It’s been a long cold winter in Southern Ontario this year and it looks like we have another snow storm coming. Even the squirrels are wondering when we are going to see some signs of spring — this little fellow seems to be asking if he can come in and join me for a warm… Read more »
A Carpet Of Groundcover
The focus of my landscaping over the past few years has been to develop most of the garden structure and fill in the beds with the bones and highlights. That has meant that most of my planting activities have been around trees, shrubs and some perennials for colour. In the back of my mind has… Read more »
Holiday Planters
It’s that time of year again to decorate my front urns for the holidays. I am fortunate to be able to obtain all the red and yellow twigged dogwood that I need from my gardens but most of my evergreens are not yet large enough to start clipping away large pieces. So I start with… Read more »
Final Fall Garden Cleanup
The weather this past week has been nothing short of spectacular. Temperatures 5C above normal, sunny and very little wind. Perfect for spending time outdoors doing some garden cleanup and finishing those last minute chores. We even picked the last of our carrots and beets from the vegetable garden today. To cut back your garden… Read more »
Why We Grow Our Own Vegetables
I read a very interesting fact today. In the 1960′s Canadians spent on average 18.7% of their total spending budget on food. This percentage dropped constantly to just over 10% of total spending by 2008. And yet, despite spending less money on food our society today is grossly overweight? Why? Certainly we are not eating… Read more »
Nyssa Sylvatica – three years in the waiting
I’ve worked at planting a lot of trees and shrubs native to the Ontario Carolinian forest in my gardens over the past few years. Some have been more successful than others, begging the question as to whether our not our changed habitat and environment can easily support what were once in abundance in our area.… Read more »
Late Season Flowers
Who says you can’t enjoy some summer flowers in October. Every year many of my clematis experience what I believe is clematis wilt. The bottom leaves turn brown and drop, leaving a poor looking climber in the garden. A Polish Spirit clematis that climbs a beautiful globe trellis just outside our bedroom patio does this… Read more »
The Garlic Is In
Thanksgiving weekend finally provided us with a respite from rainy weather, allowing the garden to dry out enough to plant our fall garlic. Growing garlic is remarkably easy. Garlic is said to grow in a wide variety of soil types, in fact I was told at the Stratford Garlic Festival that, over time, garlic adapts… Read more »
Holding Back The Weeds
I do everything I can to keep weeds from encroaching in my garden… … I mulch my gardens to supress weeds and limit new seed germination by supressing light to weed seeds; … I pull weeds in all of my gardens by hand when they are small. An old fashioned two pronged hand weeder is… Read more »
It’s Festival Season
What a great weekend we had. On Saturday we visited the Stratford Garlic Festival where I picked up some garlic to plant in the garden for next season’s enjoyment. Unfortunately I got a bit carried away, again. Remember the 7 varieties of potatoes? Well next year is going to be a similar experimentation year for… Read more »