Gardening That Grows With Me
We’ve had a great summer so far — lots of rain from thunderstorms but also lots of sun and heat. As most gardeners do, I plan my day or week based on what the weather predicts. This week, with both my kids in camp and sunny weather predicted all week, I decided it would be… Read more »
What do you do with all that extra zucchini in the garden? Our favourite way to eat zucchini is grilled on the BBQ with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper. Next up are slices fried in garlic and olive oil until still crispy. I also cut up zucchini for use in rice and… Read more »
Summer is here and the vegetable garden is really in full swing. After enjoying much of our early season harvest of peas, lettuce, spinach, swiss chard and kholrabi we are now enjoying the bounty from our summer garden. We picked all of the vegetables in the above picture today and still have a red cabbage… Read more »
The Fall Webworm (Hypantria cunea), a native pest found throughout North America, is now upon us. The fall webworm forms a large web sometimes one metre long over the ends of branches of birch, ash, Manitoba maple, flowering crab, and many other deciduous trees. The webs are can easily be seen during August and September… Read more »
We are definitely approaching the peak of the Japanese Beetle season. In our area, just north of Brantford, Ontario adult Japanese Beetles start appearing in early July but their peak season is from around the last week in July to mid-August. The Japanese Beetle is a serious problem for both turf and ornamental plants. Grubs… Read more »
As a gardener I often get very frustrated with the weatherman. I mean really, sometimes they can’t even get the weather prediction correct a day ahead. Saturday’s weather though made it very apparent why predicting the weather can be so difficult. The forecast called for a chance of thunderstorms with rain predicted in the 2-5mm… Read more »
Rosa ‘Lilli Marlene’ is another healthy rose that has stayed in my garden. Lilli Marlene is a floribunda rose with clusters of deep red blooms among dark green foliage. In order to help combat black spot during the hotter weather I have been using lime-sulfur this year as a preventative. I also removed a large… Read more »
You know summer is here when the summer squash start to appear in the garden. Today we enjoyed our first zucchini of the season, okay well one only but hey it’s still June. I planted three varieties of summer squash this year: Onyx, Golden Dawn III and Flying Saucer. I expect we will be eating… Read more »
Rose season has arrived and those roses that do well certainly do look great when in bloom. Unfortunately between the heat and humidity causing black spot and powdery mildew and the japanese beetles attacking blooms I find it just too frustrating to grow roses successfully in the country. I have over the last two years… Read more »
We compost everything at our house from garden waste to table scraps, unfortunately we are lazy composters. Given the size of our gardens I produce a lot of garden waste and my method is basically to keep piling it up on top of the compost pile. Unfortunately I never seem to get around to turning… Read more »