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2020 • 1
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Contents volume 2
Canada’s local Gardener
38 Dear gardeners.......................................................... 4 Looking for beautiful gardens................................. 5 What you need to know about growing tomatoes on a balcony.......................................... 6 Save the great red oak.............................................. 8 Houseplants 101...................................................... 10 Hugelkultur.............................................................. 13 Planning a fairy garden......................................... 14 Have you ever tried growing pineapple?............... 18 The unhumble dandelion and its imitators..........20 Cheating the climate gods......................................22 Growing hot peppers...............................................24 Dealing with deer.....................................................27
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End of season tool care...........................................30 Two Olde Dawgs...................................................... 31 Tree diversity: A popular concept but not without concerns................................................................32 Things plants know................................................35 Beautiful Gardens: Lynne and Michael Knowlton, Durham, Ontario.................................................38 Beautiful Gardens: Victoria Beattie, Calgary........44 Beautiful Gardens: Helen Hogue, Winnipeg........50 Beautiful Gardens: Roy Morris, Upper Golden Grove, New Brunswick........................................56 How to get started...................................................62
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2020 • 3
Dear gardeners
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elcome to our first national edition of Canada’s Local Gardener! Folks in Manitoba will know that we’ve been publishing gardening magazines for 23 years, starting with Manitoba Gardener. Then we added Ontario Gardener, and shortly after that, Alberta Gardener. So, we’re new to the national scene, but not to gardening. Canada is a big country. To help us keep our finger on the pulse of everything gardening from coast to coast, we’ve assembled a select team of Canada’s best gardeners to form an editorial board, who will meet a few times per year to talk about what’s going on. In addition to the editorial board, we want to hear from you, our readers. Tell us what you liked in this issue, what you didn’t like, and what you and your community have planned for the coming year. We want to hear about it! We’ll print a few of your letters and we’ll read them all. Send your thoughts to me at shauna@pegasuspublications.net. Magazine publishing has changed a lot in the past couple of decades. When we started, there were three national gardening magazines and others for BC and Quebec. Now… well, anyone who was publishing a gardening magazine for the money has given up. As for us? We do it for love. For this issue, you’ll see four gardeners and find out something about what makes them tick. I visited Helen Hogue’s Winnipeg garden the summer before COVID and learned a thing or two about how she raises monarch butterflies to release. Dorothy (our owner and my mother) and I visited the terrace garden of Victoria Beattie in Calgary to take some pictures and find out how she keeps things lush up in the air. Roy Morris from near Saint John, New Brunswick has sent us some photos (after I begged him!) and told me something about his lifelong passion for making things beautiful. And interior design duo Colin and Justin, who you may know from TV, have shared with us the outdoor side of a fantastic adult treehouse near Durham, Ontario, which is featured in their latest book, Escapology. The “why don’t you…” article is on pineapple and how you can grow it from the top of one you’ve bought at the grocery store. There’s a story on fairy gardens and another on hugelkultur, which is, essentially, gardening on a heap of soil and logs. Robert Pavlis tells us about growing hot peppers and what kind of nonsense you’ll find on the internet about making them hotter. And you can find a primer on growing tomatoes on your balcony or patio for next year. There’s an article on caring for your garden tools, in addition to a Two Olde Dawgs article and video online for making a space for your tools. And there’s an article on deer and what you can do to keep them out of your garden. (Spoiler: the answer is, try everything and keep at it!) And there are a few stories besides. Before I close, I’ll mention our How to get started article at the back of the magazine. This article appears in every issue and it’s meant for new gardener who simply don’t know where to start with gardening. The Garden Primer covers the basics, step by step, in one simple way. As you spend time gardening and listening to neighbours and friends, you’ll find other things that work for you, but until then, you have these methods to get you through. Good luck! And so, dear readers, enjoy your latest issue of Canada’s Local Gardener. Share it with a friend (or buy a friend a subscription!) and do tell me what you think. I look forward to hearing from you!
