Beginner Gardening Tips Blog

Yesterday during my mid-week holiday (Happy Birthday Canada!), I was able to get out in the garden for several hours. Amid the weeding and trimming and edging I noticed that a few of my tall, yellow wildflowers that seem to have bloomed overnight were a little bent over. As I tried to lift them, not one, but several little bees flew out. This made my day. And as I looked around, I saw bees on my other blooms, as well. I’ve been reading a lot lately about the importance of bees in the garden and about their alarming decline in Canada. Knowing that I’m attracting these vital pollinators to my garden makes me want to plant more bee-friendly blooms.

Here are a couple of articles on CanadianGardening.com about how you can make your home a healthy habitat for bees:

• Save the bees: How to attract pollinators to your yard
• Build a bee box

This past spring at Canada Blooms, I attended one of Marjorie Mason’s seminars where she spoke about xeriscaping. It was inspiring to hear how some of Marjorie’s land was originally very sandy and through continuous mulching she was able to feed her soil and make things grow. Part of the magic is also knowing which plants will thrive in drier conditions. That’s where xeriscaping comes in – choosing plants that can adapt to a dry environment and finding native varieties that have already adapted to the growing conditions in your particular area. This was a really helpful seminar for me as the soil tends to be very sandy in front of my house and I came away with some great ideas.

Succulents, such as  hens and chicks, do very well in dry conditions as they retain water in their leaves, stems and roots. Last year I planted some hens and chicks out front in an area that gets a lot of sun and that can become rather dry. I’ve included a photo to show how they’ve spread and spawned (I say ‘spawned’ because these sweet alien-looking flowers sprouted out of my little cluster and ’spawn’ seems to be an appropriate description).

You can look for your own interesting succulents and cacti this weekend at the annual Ontario Cactus & Succulent Society (OCSS) Show at Sherway Gardens. Hundreds of rare, unusual and expertly grown cacti and succulents will be on display and there will be experts available to give you more information about xeriscaping and to provide valuable growing tips. Maybe you, too, will be able to find that perfect succulent for a dry spot in your garden.

I finally grabbed these photos off my camera after writing about how I was worried my irises wouldn’t bloom. As you can see, they did just fine. I wished they would last the whole summer!

These ones I knew would bloom, but I thought I'd share them anyway!

The blooms on these purple beauties are magnificent! And they get so top heavy, they fall right over!

A few weeks ago my leaves on my irises were lush and green, but not a bud was to be found. Then one little bloom made it’s way up in a completely different place in my garden, so I was wondering why I didn’t have any blooms on the others! In a panic (OK, I’m being overdramatic–I’ll say out of curiosity), I consulted Anne Marie, who gave me some very helpful advice. Then, lo and behold, a couple of rainstorms brought forth the giant purple buds on my beloved irises and they’ve been blooming ever since.

In any case, I thought I’d share Anne Marie’s tips for any readers who were not lucky enough to have blooms this year.

These are probably a type of bearded Iris. They should bloom reliably for you each year unless…

• They have been moved or were divided last year (they take about three years to get back to full bloom again).
• They are now too shaded; they need at least six hours of full sun.
• The soil is too rich or too lean; too much nitrogen fertilizer can cause them to have little or no bloom and lots of foliage.
• They are planted too deep; the rhizome should be peeking through the surface of the soil.
• They are overcrowded; this will cause fewer blooms.
• They have been attacked by an iris borer–look for shriveled or sunken rhizomes where the iris borer has done its damage.
• They are being grown in too soggy of a location; they prefer to be slightly dry.

I definitely need to thin mine this year and will be following the tips in this article to divide them.

Do you ever find that you discover a word or a new invention and all of a sudden, you see it everywhere? Well  yesterday, Anja, CanadianGardening.com’s web editor, was telling me about seed tape, a handy little invention that allows you to quickly and easily sow your seeds in a row, equally spaced, no fuss, no muss! Well today as I was scanning some design blogs, I came across a way to make your own. Linked from Craftzine.com, this slideshow on the instructables site shows you how to do it step by step. I wonder if this would keep my squirrel “neighbours” (I say “neighbours” in lieu of the expletives I call them in private), away or if they’d have a field day pulling out these strips and dragging them around the yard…

This morning it was officially announced that next year, Canada Blooms will take place at the Direct Energy Centre located in Exhibition Place. This is a fabulous choice of venue, most notably because of the accessibility for visitors and vendors alike. I can just picture gorgeous floral displays in the vast, sunny hall. And you won’t feel like you’re descending into a cave when you head into the show.

It was also announced that the theme will focus on passions, whether it be a passion for plants and gardening or a passion for the environment, food, design, etc. I find this a little ambiguous as everyone who attends is quite obviously passionate about gardening and everyone who is involved with creating the gardens is passionate about their craft. It will be interesting to see how this theme is interpreted visually among the exhibits.

