Celebrating back to school

by Mark Cullen

You made it. After a summer of juggling schedules around a variety of kids’ (grand kids?) activities and, perhaps, your own work schedule, the summer is ‘over’. The kids head back to school this Tuesday. Don’t you think you deserve a reward? I think that you do.

Many wonderful plants come into their own and look best right about now. It is almost as if your sedum knows that you deserve a break today. It is interesting, I think, that when we are not busy watching and playing with the kids, our attention is diverted to many of the natural features in our landscape. Our powers of observation are sharpened when we have time to ourselves.
This is the perfect time of year to plant my favourite ‘back to school’ plants:

  1. Sedum spectabile. This flowering plant is like an old friend. Plant it in full sunshine and watch it bloom its head off until frost. That’s right, up to 8 weeks of blossoms. Butterflies and bees love it too. You can cut the long stems of this plant and use them indoors in flower arrangements (they last a long time). Grows to about 60 cm high and wide. Hardy to zone 3 [Winnipeg].
  2. New England Aster. We have the Canada goose; the Americans get New England aster. Most days I would trade them. As the name suggests, this is a great garden performer and it is native. Blooms in blue, white or magenta from about now into late October. Another butterfly attractant. Can grow to 1.2 metres tall but most garden cultivars are much shorter, about 40 to 50 cm. Great for cutting to bring indoors. Hardy to zone 4 (Ottawa/Montreal).
  3. Joe Pye Weed. [eupatorium] Not exactly a weed (why don’t they call mint ‘mint-weed’ – now there is a weed!) but it is one of the best perennial plants for attracting butterflies, hummingbirds and bees. Pollinators love Joe Pye because he is loaded with pollen. And the tall, flat-faced flowers are a perfect landing pad for butterflies. Look for rose/purple ‘Baby Joe’ which grows to about 70 cm or the much taller cultivar Little Joe which matures at 120 cm. You can cut Joe Pye weed for use indoors. Each year, the clump becomes a little bigger until, after about 5 years, you will want to dig and divide it. Hardy to zone 4.
  4. Ornamental grasses. There are many ornamental grasses that are just coming into their own this time of year and they often look their best as we enter the cold, pre-winter period of October-November. Look for Maiden Grass [Miscanthus], Northern Sea Oats [Chasmanthium], Switch grass [Panicum virgatum] and Fountain grass [Pennisetum]. All ornamental grasses have their attributes. They have in common, a tendency to attract small song birds while in seed, often right through the winter. I cut mine down come spring for this reason. They all need full sun to perform their best. Some are clumping and stay in one place while others travel by root or rhizome. Be sure to ask when you are buying ornamental grass otherwise you could be importing an aggressive problem for the long term. I prefer the clumpers, by far.
  5. Black-eyed Susan. [Rudbeckia] Truth is, this plant has been in bloom for a month or more already. No matter, it will continue to bloom until the cows come home (or late October, whatever comes first). The longest possible blossom period is featured with ‘Goldsturm’, which is the ‘gold standard’ of rudbeckias. ‘Irish Eyes’ will make you smile. ‘Little Goldstar’ is a great fall performer. Hardy to zone 4. Plant and forget.
  6. Japanese Anemone. Not to be confused with the early spring anemone, these gorgeous white or blue bloomers are a terrific addition to the late season garden. I have some growing just outside of my front door where they greet me with colour until the hard frost of late October in my zone 5 garden. They do spread rather aggressively and each November, before I batten down the hatches for the winter, I remove a huge portion of them, with a sharp spade. It is a wonderful way to release tension and feel good about spending time in front of the TV watching fall football.

    The kids are being well looked after by education-professionals. Enjoy your just rewards for getting them there in one piece.

    Mark Cullen is lawn & garden expert for Home Hardware, member of the Order of Canada, author and broadcaster. Get his free monthly newsletter at markcullen.com. Look for his new best seller, ‘The New Canadian Garden’ published by Dundurn Press. Follow him on Twitter @MarkCullen4 and Facebook.

Powering through

by Mark Cullen

I have a beef with two-cycle garden-power equipment, especially leaf blowers and weed whackers. In my opinion, the noise levels and exhaust fumes of these powerful machines is excessive for the job that they do. Their use in the densely populated urban environment is inexcusable and unsustainable.

You will notice that the professionals who use these machines generally wear hearing protection. But what about the passerby? Or the person trying to read the paper on their front porch while the blower/whacker user strolls by, head down, dust and debris sent sky-high. You will also notice that dogs are never in sight when these machines are in use. Maybe they are smarter than people.

Many people reading this will agree with me and others have moved on already and don’t really care.

So, what?

I am prepared to take a compromise position on this subject. Not that I have changed, but technology has.
We now have reasonable and practical alternatives to the 2-cycle gas power engine.

