Ten Minute Gardening

Move over Canadian Gardening Magazine, there’s a new publication on the market and it is quickly growing into the magazine to turn to for Canadian garden enthusiasts: Garden Making. 

Though it is only published four times a year (hopefully that will soon change) the pages of Garden Making are full of practical advice, in depth plant profiles, inspiration and good, common garden sense. What the pages are not full of are advertisements. The ads that do appear are non-invasive so readers are not distracted from the real purpose of Garden Making, which is to entertain, inform and inspire.

The expert contributors are a diverse mix of well known, slightly known and unknown (depending of what part of the country you are in) garden writers that all seem to have the knack for getting to the roots of their particular subjects without boring the reader. To date, they have all offered clear, concise information that leave the readers feeling empowered to create more beautiful gardens themselves.

The photography is superb! Even if you aren’t the type to read every word of every article, the photos alone are enough to send you running to the nearest garden centre to purchase the featured plants. They have taken the phrase “Eye Candy” to the max.

Have a gardening question? Garden Making has a “You asked us” feature in every issue. Want to know which tools to use where, where and how? Garden Making helps with that as well. What about landscape design? They have that well covered. The magazine offers suggestions that will not break your bank but will help your landscapes look like they cost a fortune.

Over the years I have become somewhat jaded about gardening magazines. They all seem to look the same, spout the nonsense, provide little information and even less inspiration to the point where I have not renewed any subscriptions for the last two years. But Garden Making has changed all by breathing fresh life into gardening publication.

Check out the Garden Making website by clicking on the link on the left under “Worth Looking Into”.  Then, subscribe to the magazine or run to your nearest newsstand to pick up a copy. It will become one of your most used garden tools.

The pussywillows are starting! Another sure sign of Spring!

What gardener’s heart does not leap for joy when the calendar is turned to March? The mere act of turning the page of a calendar to March is exciting as it signals the beginning of the end of winter. Though we in northern climates know there will be more snow coming before we can finally shrug off our winter coats, exchange our winters boots for our Wellies and our mitts for garden gloves we now have reason to hope.

The past few days have been warm (for March in S-W Ontario) and even better, sunny!!! Making the temptation to rush outside and begin cleaning up the gardens very hard to resist. But resist we must to prevent damage to our gardens. It is a bit too early to begin removing mulch, pruning or deadheading the flower stalks we left last winter (for the birds, not because we were too lazy to cut them back).

To alleviate the cravings of getting our hands dirty, working in the soil, tending plants, we must find alternatives. In our house, the last few days have been spent cleaning and trimming houseplants, cleaning the lighted plant stand and, starting seeds. I have begun fertilizing at half strength, the houseplants that are showing new growth. As we get closer to May, I will make the fertilizer solutions stronger every two weeks until the plants are ready for full strength solutions.

As for the outside, if this beautiful weather persists, I may wash the few containers I did not get cleaned up last fall so they will be ready for planting in May. There is some debris to be picked up. As long as I know I won’t damage the lawn or the gardens by walking on them when they are so wet, the debris blown into the yard by cold winter winds will be gone.

On a professional note, the selection of our Summer Crew has begun and we are gearing up for another gardening season. And, as I do every year, I say I can’t wait to get back to work, all the while thinking how nice it would be only having to tend my own gardens. But, that’s a luxury I’m saving for a few years yet.

You may have noticed that I’ve been away for a very long time. But, I’m back. That could be bad, it could be not so bad. Time will tell!

The reasons for my absence are varied. One is time. Or lack of time more correctly. We’ve given the interior of our home a major facelift this winter. – lots of painting, plastering, ceiling work, trim etc, etc, etc. It’s been difficult to find time (energy) to blog and work on the house. And now, all I can say is, if I never see another paint brush again it will be too soon!!

Another reason is all the spammers out there that made my blogging life hell for a while. I can’t believe they actually believe that anyone they spam would actually accept their spammed comments, let alone read/open them!!! How stupid can they be?? I guess some people have nothing better to do.

In addition to the above reasons, I briefly (?) went through gardening burn out. Yes, what I thought would never happen, did! I got tired of gardening. I got tired of weeds, tired of flowers, tired of shrubs, tired of grass, tired of watering, tired of writing about gardening.  Guess all that’s understandable since I’ve been doing it personally and/or professionally for most of my adult life. And, since arthritis became my constant companion, gardening is no where near as easy as it was just a few short years ago. But this year, I’m ready to go at the gardens full tilt.

We have many plans for our gardens this year; new projects to start, old ones to finish. Today, I’ll be starting some seeds. Not in the greenhouse this time, but in my plant stand. That should work out a little better than previous attempts since our cats are older now and a little less curious. Again, the seeds I’ll be starting are varieties that are not commonly found at the local greenhouses.  The other seeds I’ll be sowing are for plants that are too expensive to purchase finished.

Among the gardening tasks I’ve let slide are the cuttings I’ve rooted. They are well past the potting up point, but over the next day or two, they will finally make into soil filled pots. While I’m potting up cuttings, I have a number of houseplants that are crying to be transplanted into bigger pots, so that task will be taken care of too.

Powdery mildew had infected the rosemary plants I overwintered. Rather than resort to chemicals, I trimmed the infected stems off, and rinsed the plants under the tap. That method worked quite well, (I repeated the treatment three times) and now, six weeks later, there is only a very slight trace of powdery mildew left. One more time should do the trick.

Enough of writing about gardening for one day. It’s time to actual do some.

Catch you later!!