Shauna Dobbie Editor shauna@pegasuspublications.net 4 • 2020
Canada’s
Local Gardener Follow us online at: localgardener.net Instagram:@local_gardener Published by Pegasus Publications Inc. President/Publisher Dorothy Dobbie dorothy@pegasuspublications.net Design Cottonwood Publishing Services Editor Shauna Dobbie shauna@pegasuspublications.net Art Direction & Layout Karl Thomsen karl@pegasuspublications.net General Manager Ian Leatt ian.leatt@pegasuspublications.net Contributors Yasmin Concepcion, Dorothy Dobbie, Shauna Dobbie, David Johnson, Ian Leatt, Colin McAllister, Robert Pavlis, Wilbert Ronald, Justin Ryan. Editorial Advisory Board Greg Auton, John Barrett, Todd Boland, Darryl Cheng, Mario Doiron, Michel Gauthier, Larry Hodgson, Jan Pedersen, Stephanie Rose, Michael Rosen and Aldona Satterthwaite.
Advertising Sales 1.888.680.2008 Subscriptions Write, email or call Canada’s Local Gardener, 138 Swan Lake Bay, Winnipeg, MB R3T 4T8 Phone (204) 940-2700 Fax (204) 940-2727 Toll Free 1 (888) 680-2008 subscribe@localgardener.net One year (four issues): $29.95 Two years (eight issues): $58 Three years (twelve issues): $80 Single copy: $8.95; Beautiful Gardens: $12.95 150 years of Gardening in Canada copy: $12.95 Plus applicable taxes. Return undeliverable Canadian Addresses to: Circulation Department Pegasus Publications Inc. 138 Swan Lake Bay, Winnipeg, MB R3T 4T8 Canadian Publications mail product Sales agreement #40027604 ISSN 2369-0410
Canada’s Local Gardener is published four times annually by Pegasus Publications Inc. It is regularly available to purchase at newsstands and retail locations throughout Canada or by subscription. Visa, MasterCard and American Express accepted. Publisher buys all editorial rights and reserves the right to republish any material purchased. Reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited without permission in writing from the publisher. Copyright Pegasus Publications Inc.
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Looking for beautiful gardens BC, Saskatchewan, Quebec, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, send us your gardens!
Pictures of Canadian gardens by (clockwise): Jen Grad; Jean Rutherford; Twyla Bartel; Lois Maclennan; and Nicole Deibert.
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oming up next is our winter issue of Beautiful Gardens. In the past, it has been all gardens from cover to cover, with gorgeous photos and stimulating stories about the people who’ve made the gardens. But this year, owing to COVID, we haven’t been able to visit the gardens to take the pictures and write the stories. That’s where you come in. We need you! If your garden is remarkable— beautiful or bountiful or experimental in some way—send us a few pictures, to the email below. We’ll use our favourites in Beautiful Gardens. Now, why aren’t we asking for pictures from Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario? Well, it’s because we asked for those in our last issue, and read-
ers responded in spades. Amazing pictures of wonderful gardens, and we’ll be using a lot of them. But we need gardens from the rest of Canada too! What we’re looking for Send up to 10 pictures. Choose a couple of long-shots, which are overall pictures, taken from a distance, of your garden. Choose a couple of close-ups of your favourite flowers. We know you can’t resist these pictures—we can’t either! But they could be taken in anyone’s garden. And make the rest of the pictures mid-shots. These are pictures of a few flowers or a couple of budding vegetables that look great together. Or pictures of a garden statue or scare-
crow surrounded by plants. Or maybe your garden shed. Do you get the idea? Tell us your name and where the garden is—city or town or area and province. You can tell us something about yourself if you like too. Troubles? It can be difficult to send these pictures, particularly if you’re in a rural area with less-than-brilliant internet service. Try sending them two or three pictures at a time. We’ll let you know when we’ve got them, with a human-written email back to you. If we don’t write back, we haven’t got them. (Please allow for evenings and weekends before resending.) We look forward to seeing your garden! C