1. Lithium Ion. New rechargeable batteries are changing the way that we maintain our gardens. A few years ago, when rechargeable batteries were first introduced, they had a reputation for not holding a charge for very long. Through the miracle of modern science and innovation we can finally turn down the volume and get the job done without making the whole neighbourhood go indoors. Lithium Ion batteries last longer and can be recharged many more times than the batteries of just a few years ago.

I am not so naïve to think that garden power equipment is going away any time soon. Which is why I am taking this compromise position on the issue. If you promise to replace your whiney 2-cycle machines with new, cleaner, quieter technology, I promise to stop belly aching.

It is interesting to note that many professional landscape maintenance professionals are now using rechargeables. A recent article in trade magazine, Landscape Trades, featured International Landscaping, a landscaping company which has converted all their lawn and garden power equipment to rechargeables.

We cannot talk about replacing the noisiest culprits in the neighbourhood without also talking about the quiet ones. I don’t own a leaf blower but I own several rakes. And my ‘garden’ is 10 acres. Chances are, I spend marginally more time raking up leaves and dumping them in the compost come fall, than I would if I used a 2-cycle machine. But the point is, when I do it, I don’t drive everyone in the house and neighbourhood mad. Besides, I enjoy the experience of raking.

A broom is one of the most underappreciated tools in the shed. When I sweep out the garage or the drive way it takes precious little time and the results look pretty good. At least all of the debris that shoots straight into the air with a power blower and settles down after I go inside to settle into a football game is not a problem when I use a broom.

Mark Cullen is lawn & garden expert for Home Hardware, member of the Order of Canada, author and broadcaster. Get his free monthly newsletter at markcullen.com. Look for his new best seller, ‘The New Canadian Garden’ published by Dundurn Press. Follow him on Twitter @MarkCullen4 and Facebook.

Plants as Gifts

by Mark Cullen

There is an abundance of early autumn birthdays in our family, mostly on my wife’s side. We like to joke that her parents avoided New Year’s Eve parties and celebrated on their own. Ha!

Celebration ‘season’ seems to be with us year-round. As a close friend of mine likes to remind me, the older we get the more we should celebrate. In our latter years, we attend enough ‘celebrations of life’ to be reminded that he is right.

Whether you are celebrating an anniversary, the birth of a new child or the 150 birthday of a country, I have some ideas for you. Give plants that make a statement about the occasion or the person you are celebrating. Here is my list of top 6:

  1.  “Happy Returns” a daylily that is so vigorous and long lived that it might outlast us. It blooms its head off most of the summer too. Right now, you might find one at a garden retailer that has some colour on it. Winter hardy to zone 2, it loves the sun and is almost completely insect and disease free, in my experience. Each year the clump of roots gets a bit bigger and more colourful. This is the perfect gift for the gardener and non-gardener alike.

I planted several ‘Happy Returns’ in my garden 12 years ago and I have had many happy returns since.

  • Forget-me-Not. This plant is so easy to grow we often overlook it. But the name provides a hint to its gift-worthiness. Early last spring, I photographed our first born grand child, then a mere 4 months old, kicking it up in a bed of Forget-me-nots. She has since learned to walk and wreaks havoc most everywhere she goes now, pulling things off shelves and shoving everything in her mouth as youngsters tend to do. Indeed, each visit she makes to our place is hard to forget.

Sow the seeds now for April blossoms. Pinch the seeds off the end of new growth in early May and spread them throughout the garden where you want them to grow.

And keep in mind that a packet of Forget Me Not seeds will set you back about $2, so you can afford to be generous and place these in the envelope of a non-electronic card. An old-fashioned plant in an ‘old fashioned’ greeting card.

  •  Fall blooms. How about a plant that flowers reliably on the occasion that you are celebrating? Right now, Butterfly Bush (buddleia) is an excellent choice for a garden up to zone 5, as it is in bloom, will be for another month or two. It is fragrant and is my #1 butterfly plant. There are many other plants that bloom in late August, including Sedum Spectabile (“you are fabulous Spectabile Darling!”).
  • Incrediball’ Hydrangea. Remember the old fashioned ‘Annabelle’ hydrangea that every Victorian style home had growing in the front yard? Well, forget it. This new introduction of hydrangea is an exciting addition that will knock your gardening socks off (or the noise-maker from between your teeth). It grows in sun or partial shade up to about a meter and a half and features late season creamy white flowers about the size of your head. Really? Compare and see. Hardy to zone 4.
  • Rose of Sharon. While it would help if the recipients name is Sharon, this hardy (zone 4) flowering shrub is a winner. You see them in bloom all over established neighbourhoods right now. They look remarkably like hibiscus, the tropical plant that we see everywhere. That’s because they are hibiscus, just a winter hardy version of it. They seem to bloom forever (August through early October) and hummingbirds love them. But look for the single flowering varieties if you want hummers as the doubles are hard for them to access.
  • Sugar or Rubrum Maple. There had to be a couple of trees on my list. And they must be native, reliable (insect and disease resistant) and useful in most urban landscapes. Enter the Sugar maple (made famous by its sweet sap and the image of its leaf on our national flag) and the Rubrum Maple, which is the true ‘red’ maple, unlike the Crimson King/Norway maple imposter.  Rubrum turns brilliant red in the fall. For a REAL show look for the cultivar ‘Autumn Blaze’. Outstanding! Happy Birthday Canada.