I was puttering in my herb garden a couple of nights ago and among the helicopters I was having to pick out of the dirt from the giant maple next door were two little cilantro plants. They are not in the same place as my cilantro plant from last year, but they’re in the general vicinity, so my guess is that when the plant went to seed in the fall, a couple of little seeds survived the winter! Hm, I always thought that cilantro was an annual…

Ever since I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver last year, I’ve been inspired to grow more than just a couple of tomato plants and the odd herb. It seems I’m not the only one… every newspaper and magazine has been extolling the virtues of urban vegetable gardening of late. And with the wealth of information out there, picking your dinner from your yard doesn’t seem so unattainable. I now have a new garden all laid out and I can’t wait to plant what I hope will be a bumper crop of veggies.

I’ve got the seedlings that made it through my fungus gnat infestation—hot peppers, fennel and cilantro—as well as some heirloom tomato plants currently growing in my sister’s apartment; a couple of promised plants grown from Gina’s tomato seeds–carefully saved each year by a friend’s mom (apparently they yield giant, juicy and delicious fruit!); and a few other plants to join my seeds—a zucchini, a green pepper, and a strawberry (though I may save this for a different spot). I’m also growing beets, beans and a few other treats from seed.

Still on my list are tomatillos, since they were so successful in my yard last year. Apparently my parents, who also grew them, have a bunch coming up in their garden already. I had read that they reseed themselves, but I haven’t seen any sign in my own garden so far. Either way, I want to be able to make my own salsa verde again.

There are definitely some lessons I’ve learned since last year’s growing season, the most important, I think, revolving around feeding my soil.

I’ve also consulted Canadian Vegetable Gardening written by Douglas Green. I love Douglas’ stress-free approach to gardening and how the book devotes a couple of pages to each vegetable, making it easy to consult and gather the necessary tips. I had a chance to chat with Douglas recently about gardening when I interviewed him for a Homemakers.com story on growing herbs and took away some helpful tips from that conversation, too.

Another resource I’ve been consulting is the notebook I took to Canada Blooms. I attended a seminar by Ken Brown who, like Douglas, has a very laid-back, resourceful approach to gardening, yet still reaps tremendous rewards all season long.

I noticed someone in our forums recently had posted her three favourite reference books for veggie gardening, so I added my two cents.

What  are your favourite veggie gardening resources?

Until now my questions about my rosebushes have basically been centred around how to prune them without getting hurt. One of them is an ominous-looking beast and the other is catching up. However, armed with some helpful advice from Anne Marie, a new pair of protective rose gloves from my sister and the latest issue of Canadian Gardening, with its illustrated guide to renovating roses, I feel ready to tame the beast(s).

If you have some questions about your own roses, Canadian Gardening magazine’s editor-at-large, Stephen Westcott-Gratton will be in our forums for an hour tomorrow to address your rose queries live!

Hope to see you there at 1 p.m. EDT!

I’ve been reading Ecological Gardening by Marjorie Harris on the subway. I love it because it’s trade paperback-sized–perfect for my purse–and it’s so conversational, you don’t even realize you’re reading non-fiction sometimes. The Globe and Mail wrote that “the facts come across as if from a helpful conversation with a good friend.” I need to remember to keep a pad of sticky notes in my purse to mark all the pages I want to come back to. I really want to strive to make my garden as healthy as possible and I’m so excited about what I’ve been learning.

Here are some of the facts I have learned from my new friend Marjorie:

• Dandelions only grow in fertile, balanced soil. Their crazy long roots can actually bring nutrients from deep in the soil up to the surface. This is good news because I have a ton in my backyard and now I don’t feel so bad. They can also apparently help the growth of other flowers.
• Watering thoroughly once a week is better for the plants than shallowly watering each day–except for containers which sometimes need to be watered twice a day.
• Not all ants are bad. The other day some of the buds on one of my flowering perennials (I’m not sure what it is, but it has electric-blue frilly petals) had these little ants on them. I was a little alarmed at first, but according to Marjorie, they were sipping the sap from the buds, which isn’t harmful. Also, some of the other ugly beasties I’ve seen in my garden aren’t at all bad, so I need to make friends with them, too.
• I think one of the best pieces of advice I have taken away this week from the book is to feed the soil, not the plant. If a plant is suffering and you’ve done all the things you’re supposed to–watering, given it adequate light, etc.–your problem likely lies in the soil and what it might be lacking. Marjorie provides lots of easy troubleshooting tips for amending your soil.

This weekend I hope to tackle my monster rose bush with the brand new rose gloves I got from my sister for my birthday.

Here are a couple of excerpts from Marjorie’s book on CanadianGardening.com:

• How to amend your soil
• The organic way to fertilize your garden