Email pictures to: shauna@pegasuspublications.net localgardener.net
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2020 • 5
What you need to know about growing tomatoes on a balcony
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on’t be intimidated. Tomatoes are easy to grow anywhere, including on balconies. They just need lots of light and warmth, decent soil, good drainage and consistent watering. The biggest challenge with balcony gardening is temperature control. The balcony either gets too much sun and heat or too little, and often there is an issue with wind. Tomatoes enjoy moderate temperatures, not extremes. They are unhappy at temperatures that dip below 10 degrees Celsius or rise above 29 degrees Celsius; they prefer temperatures around 21 degrees Celsius. Consistent watering during fruit development is key. Too much or too little, or sudden change, can all send them into sulking fits that can result in fruit damage. Underwatering to the point where they dry out will cause blossom end rot, that nasty black stuff on the bottom of the fruit that makes them so unappetizing. Drying out can block the calcium needed in the blossom to develop the fruit. Adding eggshells to the soil will do little if the soil has enough calcium and most does. (By the way, yes, you can cut away the bad part and eat the rest.) Too much water can cause splitting. Long-time tomato growers attribute this to sudden rain, but it is the sudden rush of water, not the rain, that causes the damage. Excessive heat will cause curling leaves and blossom drop but when temperatures return to normal, this will end, and new blossoms will emerge. Catfacing, unsightly puckered skins and funny shapes, can be caused by both too much heat and too little, two conditions that interfere with pollination development. On the prairies the sun is fierce and hot, so catfacing may result from direct exposure. While leaf removal to expose the fruit to more light for ripening may work in murkier environments, in areas with intense sunlight, the leaves help to shelter and cool the fruit, which will ripen on its own even if it is still somewhat green when picked. Just set it out on the counter. 6 • 2020
By Dorothy Dobbie
Growing tomatoes on a balcony can be challenging.
What to plant There are two types of tomatoes: the ones called indeterminate that grow on a vine and keep on growing, and the ones called determinate that grow in a bush form, generally much easier to manage in a small space. Both types can be grown in a container. The disadvantage to the indeterminate types is that they need staking because they will keep on growing, reaching as much as 20 feet. The advantage is that they keep on producing until freeze-up so you have a continuous harvest. They produce flowers and therefore fruit along the sides of their shoots. The disadvantage to determinate tomatoes is that flowers grow at the end of their shoots so that they produce all their fruit at the same time. The advantage is size; they stop growing around three to four feet tall. Issue 1
Both need some sort of support. A tomato cage works best for the bush varieties, while staking may be better for the indeterminates. Most heirloom tomatoes are indeterminate. Know what tomatoes to grow The easiest tomatoes to grow, if you are a novice, are the round, cherry varieties which are sweet and juicy and like long hours of sunlight. They are not as fussy as the big beefsteak types. Indeterminate, they keep on giving until freeze up. You will often see these sold as hanging baskets covered in fruit and flowers. Cherry tomato varieties are a great choice for the casual or beginner gardener. Just keep them evenly watered and provide a dose of fertilizer every couple of weeks. Grape tomatoes are oblong and smaller than cherry tomatoes. They are often determinates but can be localgardener.net
If starting your tomatoes from seed, make sure you start them at an appropriate time.
either. They are not quite as juicy as the cherries. Roma or plum tomatoes are smallish, oblong tomatoes with firmer flesh. They are also determinates, good for harvesting all at once and making tomato sauce or preserves. Beefsteaks are the big fat tomatoes, firm but juicy and great for sandwiches. They come in many sizes and can be determinate or indeterminate.