With National Tree Day about a month away (Wednesday, September 27th) I thought I would ‘plant this seed’ with you today.

Still looking for something to celebrate? Say Happy Birthday to Canada: plant a native tree.

Finally, if you are looking for a plant that has the name of someone you love, here are some suggestions: Rozanne (hardy geranium), Sonia, Rebekah, Honor and Mr. Lincoln (well, you never know…) (roses), Miss Kim (lilac), Ricki, Randy and Susan (magnolias. Hmm, interesting planted together), Elizabeth (Japanese maple) to name a few.

Mark Cullen is lawn & garden expert for Home Hardware, member of the Order of Canada, author and broadcaster. Get his free monthly newsletter at markcullen.com. Look for his new best seller, ‘The New Canadian Garden’ published by Dundurn Press. Follow him on Twitter @MarkCullen4 and Facebook.

What Canadian Gardeners can learn from the Brits.

by Mark Cullen

For a Canadian to understand the passionate obsession that the Brits feel for their gardens, just look at how passionate we feel about hockey. I travel to the U.K. a couple times a year and love their gardens and their passion for the gardening experience.

Hockey here = Gardening there. 

I reflect on the pedigree of hockey. It was barely 200 years ago when a group of school boys, attending Kings Edge Hill Private School in Windsor Nova Scotia, thought it was a clever idea to play Hurley on the winter ice of Long Pond, in their back yard. They ‘laced up’ and used Hurley sticks to move a ball around the ice. About 70 years later, a group of Canadians in Kingston Ontario created the first rules for hockey. In 1892, Lord Stanley, then Canada’s Governor General, donated the Stanley Cup to reward the best hockey team in the country and the rest is history.

The Brits sent plant hunters around the world on plant discovery expeditions about 200 years before we played the first game of hockey. The Chelsea Physic Garden in London was established in 1673 for the express purpose of collecting seed and plant stock from around the globe to explore their medicinal value.

In the twenty first century, we have some catching up to do. Based on my experience ‘over the pond’, I recognise the enormous opportunities we have to learn from the Brits where gardening is concerned. Precisely WHAT we can learn might surprise you, as they are not hung up on shaping yews into giant ducks or pruning the living daylight out of a Little Leaf Linden to create a two-dimensional effect. Though, these things still go on, the emphasis now is on nature.

This spring, I was in London for the grand re-opening of the London Garden Museum and I marvelled at the largest flower show in the world at the Chelsea Flower Show, visited the historic Chelsea Physic Garden and I took advantage of a public tour of private gardens in Richmond, London. I was in heaven.

 I have the following observations:
1.  Bring on the wildlife. Archbishops Park, in Lambeth, across the river Thames from Westminster, provides unique learning opportunities for young and old alike. A still pond illustrates the value of water as habitat for myriad desirable wildlife. Frogs, toads, newts, dragonflies and song birds find food, shelter and breeding habitat there. Signs explain all of this in detail.  Insect hotels and mason bee habitat have been created by school children and are featured throughout the park. Archbishops Park encourages visitors to take time to take their time. The powers of observation are sharpened when we slow down and observe. 

2.  Sit and contemplate. We can’t have too many places to sit in our public green spaces.  It is worth noting that the Brits have created more than four times the urban green space in London, per capita, than the French have in Paris.

3.  Kids. When a tree is felled in a British park (I am sure for a good reason) it is often limbed, for safety and left there for kids to crawl over and explore while it rots. It takes a couple of generations for a large tree to rot, so this proves to be an inexpensive, resourceful use of a product that otherwise would be considered waste. As nature slowly returns the carbon of the wood back to the soil, from which it sprung in the first place, we learn that there is value in sometimes just leaving a thing alone. Nature has her way of working things out.

4.   Passion for plants. Generally, plants do not advertise well unless they are a blaze of colour. Usually we ignore them and take them for granted. Truth is, we are learning more and more every day about the value of our green, living world and redefining it as part of our urban infrastructure.

When I say that the Brits share the same attitude towards gardens (and plants) as Canadians do towards hockey, think about the excitement that would occur if two Canadian teams made it into the Stanley Cup playoffs. Well, imagine this. While the Chelsea Flower show was on (May 23 to 26th) BBC 1 featured a live, one hour broadcast each night in prime time. All the U.K. tuned in to see the latest plant featured, to learn the garden trends demonstrated at the event and (of course) to see their favourite garden celebrities expound on the best plants for British gardens. This was a week of Stanley Cup playoff gardening.

What can we learn from the Brits about the gardening experience? So much more. I urge anyone with a passion for gardening to explore it over there.

Mark Cullen is lawn & garden expert for Home Hardware, member of the Order of Canada, author and broadcaster. Get his free monthly newsletter at markcullen.com. Look for his new best seller, ‘The New Canadian Garden’ published by Dundurn Press. Follow him on Twitter @MarkCullen4 and Facebook.

Pond broker

by Mark Cullen

Are you a modern gardener? One who plants and nurtures your own garden space with an eye to enhancing the biodiversity in your community? It has taken a few generations, but now we are at a point where we have torn up our property deed, figuratively, and replaced it with a consciousness of the impact our outdoor activity has on nature, up and down the street.

If one of your garden goals is to maximize the attraction of beneficial insects, song birds, butterflies and hummingbirds: welcome.
The most impactful addition you can make to your garden is to add still water. A half barrel, a pond or any small container filled with water and ‘managed’ will attract amphibians, dragonflies and many more helpful critters in the local environment. Here are some top tips for still water features in the garden:

  1. Amphibians. When you are successful in attracting frogs, toads and salamanders to your water garden, you have achieved a very special level of success. These creatures breathe through their skin and as such are very sensitive to environmental changes and pollution. Nurture them by not disturbing your water garden too severely each spring (I just give the top 20% of the liner a scrub). Provide habitat by placing water plants in your H2O garden.

    Locate your water feature in part sun. Ideally about 60% of the surface of the water should be shaded. You can provide shade using a nearby shade tree, water plants that float and by planting broad leaved water lilies that produce leaves up to the surface of the water.
  2. Avoid raccoons and mosquitoes. The two objections that I hear most, where water features are concerned, are ‘I don’t want raccoons’ and ‘I don’t want to encourage mosquitoes’. To avoid raccoon problems, design your pond with sides that slope steeply downwards, about 50 cm deep. Raccoons can’t (or won’t) swim and are unable to swipe the fish out of your pond if it is steep enough.

    Mosquitoes are easy to manage. Just put some gold fish or koi carp in your pond. I have a 10 meter X 10 meter pond and I have about 30 small fish that do the job very nicely. You can have too many fish though, as they create a carbon-rich environment that encourages algae growth.
  3. Butterflies and dragonflies love ponds. Especially where water lilies and other broad-leaved plants sit on the surface of the water. These flying insects do not use bird baths to either drink from or bathe. They are both ‘top heavy’ and prefer to drink from water droplets on the surface of water plants or in mud, which can occur at the margin of your pond. Note that dragonfly nymphs live in still water for up to 4 years before they mature into flying adults. Another good reason not to clean your pond too thoroughly each spring.
  4. Have fun. Through the 12 years that I have lived with our family pond, I have added sea shells from Florida vacations (what else are you going to do with them?), some broken clay pots, where fish and frogs like to hide and some shiny marbles from collections that the kids had and left behind when they moved away (go figure).
  5. Safety. My earlier tip about making the sides steep to avoid raccoons, needs to be balanced with safety. Is your yard well fenced? If not, consider building a ‘pond’ that has a rigid metal screen over it and place river rocks on top of it. Secure the screen well from the cavity below, which you fill with water. It is an ‘invisible’ pond that you can splash water into from a waterfall.
  6. Marginals. The plants that you establish around your pond are as important as the ones that you place in it. They provide cover for egg laying and drying post for emerging dragon flies. Consider native marsh marigolds, water iris, tall water forget-me-nots, hibiscus and Joe Pye Weed (a butterfly magnet).

    When you build a garden pond I recommend using a butyl pond liner as it will not break down as PVC will over time. It costs more but it is worth it.

    The pond cavity should be lined with sand and a layer of polyester fiber that acts as a buffer against the existing soil (more likely clay and rocks).

    A pond or a small water feature has much to commend it and it is likely that you won’t anticipate what will go on in your new water feature until you try it. Note that the animals on the Serengeti plane meet at the watering hole each evening while they take a break from eating each other or being chased. It is a wild version of ‘Cheers’ every night. Such is the power of water.

    Mark Cullen is lawn & garden expert for Home Hardware, member of the Order of Canada, author and broadcaster. Get his free monthly newsletter at markcullen.com. Look for his new best seller, ‘The New Canadian Garden’ published by Dundurn Press. Follow him on Twitter @MarkCullen4 and Facebook.

Tool Time

by Mark Cullen

I love my garden tools. 

Using quality tools, when doing any job, is a key to squeezing the greatest possible joy out of the experience. But how do you know when you are buying ‘quality’ with the inherent benefits like durability, long lasting performance and a tool that just works better with the passage of time? Ask me, I know a thing or two about it.

My Dad was a tool hound. He loved to use well-used tools. I learned from him that there is a lot of satisfaction in using a tool for a long time. He left me many great garden tools and I have collected more of my own. I have a garden-tool museum, of sorts. It is a celebration of craftsmanship that goes back a few generations.

What to look for in a great tool:

Hardened Steel.

High carbon steel has great tensile strength. This means that a pair of hand pruners made from this material will resist breaking and will hold a sharp edge longer than a blade that is not made of high carbon steel.

It helps to have a metal file handy in the garage or tool shed to run up and down the blade before you begin work. I don’t just mean ‘at the beginning of the season’ but at the beginning of each work session in the garden. I have several bastard files around my 10 acre property so that I don’t ever have to walk too far to find one. I use it for a minute – sometimes less – to put an edge on my hedge shears, digging tools like a spade or shovel and my weeding tools like the Backhoe or Dutch hoe.

If you make this simple task a habit before you head out to the garden with your steel tools, I guarantee you will reduce the stress on your own body as you work. And you will work more efficiently. I give the metal parts a squirt of oil too.

Chrome.

Chrome digging tools are gaining a lot of attention these days. They are less sticky than steel tools, so dirt falls off them more freely. They tend to be ‘head heavy’, as the blade is solid forged and if you just drop it into the soil you will find that it will do much of the work for you. I think that they are handsome too. We have planted many ceremonial trees along the Highway of Heroes (www.hohtribute.ca) using chrome digging spades. They always look great in photographs.

Handles.

There are many heavy-duty handles on digging and weeding tools. If you find a shovel, for example, with a fiberglass handle, you will no doubt have trouble wearing it out in your lifetime. Maybe that’s because you will seldom use it. Unless you have arms like Sampson, lifting a fiberglass handled digging tool is a chore. Aluminium is soft and bends easily. Plastic is, well plastic and performs like plastic. Uggh.

I much prefer old fashioned hardwood handles. They are light, heavy duty, provide just the right amount of flexibility and they are handsome when you care for them. After the first couple of seasons of use, either rub some linseed oil on them or apply a spar varnish and you will lengthen the useful life of the tool.

When you buy a wooden handled tool, be sure to wrap your hand around it before you purchase. Make sure that it feels confident in your hand. Some handles are ultra-padded and others are very thick: I don’t like either. I get all the padding that I need from a quality pair of gloves. A tapered, long handle is best: balanced and a fine fit to my hand.

Other tips:


Sharpen your lawn mower this time of year. If you did it in spring, now is an appropriate time to do it again. Grass blades cut with a dull blade can look blunted and produce a brown hew to the appearance of your lawn. If you don’t sharpen it yourself, stop the guy with the bell in the slow-moving vehicle who comes round the neighbourhood from time to time with a grinding wheel in the back. He will remove the blade, sharpen it and put it back on (the right way, one assumes).

  • Gloves. I find that a pigskin glove, with neoprene finger tips are excellent for long wear and flexibility.  Some of the thin-skinned rubber-dipped gloves are great for planting and mucking in the soil as they repel moisture.
  • Veggie brush. A small, soft brush is great for cleaning the dirt off your carrots and potatoes and for removing loose dirt from a shovel or hoe, the white ‘salt’ stains that appear on clay pots and to give your finger nails a good scrub before you go in the house. I have one at each of my four rain barrels.
  • Aerosol oil. I mentioned that you should to apply oil to digging tools before use. Apply to the cutting deck of your power lawn mower to prevent grass build-up, to the blades of a manual, walk-behind mower and while it is in your hand, give the wheels on your garage door a squirt.

Quality hand tools are always a little more expensive than the disposable lightweights that you find at many retailers. It is my experience that a quality tool can make the difference between a job filled with joy and ‘work’. In my books, I consider the added investment a good one.

Mark Cullen is lawn & garden expert for Home Hardware, member of the Order of Canada, author and broadcaster. Get his free monthly newsletter at markcullen.com. Look for his new best seller, ‘The New Canadian Garden’ published by Dundurn Press. Follow him on Twitter @MarkCullen4 and Facebook.

Bye Bye Butterfly

by Mark Cullen

The monarch butterfly is in decline. It has been for some time and Canadian Wildlife magazine reports that it still is. So what? Let’s just say that the monarch is to the world of nature, what an ‘economic indicator’ is to our economy. When inflation goes through the roof, or interest rates take off or the Canadian dollar drops like a stone, people take notice.    

We notice things that impact on our pocket book.

So, also, we should take notice when a prime plant pollinator like the monarch butterfly population is in steep decline. About one third of our food is pollinated by insects, including the monarch. If one third of our food-stream was to disappear, all of us would notice. 

The Miracle

There is another reason why we should pay attention to the monarch. Without a healthy population of monarchs, the story of their annual migration would be relegated to children’s books and history. It is a story about a miracle. 
Canadian Wildlife tells it this way, “For any given year, these butterflies represent the final cohort in a four or five generation annual cycle of monarch reproduction and migration.” Say what? Four or five generations of butterflies are produced in one trip from Mexico to Canada each spring?

Late in the winter, the overwintering population in Mexico flies to Texas and other southern climes where they lay eggs on milkweed plants before the adult monarch dies. Then they begin their migration north. “The caterpillar offspring, which feed exclusively on milkweed, spend several weeks growing before they pupate, become adult monarchs and continue the migration farther north before reproducing in kind.”

The process repeats until late summer and early fall, often here in Canada, when the monarchs that are alive at that time fly back to the Mexican pine and oyamel forests. The journey to Canada is like a relay of eggs, pupae, caterpillar and butterfly times four or five.   

What?

Think about this for a moment. Four or five generations of monarch butterflies are produced while the whole flock (do butterflies flock?) moves north between 3,000 and 5,000 kilometres over the span of several months from early spring until early fall.

How does each new generation know which direction to fly? And how does the last annual generation know when to stop, turn around and head south again? Not to mention the knowledge they must possess that tells them to stop making babies for a spell.

This is the miracle.

How you can Help

While there are myriad organisations like Canadian Wildlife, government agencies and concerned individuals giving this issue attention, there is a lot that you can do. Even if you live with a condo or apartment balcony you can nurture flowering plants that attract and feed monarchs.

It is not too late in the season to pick up milkweed seeds and sow them directly in your garden. This is a perennial plant that will grow this summer and flower next. Native milkweed is the exclusive food and habitat of monarch butterfly larvae.

Other nectar rich plants include Butterfly Weed [asclepias], Catmint [nepeta], Bugle weed [ajuga], Coneflower [Echinacea], Cranesbill [geranium], some coreopsis, False Sunflower [heliopsis], false indigo [baptista], Yarrow, sedum, Hollyhock, lavender and my favourite Joe Pye Weed [eupatorium, which is related to milkweed]. These plants are available at garden retailers this time of year and are ready to plant.

Water

All wildlife needs water to survive and butterflies are no different. But they are not like birds that dip into the bird bath for a drink. Butterflies have very short legs and top heavy with wings. They prefer lily pads and mud to access water. That is why you often find butterflies hanging out at the beach.

It is helpful, I suppose, that butterflies are handsome creatures. If there is a decline in the population of dung beetles (which there is) I doubt that we would care much. Dung beetles are not classified as primary pollinators, they wallow in animal waste and they are not very attractive by any standard.

But they do represent an essential stage in nature’s decomposition process, without which we would be sky high in organic waste. And THAT is another story.

What gardeners can learn from farmers

by Mark Cullen

If there is one group of people who watch spring approach with the same anticipation as gardeners, it is farmers.

Like gardeners, they are land stewards and plant aficionados. Unlike most gardeners, farmers depend on their land stewardship and plant knowledge to cultivate their livelihoods (vs. doing it for fun). There is a great deal that gardeners can learn from farmers – scientific knowledge which has been developed in our universities and agricultural extension programs, and cultural knowledge which has been passed down for generations from one farmer to the next.

Here are the top 4 lessons that I have learned from the farmers:

  1. Crop Rotation
    Crop rotation benefits farmers by breaking insect and disease cycles, allowing deeper rooted crops to improve soil structure for plants with less root vigor, as well as by adding nutrients to the soil and increasing the content of organic matter. The practice of rotating crops around a field annually contributes to more reliable crops, healthier harvests and a better bottom line.
    One crop which is particularly dependent on a proper rotation in the garden is tomatoes, which should be moved every year. Tomatoes are particularly susceptible to soil-borne diseases such as verticillium wilt and early blight. Moving them also helps avoid soil-borne pests such as wireworms and beetle larvae. I recommend a three year rotation where year two incorporates a “Cabbage Crop” (such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kohlrabi, or kale) and year three, an onion crop (such as garlic, leeks, onions, scallions, and shallots).

    For container gardeners who want to plant year after year, I recommend that you remove and replace your soil each spring- making sure to clean the container to rid it of pathogens. I do this will all of my containers regardless of what I am growing.
  2. Reduced-Tillage or No-Till
    In an agricultural setting, excessive tillage (i.e. plowing or cultivating) destroys soil structure which plants depend on to grow and store nutrients. It also leads to soil compaction and erosion while accelerating the decomposition of soil organic matter.

    Soil structure and organic matter should concern all gardeners. “No-till” gardening generally requires that after the bed is established, the surface is never disturbed. To retain the highest degree of natural soil borne nutrients, mulch soil to prevent drying out and crusting over.
    When you plant, pull the mulch back and disturb the soil only to plant into the ground. Leaves, compost, finely ground up bark mulch and straw all make great mulches.

    Leaves should be spread no more than 25 cm thick when dry or 4 cm thick when matted and wet. Come July, all those leaves will have decomposed and been taken down into the top soil by earth worms, where they are converted into nitrogen-rich worm castings. If you don’t have lots of worm activity in your soil, you can buy worm castings by the bag at your garden retailer. I mix them one part to ten parts soil.
    Natural nutrients are added to the soil as the mulch breaks down, your earth worm population will explode and you will experience a dramatic decrease in water requirements.
  3. Feed the Soil
    With each harvest of nutritious crops leaving the field, farmers know that the nutrient value that is removed when the plant is harvested needs to go back into the soil. These nutrients are fed back into the soil as compost, well rotted manure or fertilizers where they are available to the next crop – and the cycle continues.

The nutrient cycle in the garden is really no different, and to expect the garden to absorb nutrients without first feeding the soil is misguided. By far the best thing you can do for your garden is start a compost pile, diverting kitchen waste from landfills and adding rich nutrients and organic matter back into your soil. When I run out of compost from my own pile, I supplement with Biomax- the only brand of manure approved by the Composting Council of Canada and is OMRI certified.

  1. Pollinators Do the Heavy Lifting
    No doubt you have heard about the state of our bees and pollinator populations. No one is paying closer attention to this issue than farmers, as 1/3 of all our food is directly pollinated by insects and birds.

    Gardeners can do their part to protect pollinating insect populations by creating a habitat for them. Design a garden that incorporates tall, native grasses and pollinator-friendly perennials such as blanket flower, Black-eyed Susan, Beebalm, Coreopsis, Mint and Purple Prairie Clover (all of which can be planted now for next year’s blossom). Not only will this type of garden look stunning and support a range of pollinators, it will also be less susceptible to disease or vulnerable to drought.

    Gardeners generally have the luxury of pursuing our labour of love free from many of the pressures which farmers face, mostly as we are not making our living at this pastime. Through our shared experience we can learn from one another to maximize our productivity, satisfaction and environmental contribution in the garden.

Bloom for Your Buck

by Mark Cullen

The months of May and June create quite a flurry of activity in the garden and at garden retailers. There is a temptation to just buy everything that looks good right now. Well, hold on for a moment.

There are many plants that will provide great value for the investment. Some produce lots of bloom reliably the first year, continue to grow in size with the passage of time, are reliably winter hardy, have very few insect or disease problems and after a few years you can dig them up, divide them and plant the divisions around your yard (or give them away).

Here are my top 5 favourites:
1.  Daylilies [Hemerocallis]. Unbeatable for reliable blooms in a sunny location. I planted about 50 daylilies around my new garden 11 years ago and all of them have outperformed, each year growing in flower count. I do separate them every 4 to 5 years, to help restore their vigour. Look for any variety that suits your colour palette. And if you want reliable, summer-long colour, pick up the Stella series, which are known to bloom for the longest possible stretch, usually about 6 to 8 weeks. They grow to about 60 cm, though there are many daylilies that grow much higher. In my experience, there is nothing that harms daylilies: insects, disease or deep freezing temperatures. Even the lily beetles don’t bother them. They are members of the asparagus family, perhaps that is why.

2.  Monarda. Bee Balm.  Oswego Tea. This is a native plant blooms for up to 8 weeks, attracts hummingbirds and honey bees. You can cut it and bring the flowers indoors and if that isn’t enough, you can make fine tasting tea with it. Earl Grey knew this, which is why you find it listed in the ingredients in his original blend. Medicinal, winter hardy and the only insects that I have found on my many specimens are some aphids. The finches love the aphids so I am not fussed about them. Growing to about 80 cm high, the original Bee Balm is a winner but there are many introductions that have been developed by the ‘hand of man’ that are outstanding garden performers. Look for the Balmy series including Lilac, Purple and Rose. Also Grand Parade is a winner. Loves the sun, tolerates up to half a day of shade.

3.  Shasta Daisy. [Leucanthemum x superbum]  Most varieties of Shasta Daisies bloom from June to September. Think about that. Lots of annual flowers don’t bloom that long: nasturtiums, lobelia and calendula have much shorter bloom cycles. The variety Becky was the perennial plant of the year in 2003. This is like an academy award for a plant, they don’t get any better. When I am ‘pushing up daisies’ my remains will be serving a great service to humankind. Don’t knock the daisies.

One note: don’t make the mistake that I did and pronounce the Latin name super-bum. I did that for years before some kind soul corrected me, “Mark, it is superb-um”. Oh.

4.  Geraniums. You are now saying, “the annual or perennial geraniums?” and my answer is “take your pick”. They are both excellent garden performers. 

a.  Annual geranium [pelargonium]. There are no plants on the market that produce such reliable colour as geraniums do. Preferring ‘cool’ sun on the east or south-east side of the house during summer, they are forgiving virtually everywhere. They look better when you remove the spent flower, though some of the new varieties are almost ‘self-cleaning’. You will maximize the blossoms with an application of fertilizer, especially when grown in containers. I use ‘Once and Done’ fertilizers that provide a mild fertilizer charge every time you water. What makes annual geraniums most remarkable is that you can let them go dry for quite a while and they will forgive you.

