Hello My Dear Gardening Friends,

I understand that April can be as capricious as a woman, standing on your feet, wearing stiletto heels!! Indeed today has become cold and wet - I thought that this was only May weather, when the cold and rain is good for corn and hay. We enjoyed those wonderfully warm days of the past week, tantalizing us and getting us ready for the really hot weather that will come before we know it or are even ready.

Petals we are seeing now: our gardens are bursting with daffodils, hyacinths and all the early spring flowers! Time to get those poor waifs out of the basements and outside – but a word of warning: we can still get the odd frost at night, and even one last snow fall. I succumbed and purchased a clematis at Canada blooms, as much as I want to get it outside I am waiting a little longer because I do not think that it will enjoy the cold earth!!! Remember to not plant until you can sit on the ground with a bare bottom! This piece of advice comes courtesy of my grandfather Wood.

I mention double digging from time to time. I have been asked what can one do if you are no longer capable of digging and cannot afford to hire someone to do it for you. Relax there is a solution and a very simple one - do not dig! You can practice no digging; all you will need is a spade and a lot of well rotted compost!! It must be at least 4 inches on top of the soil at all times. You must renew it each year - just sow your seeds or put your plants into it. This no digging technique is low maintenance and has high rewards. There is a lower incidence of weeds and the plants seem to do better than when just popped into the ground as sometimes has to happen when either our backs refuse to do any more work or when rheumatism strikes.

“Till the soil on midsummer’s day, feast aye famine will come your way. Till the soil in April showers, you will not have fruit nor flowers.” -old proverb

Proverbs are rooted in good practices, for no good gardener will work their soil when it is either very dry or very wet. If you should dig when the soil is very dry you are loosening the crumbs too much and destroying its ability to hold water. But if you dig when the soil is very wet, you will compact it and make it difficult for the water to drain away. In either case you make life harder for the plants and yourself.

On very hot days in England, Canada and America, gardeners used to start work at dawn and finish at mid-day, returning in the early evening. The people in Mexico still do this – you have seen pictures of the Mexican asleep under a tree, what that picture doesn’t tell you is that he has worked from dawn and is sleeping until around 4.p.m. He probably hasn’t eaten yet and he will work until it is too dark to see.

If you do need to plant in high summer, work in the early morning before the sun is high or when it has set. A cloudy day works well too. Make sure that you water the ground really well afterwards. This gives the soil and plants maximum opportunity to recover. If you do have to plant in wet weather, avoid standing on the soil - use a broad board, this way you will spread your weight and not compact the soil as much.

Exposure to light helps to trigger germination of many annual weed seeds. Some old time gardeners always cultivated at night, believing that it stopped the weeds from spreading. Unfortunately most seeds still receive enough light to germinate, regardless of when you hoe. Maybe it was just an excuse to get outside and empty that bottle of mead!!

To cut down on the need to weed, spread lots of mulch on the flower beds surface in the spring and fall. This makes a home for the worms, as well as containing moisture for your plants. Should you need to replace a plant or wish to add another one, dig a hole more than twice the size of the container or root ball of the plant, add some compost to the planting hole, and mix the soil with even more as you backfill.

If you have a fair sized garden you may decide to use a rototiller to prepare the ground. This is an easy and fast way of digging, weeding and loosening the soil, and can be used as a way of incorporating compost or green manure. But try not to get too carried away as an overuse of the tiller can actually make the weed problem worse by chopping up small bits of rootlets and distributing them far and wide. Excessive cultivation will destroy your crumbly soil texture and make for a compacted hard-to-work soil. Instead, use it to prepare new beds, or once a year to loosen the soil before you plant.

Long before we had Garden Centers, seed merchants and plant stores, plants were spread through sharing. In fact many of our favourite garden flowers, including pinks (Dianthus spp.), lavender (Lavandula spp), pot marigolds (Calendula officinalis), morning glories (Ipomoea spp), hollyhocks (Althea rosea) and hundreds of others have spread around the world from the very earliest gardens. Keep your eyes and ears open for horticultural plant sales. Lakefield will be holding theirs on the May long week-end.

Annuals are plants that set seed, and die – all in one growing season and have to be sown every year. The Latin name often gives you a clue; for example the sunflower (Helianthus annuus) or stocks (Matthiola incana). Annuals are usually tender, that means that they will not withstand cold, frosty weather. They are usually very easy to grow; merely sow the seeds (in that wonderful compost) in the spring and enjoy all summer.

Perennials survive as living roots from year to year. Some, including day lilies (Hemerocallis spp) are extremely long lived, others, including lavender can die suddenly for no apparent reason after only a few years. The best way to propagate most perennials is by taking cuttings or by dividing clumps. You can try sowing seeds too.

Biennials blossom during their second year and die shortly after setting seeds. However, their seeds are usually hardy and they often self seed or send plantlets up from the original plant. Foxgloves (Digitalis spp) and hollyhocks are biennial. It is easiest to let biennials increase their own stock by self sowing (or come to Loblaws and buy them from me) then transplant the new seedlings to where you want them to grow next.

Most old fashioned garden flowers are open-pollinated, which means that they will come true from seeds. Or look like the parent plant. Hybrids are created when plants from two different families are crossed to make a flower with a particular colour or habit. Many hybrid plants have very exciting colours and shapes.

Offsprings of hybrids will revert to the strongest characteristics in their breeding. This is why glorious brightly ruffled flowers of the hybrid columbine (Aquilegia hybrida) that self sow often revert to murky purple. To raise hybrid offspring, take cuttings or divide plants when they are large enough.

Ever since the first gardeners saved seeds of a particular colour of a flower to try and reproduce it the following year, humans have tried to control plant development. People labour long and hard to produce the brightest, largest and best shaped, pest, weather and disease resistant varieties. The Shirley poppy is a very good example of a plant bred from traditional cornfield poppies (Papaver rhoeas).

Genetically engineered seeds were first developed to produce plants that are disease resistant, or that tolerate herbicides. These seeds are produced by gene splicing, where a person mechanically moves DNA from one cell to another. Thinking about this process makes some people uncomfortable, because it raises the possibility that traits can be moved from dissimilar organisms, between animals and plants for example.

There is fierce debate about the pros and cons of genetic engineering (GE). Environmental arguments center on whether GE crops can pollute other species through pollination; whether it is wise to make crops resistant to herbicides because this promotes the use of herbicides and will lead eventually to weeds also becoming herbicide resistant; and questions about how other plants and wildlife will have to adapt. Moral arguments look at questions of individual and consumers’ rights, and whether a few huge companies can have the right to control the supply of seeds. But we do not want to go there do we??

An old wive’s tale in England states that turnips must be planted by naked gardeners (oh what a sight that must be)!! It seems that if planted too early, when the soil is still cold, turnips will grow woody stalks and bolt to seed without developing tender, crisp, rounded roots. If the temperature and the soil are warm enough for you to cavort and plant in the all together, then the turnips are much more likely to thrive.

Put Your Pea in the Hole!! A gardening friend claims that his wonderful peas are because he uses a pea board to space his peas. To make one, take a 1x 6 inch board that is 46 inches long. Draw a line lengthwise down the center of the board. On each side of the center line (1 & 1/2 inches away) draw a parallel line. Then draw a parallel line every two inches from the top of the board to the bottom. Where the lines intersect, drill a hole large enough to let a pea seed pass through. You should have three holes in each of 22 rows, or 66 holes in total. When you are ready to plant, lay the board on the prepared soil and place a pea in each hole. Push it into the soil with a chop stick. Remove the board and there you are.

Get Tough with Tender Seeds:

Basil (and some say Parsley, as well) should be planted with stomping and swearing. It’s a rule so old that the French term for slandering is semer le basilic, literally “to cast basil” upon someone. Stomping is good advice. Small seeds like those of basil and parsley need to be kept moist after planting, so that they will not dry out when they burst open. Firmly compacted soil eliminates air spaces that would allow drying out. I am guessing that swearing was used by the gardeners who forgot to stomp!!!!!!

Well my dears - do not forget your hats, sunscreen, and gloves. Especially if you are pruning roses, keep your eye on the frost warnings, and bring inside any little plants that may succumb - after all you have invested a lot of time as well as money into raising them this far. Hats are imperative in the hot days ahead, for the ozone layer is getting quite depleted.

Good gardening to us all!
Lovingly, Beryl

And to all of you who have asked – I am feeling much, much better. I will be at Loblaws on the 4th of May, they are open already – so do stop by and say hello – hugs will be given freely!