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Growing conditions
hile tomatoes like sun it may be best to say that they like six to eight hours of light. Really intense sun makes them unhappy. Soil should be slightly acidic (add peat moss) and don’t over fertilize with nitrogen or you will get lots of foliage but little fruit. Feed them a balanced fertilizer. Don’t crowd them. Grow one
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Heirloom tomatoes come in many colours, shapes and sizes and are generally grown for their more intense taste. When choosing tomatoes, consider the time to harvest which can vary greatly. If you are starting them indoors this is an important factor to keep in mind so you will know whether to get started in February or April. C
tomato plant in a deep four- to five-gallon, well-drained pot, using potting mix as opposed to garden soil. Be sure to fertilize every two weeks or so. Watering If your balcony has access to an outside water source, consider hooking your plants up to an irrigation system on a timer. Lee Valley sells once especially designed for decks.
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2020 • 7
Save the great red oak Story by Shauna Dobbie, photos by David Johnson
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erhaps it was a marker for the fur traders along the Carrying Place route that ended in what is now Toronto, along the shore of Lake Ontario. This great oak, over 300 years old, has seen the birth of a city and managed to escape the axe. From the street today, it seems as though it might swallow the bungalow beneath it whole as its enormous limbs grow over the roof from behind, dipping down below the eaves in front. This is Zhelevo. The old man-tree got his name from Edith George, his most die-hard supporter. Edith lives in the same area as the oak, and she took my husband and me around her neighbourhood, telling us about its history. A previous owner of the house and land where the Zhelevo is, airman Michael William Nicholas, loved the oak. He took good care of it, pruning and fertilizing it and digging trenches to get water to the roots. Michael bought the house in 1961 and has long since passed. Today, you can see that the house and tree don’t go well together. It’s too close to the house and its roots are invading the structure. This much is clear: one of them has to go. And Edith is determined that it should be the house. The current owner of the house signed a sale agreement with the City of Toronto in December of 2019. If $430,000 can be raised by December 12 of 2020, the city will take ownership of the property, the house will be removed and a park built around Zhelevo. The COVID-19 crisis has got in the way of the fundraising effort, though, and the deadline is looming. Onethird of the money has been procured as I write this. Will the other twothirds come in on time? Will the city extend the deadline? We cannot know, and the safest thing to do is to donate today, and to talk to people you know about donating. But, you may ask, why donate if you don’t live anywhere near the tree? If you have no hope of seeing it ever? You’d donate for the same reason you give for relief after a devastating tsunami across the globe. With the tsunami, you recognize that people
8 • 2020
Zhelevo the great red oak towers over the house that was built next to it.
The tree and the house are a little too close for comfort.
Scan me Find out more about the campaign to save the red oak here. https://www.toronto.ca/redoak
you will never meet deserve to feel the kindness of the human heart in their hour of need. This is Zhelevo’s hour of Issue 1
need, and whether you believe a tree wants to live or not, you can understand how the desire to save it from becoming coffee tables is part of the human condition. Edith says, “This tree is my cathedral.” She goes to it to pray when disaster strikes. “The great red oak is a survivor and it gives me hope for a planet full of natural and manmade disasters. Like our country Canada, this tree has survived so much and is still standing.” C localgardener.net
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2020 • 9
Houseplants 101 By Yasmin Concepcion Hi, my name is Yashie and I’m an indoor plant addict. Being a self-confessed plant addict does not, by any means, make me an expert on indoor and tropical plants. All I have to offer is my experience with the varieties I’ve had and lost, those that I still have and struggle to keep alive, and the ones I have successfully kept alive and healthy for months or years.
T
he peace lily, or Spathiphyllum wallisii, is not a real lily despite its name. It is actually a member of the Araceae family, same as anthuriums, calla lilies and monsteras, native to the tropical regions of the Americas and southeast Asia. They thrive on the forest floors, receiving dappled sunlight which makes them perfect house and office plants. Aside from the gorgeous foliage, with creamy white flowers giving a striking contrast to their rich, deep, emerald green leaves, another reason they are great houseplants is their air cleaning ability. Identified by the NASA Clean Air Study to be one of the top 10 indoor plants for air purification, the peace lily is able to break down and neutralize toxic gases like benzene, formaldehyde and trichloroethylene. So, it’s good to have a peace lily plant, or two… or three. One of the reasons I love the peace lily is because its care and growing requirements are very straightforward and effortless. It tells you what it needs, you just have to know what it’s telling you. Light They usually thrive in medium to low light, even artificial light. But if you want your peace lilies to produce more of those white spathes and flowers, give them more light, but not direct sunlight as that will burn their leaves. Water Peace lilies like evenly moist soil. Have a regular watering schedule once a week or check the soil. When the top one to two inches of soil is dry, it’s time to water. If they go too dry between waterings, they wilt. But don’t worry, just give them a deep and thorough drink of water and they will bounce back. The best way to bring them 10 • 2020
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Self-confessed plant addict Yasmin.