Buying tip: buy the expensive geraniums, generally priced over $2 per 4 inch pot. There are many plants sold in the $1 – $1.30 range that are cheap to grow, produce a nice flush of colour in the grower’s greenhouse this time of year and completely poop out in a few short weeks. They are a rip off. Look for ‘zonal’ geraniums that are grown from cuttings. More expensive, yes. But in this case, you really do get what you pay for.

b. Perennial geraniums or Cranesbill: a ground hugging perennial plant that will bloom from May until September. Look for the variety Rozanne, the perennial plant of the year in 2008 for good reason. There are many varieties to choose from that range in colour from magenta, blue, violet and pink. Most grow about 30 to 40 cm high and spread much further. All are reliable winter hardy plants to zone 4.

My short list of second choices includes veronica, rudbeckia, hosta, peonies, all of the hardy ornamental grasses and perennial sage.

Mark Cullen is lawn & garden expert for Home Hardware, member of the Order of Canada, author and broadcaster. Get his free monthly newsletter at markcullen.com. Look for his new best seller, ‘The New Canadian Garden’ published by Dundurn Press. Follow him on Twitter @MarkCullen4 and Facebook.

Contain This

by Mark Cullen

The long May weekend. Like looking at a plate of your favourite food, it is hard to know where to begin. I suggest in the garden or in the dirt in some containers. 

I want to give you my recommendation of WHAT to plant in containers. Truth is, many plants lend themselves to the confines of a pot while others do not. Corn is a bad choice for a pot. It is too large, top heavy, demands lots of water and it really does not like to have its roots restricted. 

We have changed how we plant in containers in recent years. Remember the large containers that people placed at their front door filled with rose coloured geraniums, a couple of ivies or lobelia and a dracaena or ‘sword plant’ in the centre? We don’t do that any more. Bell bottoms and sideburns are out too.

Today, the rule is ‘almost anything goes’. Indeed, we are now mixing food plants with perennials, annuals with miniature roses and herbs with everything. The only rule is to make sure that you place your containerized plants in an exposure that works for them. A sun loving petunia does not do well in the shade.

My favourite 6 plants for containers:
1. Coral Bells [Heuchera]. There have been so many new introductions in this family of winter hardy perennials in recent years that I have had trouble keeping up. The foliage of Coral Bells can be spectacular so the flowers are a bonus. They mature to between 15 cm and 65 cm in breadth and width. Stick with the more compact varieties for best performance in containers. My favourite varieties are Marmalade, Blackout and Caramel all of which are perfectly named as they look as their name suggests. I am going to try the new Root Beer this year as I appreciate roots and really like beer. Sun to part shade.

2.  Hosta. Another plant that you will grow for the foliage and consider the flowers a bonus. Again, stick with the smaller varieties. Hostas will tolerate being dry between water applications. The flowers attract hummingbirds and the foliage is to die for, in many cases. My favourites include June (yellow/green mid-sized), Striptease (green chartreuse) hosta of the year in 2005 and Guacamole (green) hosta of the year in 2002. My friend Paul Zammit, from the Toronto Botanical Garden, has perfected the art of growing and overwintering hosta in his garden. He recommends that you place the pot and all in your garage over winter. Part sun or shade during growing season.

3.  Million Bells. Remember petunias? They are still popular. However, million bells look like petunias with smaller flowers but they actually produce more colour. They flower longer and do not require pinching or cutting back, as petunias often do. They don’t know when to stop blooming, which is why they look great late in to fall when many other annual flowers have pooped out. They do need to be fed. Be sure to apply a Feed and Forget fertilizer at the time of planting. One shot, good for the whole season. Available in brilliant, bold colours on the hot side of the colour wheel (orange, red and rose).

4.  Boston Fern. Not the old Boston fern that dropped leaves everywhere when you bumped into it, but any of the new varieties that hold their foliage and fill out all season to create a relaxed, country feel wherever they grow. I put 8 of these at the front of my house each summer in hanging baskets and large clay pots and they never disappoint. They forgive me when I don’t water them regularly and they look their very best when the frost arrives in late fall.

5. Roses. Not just any rose but everblooming, disease resistant, small to medium in stature bush roses. Look for Oso Easy from Proven Winners. They are great garden performers in containers. Knock Out roses are equally colourful and reliable. I recommend that you remove roses from containers in the fall and plant them in the garden over winter where they are better insulated. Come spring, dig them up and place them back in containers. Repeat. 

6. Herbs. All herbs lend themselves to container growing, except a giant like dill. Most herbs originated in the Mediterranean region and enjoy being on the dry side, do not like to be fertilized and thrive in the hot, blazing sun. Place your herb pots near the kitchen door to ensure easy access.

My list of great performers in containers goes on to include geraniums, dusty miller, dwarf zinnias, sweet potato vine, spider plant, bacopa and virtually any plant that is compact, does not mind becoming dry between water applications and is suitable to the sun/shade exposure in your yard or condo balcony.