April at last.  Will it ever warm up?

• First, get those seeds planted indoors. Count on 6 to  8 weeks before last frost.
• If you repot the seedlings as soon as they sprout their first set of leaves, survival rates are better.  Pot them up as soon as you can hold on to the leaves. Never hold a baby plant by the stem.
• Then there are the teeny tiny plants like Laurentia and Poppy.  I use a baby fork to transplant the seedlings from the seeding medium to potting soil
• Pot up cannas and tuberous begonias.
• When the weather warms the soil a bit, replant perennials that may have been lifted by frost.
• Plant new perennials as soon as you can work the ground.
• Tidy and cut back vines.
• Take the winter cover off the roses.
• Get away from the computer and into the garden!

When Winter wanes
And days grow longer
When snow drifts melt
From sun much stronger
I put an end to Winter’s rest
And wander from my comfy nest
Into the garden still brown, cold
To hunt for green shoots hardy, bold
Drawn up by an ever- increasing sun
That tells of Winter quite undone.

 

 

And just for you, a link to my latest presentation: A New Kind of Gardener

Note: It takes a while to load. Please be patient.

 

Pollinator Patches

"Be the change you want to see in the world." When Mahatma Ghandi said that he must have been thinking about Pollinator Patches. You can make a difference in your world this year by creating a Pollinator Patch -- a habitat for native bees.

To help you build your own Pollinator Patch, see our Roadsides Guide.

Roadsides Guide to Creating Pollinator Patches

The first Pollinator Patch was planted in Barrie, Ontario, in May of 2010. Visit the Roadsides site, read the blog, and be sure to look at the gallery to see pictures of the creation of Pollinator Patch from Year 1 to the Weaning Year 5.

Roadsides web site

 

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do. --Wendell Berry

 

Jottings

Jottings contains some articles I wrote for the monthly newsletter of Barrie's Garden Club and other projects. I hope you enjoy them.

 

It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment. Ansel Adams (1902-1984)

 

Hints & Tricks

This is a collection of neat ideas and crazy tricks that I've collected from various sources. Many are amusing, and most are useful. We gardeners just love to learn neat little ways of doing our gardening jobs more effectively. My most popular talk was just that: "Hints and Tricks."

Most of the hints I've used myself or know someone who will vouch for them. All of them are fun to read and almost as much fun to do.

 

We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it's forever. Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996)

 

Gardening Info

This is a miscellaneous section of odds and sods of information I've collected and would like to share. I've found most of the information in magazines and on the internet or in the many gardening books I can't resist buying!

The side column of this section includes some of my presentations using Adobe Presenter.

You'll also find some of my favourite links on the Gardening Info page.

 

"Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the F.D.A.’s job." ~ Philip Angell, Monsanto's Director of Communications (October 1998)

 

The Blog

I guess the whole site is a sort of blog, isn't it?

But this new section is a more conventional blog -- a space to put my thoughts and new ideas as I learn them or think them.