back to life is to put them in the sink (or tub) and just give them a shower. Make sure that water runs out of the pot’s drainage holes to make sure that the water reaches the roots. Don’t let your plant sit in water as this will cause root rot. And remember that underwatering is better than overwatering. A peace lily will tell you when it is thirsty and will come back after watering. But if you overwater your plant, there is no coming back from that. Humidity Peace lilies like high humidity like all other tropical plants. But living in Canada where the seasons are extreme, it is difficult to get those “tropical conditions” without help. So, place your peace lily by a humidifier or just mist it every day. You can also place the pot on a pebble tray with water to increase the humidity around your peace lily. Feeding Peace lilies don’t need too much fertilizer. I’ve fertilized my variegated peace lily ‘Domino’ probably once this summer with a regular house plant fertilizer and it is doing just fine. Repotting and soil If your peace lily starts drooping less than a week after watering, it means that it has outgrown the pot that it’s in. To verify this, check the drainage holes at the bottom of the pot. If roots start to come through it, it’s time to move to a bigger pot. Choose one that is one size bigger than its current pot. The soil should be well-draining but also able to retain water. Some plant enthusiasts would say the best way to make sure that you’ve localgardener.net
Like most tropical plants, peace lilies like high humidity.
Good drainage is very important. Issue 1
2020 • 11
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Peace Lily in bloom.
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got the right soil is to mix your own. One of my peace lilies is still in the same nursery pot and soil it’s been in since last year. I just topped up the soil with regular potting mix. Toxicity The peace lily is mildly toxic to pets and small children. It contains a chemical called calcium oxalate crystals which can cause severe irritation, pain and swelling in the mouth if you bite the leaves. Make sure to keep it away from curious pets and children. Varieties There are about 40 varieties of peace lilies which are mostly hybrids of the original plant. The ones that are worth mentioning, and are easy enough to find in garden centres and even box stores, are: ‘Domino’: A variegated hybrid with beautiful dark green leaves speckled with white streaks. ‘Sensation’: The largest of the hybrids with massive leaves; it can reach a height of six feet. ‘Little Angel’: A dwarf variety that will be great for your desk or shelf. Peace lilies are stunning and easy houseplants. Just be mindful of their needs and they will live a long and happy life. C
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Photo by Øyvind Holmstad.
Hugelkultur
Building a hugelkultur bed at the Scandinavian Permaculture Festival.
