Garden 101

If you grow dahlias (and I recommend you do, if you have a sunny spot available), the best way to keep them blooming is to continually cut the flowers.   Either pick them for cut flower arrangements, or leave them on the plant to enjoy in the garden but then remove the flowers as soon…

The one real blessing of the last year was being home enough to spend at least a little bit of time in my garden every day during the growing season. I loved being in the garden and the garden grew better because I was out there, seeing what was going on, and intervening—with water, staking,…

About this time of year I start getting questions along the line of “My daffodils are finished blooming. Is it ok if I braid the leaves to make them look tidier while they die down?”     The short answer is no, not if you want them to bloom again next year.   Daffodils, need…

Everyone knows that plants need soil to survive and thrive, but I’ve recently realized that some people have questions about how far up the side of the pot that soil should go. The short answer to the question is that pots should have enough soil in them to support the plants growing in them, and…

With gardening, there is always more to learn. I’ve written previously about spring pruning roses, and I stand by the tips and techniques in that article for most roses.   But I’ve learned more about climbing roses and realize that I was cutting back most of them too harshly. They still grew well, but I…

That’s the question a new homeowner asked me last week. “I just bought a house and the yard is full of hostas. What do I do with them?”     Good question. And I think I had an answer that made her happy.   In the fall, most hosta leaves turn lovely shades of yellow…

I’ve written previously about how I created my little pond (aka my pond-in-a-bucket) out of a hard sided pond liner. Because it’s made out of hard plastic I believe it could crack over the winter if I were to leave it full of water that would then freeze.     So in late fall every…

While I was driving to work this morning I noticed that someone had wrapped all of the young deciduous trees and small shrubs in their yard with burlap, to protect them from the coming winter winds. In general, I’m not a fan of shrouding plants in burlap after their first winter (that first year they’re…

I understand the temptation to just stash your tools away, mud and all, after a hard day’s work of gardening. Why bother to clean them off if they’re just going to get dirty again? I’ve felt this way too, but if you want your tools to last, you need to keep them clean. And once…

Hostas are problem solver plants–they tolerate a lot of shade so perform well in areas where other plants often don’t, they emerge from the earth in spring with big leaves that can hide the dying foliage from spring blooming bulbs, and they are so cold tolerant that they survive over the winter in pots in…

The scene repeats itself again and again, in gardens around the world, every year. The story goes like this; you’ve purchased your seedlings and you’re ready to plant them in the garden.     You pop one out of the cell pack and…   …discover that its roots are wound around and around the little…

If I lived on a larger property, I’d have a proper compost pile, or rather piles. Compost needs to be turned (stirred) periodically, and the way to do that with a mass of it, is to shovel it from one bin to another. My parents have a large lot in a semi-rural area, and my…

First off, why would you need to change the blade on your secateurs? And the answer is if the blade has been damaged to the point that just sharpening it or cleaning it won’t solve the problem. If you do those two things regularly, and only use your secateurs to cut the things they were…

I’ve written several posts about secateurs (sometimes called pruners, even though technically a pruner is a person who is pruning–the tool used to prune is often a pair of secateurs), how to choose a good pair, how to sharpen them, and today, how to clean them. I talk about them so much because I use…

I have lots of cedars and a pretty small plot of land, so I’ve had to learn how to prune them. I have so many because they stay green all year, they’re easy to care for, and they create much-needed privacy in my urban garden. I believe all of my cedars are Emerald Cedars (Thuja…

Raking leaves is as much a part of our collective idea of “fall” as drinking hot chocolate is part of our idea of what’s supposed to happen in winter. Stories have been popping up in my social media feeds proclaiming that experts say you no longer need to rake the leaves off your lawn! Is…

I like to move and/or divide most perennial plants in early spring, as close to when they emerge from the ground as possible, as I find I get the highest success rate. Fall is the second best time to plant or divide most perennials. But peonies are different—they are best divided or moved in the…

Succulent plants, especially members of the echeveria family, have become hugely popular the last few years, as well they should. They grow with next to no water, and can be manipulated in all sorts of ways, and even grown vertically, in growing medium and mesh, so that they be can hung like a wreath.  …

I’ve been checking the weather forecast several times a day lately as I’m on the lookout for frost. I have my old sheets and burlap ready to cover some plants if frost is threatened, but I know this is only a temporary measure to postpone the inevitable.   This weekend I started taking apart some…

I love the look of ornamental grasses, especially in late summer and into fall when the plumes develop. When the sun hits them the right way they’re glorious! However, most ornamental grasses with lovely plumes are quite large. My garden is small. This means that the Miscanthus sinensis ‘Morning Light’ growing in my front yard…

Tulips are the tempermental stars of the spring garden. They put on a gorgeous show but then, if you don’t treat them just right, they disappear and you’ll never see them again. Treat them right and they’ll probably, but not always, bloom again next year. And maybe for years to come. I’ve had some tulips…

Whether you’ve just moved into a new garden where everything’s a mystery, or see something unfamiliar sprouting in a garden you’ve had for years, a good way to figure out its name is by taking a photo and sharing it with knowledgeable friends and acquaintances. However, your success at this depends not just on your…

It is infinitely more enjoyable, and better for your plants, to use sharp secateurs than dull ones. I’ve written elsewhere about how to choose a good pair of secateurs. In this post I’m going to show you how to keep your secateurs sharp so that you can enjoy pruning.   I have a pretty big…

Has a gardening friend or nursery salesperson ever asked you if you “know your zone?” It’s not a pick-up line (well, it’s usually not a pick-up line. I suppose someone might try…) or a way to ask your astrological sign. They’re trying to talk about your growing zone. “Growing zone” is gardener shorthand for what…

I wrote previously about how to dig up tender tubers–the roots of dahlias, cannas, and begonias–to store them over the winter. I know that a picture tells a thousand words but moving pictures with talking are even better, so I’ve done a short video to walk you step-by-step through the process of packing up your…

When winter storms come and pile on heavy snow and ice, it can spell disaster for some trees, especially evergreens, which have needles that hold a lot of snow and ice.   Evergreens with a strong main trunk, like pines, are best suited to weather this type of weather. But evergreens that grow with many…

Every year at this time articles about “putting your garden to bed” seem to pop up like dandelions. Worried new gardeners stop me to ask “do I need to put my garden to bed?” “what does it mean to put your garden to bed?” and “what am I supposed to be doing now?”  The underlying…

When you live in a climate with real winter, frost is a fact of life. But when frost comes too early, a gardener has to take action!   What’s too early? Well, I’ve been hearing from gardening friends slightly north of me who had frost warnings in August. They were posting photos of what looked…

I’ve written before about how much I love coleus and how I’ve had a hard time finding my favourite variety at any of my local nurseries.   To keep growing this plant, I’ve been growing cuttings, starting with my original plant, season after season. In this post I’ll show you how I make cuttings and…

I think everyone who has a garden would benefit from having a rain barrel–I have four in my yard (three catching rain off the house and one from the garage). There are two main reasons I think everyone should have at least one; the first is that rainwater is free and tap water isn’t. Why…

Rain doesn’t fall the same everywhere.   I’m not just talking about the difference in rainfall between one side of town and another, I’m talking about within your own garden. Even in my tiny city garden some spots get more rain than others. The cause isn’t some magic invisible shield–it’s the fact that I have…

Deadheading is the process of removing spent flowers from a plant—in plain language that means cutting off the dead flowers. There are two main reasons to do this. The first is aesthetic—dead flowers just don’t look good. Take a look at these geraniums before they were deadheaded:   And then take a look a few…

Sedums, sometimes known as Stonecrops, are great plants–they have nice flowers, they’re drought and heat tolerant, and they are beloved by bees and other pollinators.   The only downfall with them, in my opinion, is their tendency to flop over late in the season. One day you have a nicely rounded mound of plant and…

Have you ever admired the beautiful blooms on a peony but lamented that they were at ground level, possibly splattered with mud, because the flowers were so heavy? It doesn’t have to be that way and the time to act is now. If you wait until they start to topple over it’s very difficult to…

Lavender, latin name Lavandula, is a heat and drought tolerant woody plant. Its native climate is the Mediterranean, so it grows well in fast-draining soil (i.e. dry spots) where it will receive direct sun for at least 6 hours a day.   There are many varieties of lavender, not all of which will grow well…

Peony plants that die back to the ground each winter and then send up new shoots each spring are known as herbaceous peonies–the term herbaceous means that they don’t have a woody stem. I think it’s safe to say they’re the most common type of peony grown in North American gardens–they’ve been around a long…

Roses should be pruned each spring. Cutting back rose canes (i.e. the stems/branches) every year helps to foster healthy, good-looking plants and encourage more blooms. The time to prune is in the spring, once you start to see buds emerging.   If you didn’t protect your roses for the winter, and you live in a…

One of the first spring tasks in the garden is to remove the winter protection off of roses. As I explained in my post on how to protect roses in winter, the recommended way to ensure that your roses make it through the winter intact (and note that I’m writing this for those of you…

You can’t really get out in your garden and do a lot until the weather warms up and the ground dries out a bit. That happens for me sometime in late April—we’ll still have frost for another month after that, but by late April I can start dividing and moving perennials and really “gardening”. However,…

It’s every gardener’s nightmare: spring seems to have arrived, tulips, daffodils and other spring bulbs are emerging and WHAM! an unexpected snow/ice storm accompanied by plunging temperatures blows in from out of nowhere, engulfing everything in an ice blanket. Will your bulbs be ok? What do you do? The good news is that spring-blooming bulbs…

Nigella (Nigella damascene) is a beautiful and easy to grow flower for your summer garden. Nigella blooms are unlike anything else—to me, they look a bit like a firecracker or a sea creature. They come in a few colours, including white and soft pink, but it’s the blue varieties that I think really stand out…

One of the last tasks of the garden season is to protect roses for winter. And by last tasks, I mean you need to wait to do this until winter sets in–the ground is frozen (or in the process of freezing) and no more balmy days are forecast. I won’t lie, this can be a…

I’m always sad to see my beautiful flowers freeze and die in the fall. However, I am heartened to know that my begonias, dahlias and cannas will live again the next year, as long as I lift and store their fleshy root systems, called tubers and rhizomes. (If you want to get technical, begonias and…

I grow a LOT of plants in pots. A lot. I love their versatility and the way they can add height and colour to any spot. The only thing I don’t enjoy about growing plants in pots is having to empty the soil out of them in the fall. And because I live in a…

As frost hits and the growing season winds down there are some things that need to be done to keep your garden fabulous:   Annuals Remove and compost annual plants once they die. A bed full of wilty dead coleus is not attractive.   Vegetables Most of your vegetable plants are annuals, so should be…

Weeding is an inescapable part of gardening. You can minimize the amount of it you have to do by using mulch and planting intensively (less space between plants means less space for weeds) but you’re always going to have some weeds to deal with. Ignoring them just leads to more weeds, so it’s a battle…

Watering plants is really straightforward in many ways. We learn early on in science class that plants need soil, light, air and water to grow. But how to water and when are the questions that generate answers that begin with “It depends on…” and then follow with qualifiers about temperature, type of plant, whether it’s…

Do your roses lack vigor? Your shrubs seem sparse? Your tomato plants puny? It may be that they’re hungry!  Plants take nutrients from the soil and, over time, if the soil is not replenished, will exhaust the supply available. It’s just like if you or I were to keep taking food out of the refrigerator…

Or how to make sure your garden gets better every year. Walking through my garden in spring is like meeting up with a bunch of friends I haven’t seen in months—it’s a series of happy surprises and reunions as I reflect on the good times we had together—the stunning bloom on this particular tulip, the…

“Are you looking for annuals or perennials?” is often the first question you’re asked when you go to a garden centre. “Erm…I’m not sure” can be uncomfortable to say–perennial and annual are terms you’ve heard before but just haven’t quite remembered the definitions of as they only tend to come up occasionally–like right now, in…

There are all sorts of website, people, and businesses willing to provide advice to gardeners, but the question, especially for the new gardener, is whose advice do you trust? I’ve seen a “gardening magazine” publish advice that’s just plain wrong and refuse to correct it. Irresponsible? Yes. Surprising? No. Gardening is big business, editorial teams…