Ten Minute Gardening

What should every gardener have? Some best friends! Here are my top five:

1). Gardening friends that you can share plants, experiences and knowledge with. You can learn so much from speaking with other gardeners. And, you can change up your gardens by giving and receiving plant divisions, cuttings and seeds.

2). Three good gardening books:

• One should be an encyclopaedia of plants (Reader’s Digest A – Z Encyclopedia.of Garden Plants
• One should be a reference book on landscape design (Taylor’s Master Guide to Landscaping).
• One should be a really good “how-to” book that covers planting, pruning, deadheading fertilizing, watering, insects and diseases etc. (Rodale’s Encyclopedia of Gardening and Landscaping Techniques)

3). Good tools: Purchase the best tools you can afford and keep them maintained. Sharp hand pruners, sharp shovel and spade, sharp loppers, sharp hoe and, files (rasps) to sharpen them with make gardening so much easier.

4). Compost Pile: Why purchase soil amendments when you can make your own? Composting is a must for every serious gardener whether you purchase a small bin, build your own or do it the real old fashioned way and simply make a pile somewhere in the back yard. There is no better way to dispose of garden clippings and kitchen waste than composting them. Once the compost is ready you can use it to top dress your gardens, or add it to planting holes. You will be adding slow release nutrients to the soil and improving your garden soil at the same time.

5). Patience: Gardening is not a hobby for those who seek instant gratification. Plants take time to develop and mature just like the gardeners who tend them. Every year your garden changes, providing new surprises and new challenges. As your garden grows, so will your knowledge and enjoyment of this most wonderful hobby.

To further entice you to try growing scented geraniums, here is a recipe that uses scented geranium leaves. I have baked this cake many times and am always delighted with the subtle flavour rose scented geranium leaves give to an ordinary white cake!

For an alternative, try using lemon scented geraniums and making a glaze with fresh lemon juice.

• Wash leaves in plain water and gently blot the leaves dry with a towel
• Grease your cake pan as usual
• Place scented geranium leaves on the bottom and along the sides of the pan (the butter, cooking spray or shortening will hold the leaves in place).
• Prepare a white cake mix according to the instructions on the box and pour into prepared cake pan. Even better is a white cake made from scratch!
• Bake as directed.
• When the cake has cooled, remove all of the leaves and discard.
• Frost with a simple white frosting or a glaze. For added flavour, try adding a drop or two of culinary grade rose water to the frosting.

Apple Scented Geranium

If Lavender is the queen of herbs, then Scented Geraniums have to be the court jesters as they have the ability to fool you with their varied scents. Close your eyes as you sniff the leaves of a scented geranium and you would swear you are smelling roses, or apples, or lemons or mint, or pine. Even chocolate, though it does take a bit more imagination to smell that fragrance.

Scented geraniums or pelargoniums, are a fascinating group of about 250 plants. Typically they are grown for their fragrant foliage, rather than their flowers which are less showy than their cousins of the garden varieties we know too well. Their foliage ranges in shape from fern like, to tiny bunches to large fan shapes. The leaves can be plain green, have dark purple veins, or are variegated, so they are quite capable of holding their own in the garden, as they provide important foliar interest.

Okay, they smell good and have interesting foliage, but what do you do with them? What don’t you do with them?! Aside from being the perfect potpourri ingredient, scented geraniums are surprisingly, at home in the kitchen. To a lesser degree they are used medicinally and in aromatherapy.

Tender perennials, scented geraniums must be over wintered indoors. Not difficult in theory, but when attempting to trick Mother Nature, problems will and do occur.

The first step in bringing your scenteds in for the winter is to get rid of any little creatures that may be hiding in the foliage. Do this by spraying the foliage with water (outdoors!). Hopefully, you will wash all or most of the beasts off the plants.

Next, cut the plants back by at least one third. Save the leaves and dry them for potpourris or, use them fresh in recipes.

Place the pots in a sunny window where they will receive at least four hours of direct sunlight a day, in or lighted plant stand. Allow the pots to dry out between waterings. Do not fertilize in the winter months. The goal is to maintain the plants, not promote vigorous growth.  Snip off any spindly new growth as it appears. In late March you can begin fertilizing the plants once a week with a half strength 20-20-20 water soluble fertilizer.

Scented geraniums, when grown indoors, unfortunately seem to be a magnate for whiteflies and to a lesser degree, aphids, spider mite and mealy bug. At the first sign of infestation, wash the insects off with water in the kitchen sink, using a fine spray. You will have to repeat this every week for a few weeks. If washing the insects off does not control the population, you will need to resort to using an insecticidal soap such as Safer’s. Follow the instructions on the bottle and repeat every week for about three weeks. Yellow sticky traps, placed just above the plant canopy, are another useful tool for combating insects, but not as effective as the first two methods.

For an amazing selection of scented geraniums, order a copy of Richters Herbs catalogue (see Sources). You will be hard pressed to select just a few to order. Some of the better garden centres will have a good selection to choose from, though not as numerous as Richters. If you are fortunate enough to have a herb farm in your area, they should have a good number of varieties available as well.