The Daily Gardener

Half-Hardy Plants. That's a term you don't run into very often - but when you do, it can be confusing.   Just this morning, I swung by a garden center to check out their clearance plants and I ended up chatting with a gardener who had running to a label that had that term: Half-Hardy Plants.   The term Half-Hardy simply means that the plant will not survive a frost - that they can't handle a dip in temperatures.

Why do you garden?   This was a question that was posted in a Facebook group I belong to, and it received over 1400 responses.   The most popular were: - its calming - to bring beauty into my life - to connect with nature - healthy food There's another benefit that many people often overlook: staying physically active. If you take a look at your Fitbit after spending time in your garden, you'll realize it's a workout.

Today I'm heading over at 1 o'clock to Walmart to pick up my mobile order. It has a ton of things I need to get for my student gardeners.    When the kids help me out in the garden, I put them in teams of two and I generally have 6 to 8 kids helping me out in the garden on any given day. That means, I need to have multiples of some of my favorite garden tools...;

Do you have a little sun trap in your garden? The perfect spot for an afternoon of lounging while reading your favorite book? The definition of the sun trap is a small partially-enclosed outdoor space which receives a disproportionate amount of sunlight due to favorable conditions.  Think of south facing areas of your garden, areas without light-blocking trees, areas that are sheltered from the wind and positioned to receive ample sunshine.

Gardeners.   Horticultural experts.   Professors, even.   On the garden path, you can, from time to time, run into people that decimate you faster than a Japanese Beetle on green beans.   Let's just set one thing straight. Gardening is good for you, but people who give garden advice can be bad for you.    What they fail to realize is that gardening is an activity of the head AND the heart...

Emerson once wrote,   "To science there is no poison; To botany no weed; To chemistry no dirt."   As much as I like this quote, I know most gardeners will beg to differ. To gardeners, there areweeds. As I mentioned in an earlier episode this month, we often forget one key variable in gardening; the gardener. Each of us, as gardeners, has our own point of view when it comes to weeds.   On May 12, 1957, Vita Sackville West reached the same conclusion when she said, "It was borne in on me, not for..

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, "But these young scholars... Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not, And all their botany is Latin names." There is more to gardening than nomenclature, and more than nomenclature there's actually growing and knowing plants.

Here's a gardener's bedtime ritual this time of year: Use sandpaper or a nail file to nick those nasturtium seeds and soak them overnight; then sow them outside. They grow well in poor soil.  The leaves and flowers are edible and are great in salads. And, if you don't want to plant the nasturtium seed pods, you can always just eat them.  Nasturtiums have been called the poor's man capers.  A true caper is the flower bud of the caper plant, Capparis spinosa; the seedpod is called a caper berry...

Is your rhubarb bolting already?   When your rhubarb seems to be bolting too early, ask yourself these questions...   - Is your rhubarb an heirloom or a new variety? Older varieties tend to bolt sooner. Try planting a newer variety.   - Is your rhubarb very established? The older your rhubarb, the quicker it bolts. If you divide your established rhubarb, it revitalizes your plant and can thwart flowering.  

Have you ever used a knife as a garden tool?   Serrated knives are my favorite.   The word serrated has latin origins meaning “saw shaped”; think of the serrated edges of Maple leaves.   If you are a thrift shopper, at Goodwill, they keep most of the donated knifes in a case at the front of the store. You can just ask to see if they have any serrated knives - they are so handy in the garden for weeding and working with difficult spaces like between pavers or even just wearing out the root syste

Are you feeling it yet? The urge to get going in the garden?   I was reading a book from 1915 about spring, it started this way, "If you are not dead, you will feel the sap start within you..."   Everyone comes to the garden in their own time.   If you're not yet ready to put your pots together or take on gardening the way you did last year, that's completely fine.   Sometimes the seasons of our lives, don't align with the seasons of the year.

Do you know what to look for on a plant tag?   The first major thing I look at is growing zone.  Often the plant tag will give a range for the growing zone like 5-9 or 3-7.  This is why knowing your growing zone is key.  If you don't know, you just need to ask someone at the garden center -they should know what growing zone you are in.   Now, as an experienced gardener, let me tell you what happens to me a few times every summer...

Plant height is one of the factors often indicated on plant tags.   But mature height often takes ten years - especially if you're talking about trees and shrubs.    Most plants benefit from some amount of pruning - in which case their height can be controlled.   BTW, Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on the planet. It can grow 3 feet in just 24 hours.  

Most gardeners share a common secret: they never feel like they know enough about gardening to call themselves an expert.   If you feel this way after years of gardening, you're not alone.    Over two centuries ago, Thomas Jefferson sent a letter to his friend, the painter Charles Wilson Peale. He's lamenting the limitations of his garden at Monticello. He concludes with  one of my favorite garden quotes of all time:   "But tho, an old man, I am but a young gardener."

Have you ever taken a class on gardening?   If you're in the Calgary area, there's an excellent class taking place tonight from 7 to 9 PM   It's part of the "Garden On" Lecture series.   Tonight's focus is on herbs.   If you're new to gardening, herbs make for wonderful starter plants. They are easy to grow, generally trouble-free, and versatile. They can be incorporated into almost any garden situation.   Tonight's class will cover - What makes an herb an herb - Propagation - Harvesting