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ugelkultur is a method of gardening on a compost hill over wood. You do it something like this: mound branches or logs on the ground and cover the mound with leaves, plant waste, compost and soil. Your mound should be about three feet high and three feet wide. It can be as long as you like, but six feet is recommended by the Permaculture Research Institute (at least in this article you reach through the QR code). Let the mound cure for a bit— in Canada, over winter seems like a good idea—and then plant into it. This method has reportedly been used in Eastern Europe for centuries. In 1962, a German fellow named Herrman Andrä wrote a booklet about it, where the term hugelkultur was first coined. Since then, a number of permaculture adherents have glommed onto it, and there are websites and lectures devoted to it. A big adherent today is Sepp Holzer, an Austrian farmer. People who practice hugelkultur have noticed several benefits. You need to water rarely, if at all. With microbial activity going on inside the mound, it is warmer under the soil. Since it is a localgardener.net
Scan me Scan here for an article on The Art and Science of Making a Hugelkultur Bed https://permaculture.org.au/2010/08/03/the-art-andscience-of-making-a-hugelkultur-bed-transformingwoody-debris-into-a-garden-resource
mound, there is less crouching to tend to the plants. And hugelkulturists report superior produce being grown in their beds. As you can imagine, hugelkultur is meant for vegetable gardening; it’s best for annuals and isn’t conventionally attractive. A bed typically lasts five or six years, depending on the size. When the bed has nearly flattened and the wood feeding the soil inside has given up its goods, you can use all the decayed matter elsewhere, or you can transition the bed to growing fruit trees. There are no scholarly, peerreviewed publications that detail any benefits of hugelkultur, and there are a few folks who argue with the methIssue 1
ods. From a growing perspective, you might have too much of a good thing from all the composting material below the soil line. Or you might have soil deficient in nitrogen because the composting activity is sucking it all up. Is hugelkultur going to revolutionize growing food? I doubt it. Some folks who’ve tried it say that, in their conditions, the mound needed more and not less water. There is also the issue of getting wood to form the centre of the mound; if you have a woodlot, this may seem like a no-brainer, but if you live in the city, you might have to buy timber. There is also the issue of the science behind it. Theoretically, scientist and gardener Robert Pavlis (who writes on hot peppers in this issue) says that the wood in the mound decomposes too slowly to provide much heat and the easily composted material would produce heat when the mound was new, likely before being planted. All that said, though, there are a lot of anecdotal reports that hugelkultur works. If you have the inclination and the timber, give it a shot. And let us know how it works for you! C 2020 • 13
Planning a fairy garden
14 • 2020
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ome fairy gardens start with a single item already in the garden or given as a gift: an old toy truck you dig up or a purpose-built tiny cottage your neighbour brings to tea. But if you’ve decided to start a fairy garden from scratch, there are some things you’ll need to decide on. Indoor or outdoor You can certainly have both, but if you need to decide, think about what’s going into the fairy garden. An indoor fairy garden will need a certain amount of sunlight to grow plants. (This is a gardening magazine, and we won’t be considering plastic plants here.) An outdoor fairy garden will have to weather the rain and wind, and it will probably need to be stored for winter. Scale The most common scale for purpose-built fairy furniture and items is 1 inch equals 12 inches, or 1:12. There are smaller sizes, too, like 1:24 (half-inch) and 1:48 (quarterinch). Some items aren’t built on a specific scale, but you can fudge it. For instance, an adult female fairy at 1:12 would be about 5 inches high; at 1:24, she would be about 2.5 inches high. If you have a fairy that is 3.5 inches localgardener.net
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2020 • 15
high, what scale is she? That’s up to you. I would probably put her in the 1:12 scale because she’ll look cute as a smaller fairy. If you decide to build fairy items, having a scale in mind will be useful. If you figure an actual door is about 7 feet high, you would build your popsicle-stick house around a door that is about 7 inches high. That said, you’ll find that a typical manufactured fairy house has a 6-inch door. Maybe this is because shorter doors bring to mind older English cottages? Who knows. Purchased or homemade If you have a few hours to kill, Google “fairy garden supplies”. There are many, many manufacturers. Add to that, the supplies for model railroad gardens (which are in a scale of 1:22) and doll houses. There is a good chance that what you want, you can buy. If you purchase, most items are made from plastic or resin. Some are made from clay or metal. And aside from the materials to choose from, there is the style they are made in. Do you want chubby, child-like fairies or slender goth fairies? (Yes, there are 16 • 2020
Scan me Directions on how to make fairy furniture accessories for your fairy garden. https://www.diyncrafts.com/28690/decor/25-cute-diyfairy-furniture-accessories-adorable-fairy-garden
goth fairies!) You can also make your own furniture, houses and fences out of wood, wire, polymer clay or whatever you’d like. If you are artistic, go ahead! Plants Alpine plants are ideal for fairy gardens; they’re small and don’t spread too quickly. