My Dear Gardening Friends,

“Anyone who has the ability to see Beauty never grows old.”
~ Franz Kafka

I had a little excitement yesterday. I was stuck not in the ice and snow, but in mud – somehow that was acceptable for it is a sign that spring is almost here! Have you checked to see what is growing in the gardens already? I walked around today and there are all kinds of things happening – young shoots pushing their way through into daylight, in a lot of cases right through the snow.

I have had a delightful time taking down my winter drapes and putting up the summer ones. Meant to keep the sun off the plants, but letting up all that wonderful light.

“When Winter’s rage abates, when chearful Hours, Awake the Spring and Spring Awakes the Flow’rs” John Dryden Virgil’s I, II 463-64 (1697)

I paid a visit to Griffin’s greenhouses on the weekend and I am afraid that I succumbed to a flat of bright yellow pansies. What a delightful surprise that I also found green pottery English “Wellies” (Wellington boots for those Paddington Bear fans), planted with yet more yellow pansies. I have been busy sharing them with friends – I could not resist their bright and beautiI have had an enquiry about removing covering from shrubs. I understand that this was in the form of a tent; I am pleased that you did not mummify the poor thing. I would wait for a couple of weeks at least – we can still get snow, right into May – do not be in a hurry to remove mulch, etc. The gardens are very wet, and if you walk on them – you will compact the soil. If you must be outside, and we are all itching to “clean up”, I would restrict garden chores to picking up garbage and tree limbs that have come down, and any other small pruning jobs. It is a good time to apply dormant oil spray if you have not done so – it must be applied before the buds open.ful little faces. Since Medieval times, March has been a time to cultivate the soil – that is if you live in a kinder climate then we do. We still rejoice in early spring as we return to our gardens after this long winter as it seemed to go on forever.

The actual time that you can dig your garden depends on the weather of course. In some areas, Vancouver for instance, people are already setting out their plants, seeds and vegetables. We are still waiting. Our soil is too frozen and too waterlogged , but as the days grow warmer, and they are, once it reaches 42oF, spring has finally returned. Soon you will be removing winter mulch and planting your peas.

When you do get “on to the land”? First of all, pull out all the weeds; the ground is soft and the task easier. Then spread a three to four inch layer of compost over the soil and dig it in. A call to the works department in Peterborough and they will bring you a large truck load - all you pay for is the delivery. I think that starts at around $90 depending on where you live. Go in with your neighbours and share a truck load for your gardens will thank you.

I have mentioned double digging before – but it does bear repeating as some of you do not know how to do it!

1) If you are working with heavy clay soil, first soak the ground so that the clay is workable. As the frost comes out of the ground and it is still soft, that will work very nicely. Remove the weeds and lay a one inch layer of compost across the garden bed.

2) Next (or even on the next day), dig a trench one foot wide and one foot deep at one end of your garden bed, piling the soil in the back. This is your first dig.

3) Now push your spade into the bottom of the trench, moving it around to loosen the sub soil, ideally another 12 inches but realistically as deep as you can (this is the double dig).

4) Repeat this procedure, digging another one-foot trench beside the first one. Loosen the soil at the bottom of the second trench as you did the first one.

5) Repeat this process for the rest of your garden bed, filling the last trench with soil from the first one that you dug. Any remaining soil can be used in either your compost pile or in other parts of the garden.

6) Add organic nutrients (manure, alfalfa and wood ash) as needed to the top two or three inches of soil and spade them in.

7) NOW stand back and admire all that hard work; a beautiful, rich, light-textured soil for those precious plants you will be buying soon!!!

Years ago even gardeners who could not afford fertilisers used wood ash since almost everyone heated with wood. An old seed catalogue described wood ash as “indispensable for all crops needing potash, and of high value for cabbages, potatoes, corn, onions, strawberries fruit trees and beans”. They were cautioned that ashes might cause scab in potatoes. The recommended application was one pound of ashes to each 10 to 20 square feet. Gardeners seemingly have fought scab and other pests forever.

The Indians also knew the benefit of ashes the saved them from their campfires and spread them over their gardens. Samuel Deanne included in 1790 among ashes for fertilising “cola ashes, top dressing for cold damp soils”. Coal ashes have little in the way of value as fertilizers, but an inch spread around the base of tender plants will make it difficult for cutworms to attack, thus saving your tomatoes, etc.

If you are planning a vegetable garden this year, I would suggest that you treat it like the rest of the garden – plan it all out on paper first. Sketch a rough rectangle to represent your kitchen garden – mark lines to correspond to the rows of vegetables which should, if possible, run north and south. Obviously the number of lines/rows will depend on the space that you have and the kinds of plants that you plan to grow – about 2 ˝ feet is an average recommended distance between rows.

Mark your rows on the paper – large/tall ones such as corn, at the back, and the dwarf types go in front. Again always purchase the best quality seeds - and only what you will use.

When planting carrots, beets or other root vegetables, scatter a few radish seeds in the furrows of the seeds of the main crop. Radish seeds germinate quickly and the young sprouts will mark the rows so that you can weed and cultivate from the start. The radishes will mature in a few weeks, you can pull and eat them, thus, they do not interfere with the slow growing species. Plus you will be putting that same area to double duty.

I have planted my Datura’s and already they are well up and doing just fine. I hope that this year I finally got a yellow one; I thought that I had last year but it turned out to be orange!!! Never mind I loved it anyway like any good mother.

“Well must the ground be dig’d, and better dress’d, New soil to make, and meliorate the rest” John Dryden, Virgil’s Georgics I, II 87-88, 1697

“If the earth not be soft, Go dig it aloft” Thomas Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, 1580

Isn’t it interesting how tools have changed very little over the years? Medieval gardeners had their spades, rakes and hoes, and in the old pictures, they look very much the same as ours do today. They had clay pots, wheelbarrows and spoons for planting and knives for pruning. As they say nothing is new, just adapted to make it more “streamline” and expensive!

Now that Peterborough is formulating a plan to ban pesticides, we are seeing front lawns being torn up and the area turned into prairie type meadows or native woodlands. Not so very long ago, a lawnless yard was a sure sign that the residents had descended into irrevocable moral turpitude – not so any longer. The infestations of lawn grubs has reached epidemic proportions, making a perfect green “carpet” more difficult, more time consuming and more expensive. Plus people have an increasing aversion to the pesticides and high nitrogen, fertilisers so commonly and cavalierly applied to existing lawns and so culpable where groundwater contamination is concerned.

Can you imagine trying to explain to even our grandfathers that we are tying up so much valuable real estate because you want a perfect lawn? I think that you would be met with looks of sheer amazement – wasting all that good growing land.

I would suggest that you remove the lawn in stages rather than all at once. What do you do with the turf that you have just removed? You can turn it over grass side down and bury it about a foot deep. Cover the area with a foot of good topsoil. The nitrogen rich turf will die and slowly decompose, adding an extra layer of organic material to the soil. Really the best time to do this is in the fall, but there is no reason why you cannot do it now.

Another suggestion would be to make a berm in the back garden. Decide what part of the garden would benefit from a little man-made “hill” and then arrange the turf in a heap (grass side down again). The turf will form a solid base for the berm. Cover all of this with an additional foot of topsoil or better yet, triple mix. Rocks may be put in place before the topsoil is added to provide plant pockets and stability.

Once the berm is completed and ready to plant, resist the urge to plant short specimens around the bottom and tall plants on top. In nature tall plants grow at the bottom of berms and hillocks, short plants grow on the top.

Turf grass can best be used in a cottage garden setting by the “thin green line of grass” that you may leave, effectively linking all the sections of the garden together, and creating a visual contrast to the plants within the borders. It also gives you a place to walk whilst either weeding or just enjoying your creation.

I have been asked to explain p.H.:
Is our soil “sour or sweet”? With certain crops this is very important. Plants such as the Rhododendron family, blueberries, heather and other erinaceous plants like an decidedly acid soil.
Most crops do their best in soils that are within a degree or two of neutral in either direction – they require neither sweet nor sour soil but the “happy medium”.
Soil chemists have set up an arbitrary table for the measurement of soil conditions. In this table they have made 7 the neutral zone. In soil whose p.H. is 7, there is neither sweetness nor sourness - it is in balance. From 7 down the scale to 1, the acidity increases until in the lower categories there is so much acidity (sourness) that few, if any, plants can live. In between 7 and 6 is the soil condition in which most ordinary crops do their best. The acid loving plants, the azaleas, blueberries and rhodo’ s do best with p.H. 4.5 to 5.5 or 6.
From 7 and up to 14 the alkalinity (sweetness) increases until in the upper categories, few, if any, plants can live or grow.
So if your soil p.H. is 5, let’s say that it is rather strongly acidic and whilst blueberries would grow on such soil, you can hope for a good crop of clover, beans or any other ordinary garden vegetables when adding lime to cancel out part of the acid.
However if the test shows that your soil is p.H. 8, this means that your soil is slightly sweet. Most crops will grow just fine, but if you wish to grow blueberries, you must cancel out that sweetness by using something that will produce acid in the soil. I am growing on pure limestone, but I plant my rhododendrons and azaleas under my cedar hedge and they are doing just fine. More on this next time.

Good gardening to us all. Hats, sunscreen – maybe switch to your gardening gloves, rakes and do not put your snow shovels away just yet.

Lovingly, Beryl