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Gardening Quotes

This is the time of year I get lots of requests for tips on achieving the elusive “low maintenance” garden.  This month’s quote reveals the secret! 

"A callused palm and dirty fingernails precede a green thumb."
 Mike Garofalo 

That’s right – there’s no magic bullet!  A “low” maintenance garden comes with a bit of down-

DIRTY KNEES,
A Newsletter for York Region Gardeners
March 18^th , 2011
Evelyn Wolf, Perennial Garden Consultant

This is the time of the garden season when weather forecast watching becomes a bit of an obsession in itself for avid gardeners.  Will winter come for a day or two again and frost bite emerging plants?  Will spring rush to summer’s warmth too quickly for a good Tulip show?   Here in Southern Ontario it’s very frustrating to make plans for a spring garden since “spring” is so different from one year to the next. 

At this point “They” are calling for a long cool spring.  While this sounds discouraging for cottagers, campers, and the winter hibernators among us (like me!), this is good news for gardens.  Long and cool is what all spring blooming plants need for a good long show.  (I planted tons of tulips last year and can’t wait to see how many the squirrels left for me!) 

In my own garden I love to include some plants that bloom in very early spring.  Seeing flower buds opening amid the last of the melting snow is more heartening for a winter weary gardener than any good weather forecast could be.  The last of the lingering snow cover in my garden just melted off yesterday to reveal Hellebore flower buds just days away from opening and the first few flowers opening on my Witchhazel ‘Diane’ in a rich deep red.   I like to think of these super early signs of flowers to come as Mother Nature declaring her superior weather forecasting skills – if She says it’s OK to start the growing season, then it must be spring! 

(Hellebore is the very earliest perennial to bloom – well worth their high price tag!  The snow melted earlier this week to expose buds, and I’m just a few days away from seeing blooms!)

Late March To-Do list –

 ~ try not to let spring fever get the better of you!   In the middle of March while watching early spring flowers come along, it’s hard to remember that we’re still a full 8 weeks away from our climate zone’s last frost date, and that it’s very likely we’ll still get lots of below zero nights.  (click here for a look at plants enduring a late May snowfall!  Very normal situation in our zone.)   Don’t uncover any broadleaved evergreens protected from winter damage with burlap or pine boughs yet – Rhododendrons for example.  Their flower buds are very sensitive to damage from late spring frosts in the intense sunshine of spring that is fooling them into blooming too early.

 ~ Start weeding!  The very definition of a “weed” is a plant that knows how to outwit more well-behaved plants by germinating seed extremely early, or are evergreen and ready to zoom into flower and drop seed before being bullied out by main season plants.  We haven’t even had a chance to dust off gardening tools for the new season yet before chickweed, for example, is blooming and dropping seed!   As soon as you can, get out there and dig up all the evergreen weeds you probably didn’t even notice were there last fall.  Easy to find at this time of year – they’re often the only thing in a garden that’s green!  Get them before they drop seed which may only be a couple of weeks from now.  

~ make a plan for your lawn’s Corn Gluten application to prevent this year’s crop of weeds in your lawn.  Overwintered weed seeds will be germinating over the next few weeks and corn gluten will kill them before they have a chance to open and develop roots.  Overseeding with new grass seed in spring is also a good standard practice, but corn gluten will kill those seeds as they germinate too!  Corn gluten is effective at killing newly germinating seed of any kind, for up to 6 weeks.  These two good natural lawn care tasks should be well timed each spring for best results.  Either apply corn gluten now and wait 6 weeks before overseeding with grass seed, or spread the grass seed now and wait for at least 4 weeks to allow the grass seed to germinate and grow some roots before spreading corn gluten.  Once the new grass plants have put down some roots, corn gluten won’t harm them at all – in fact corn gluten is a natural source of nitrogen and will feed the developing grass plants.  Corn gluten used correctly is very effective - an all natural weed ‘n feed!  Getting the timing right though is important.  (To learn more about corn gluten and other effective natural lawn care methods, register for my April 4^th class – EARTH FRIENDLY LAWN CARE.  Follow the link for information.)

                                     Happy Spring!

                                               Evelyn Wolf