people involved, is yet to come. I figure it is a first step... getting the ideas out of my head and putting them out there for others to think about as well. There are a lot more people needed to get it off the ground so the whole project may never come to fruition but there are a few people asking me about it, it has been fun so far and isn't that the whole point of something you do for free?

Kitchen Garden

Ever since we decided to move fencing this year, I have been planning my kitchen garden. Yesterday, I found all my seeds and pulled out the companion planting book so I could come up with a planting plan. So far, I have decided to plant the carrots, radish and onion together and the garlic with the roses. The roses are more important to me than the garlic but I will likely plant more garlic inside the fence for eating. January isn't over and they say February is going to get cold but I am feeling the excitement of spring!

Green and Pink in January

It was so nice and mild a couple of days ago so I grabbed my camera and went for a stroll around the garden. One of the things that I really appreciate about my rock garden is that there are many things that stay green all year round, even when covered by snow. These photos were taken on January 3rd.

This season has been so mixed up with mild weather most of the fall. My Dutch iris keep growing and they're about 5 months too early. My Hall's honeysuckle is full of buds. And the buds on my spring blooming heathers are starting to pop about 6 weeks early.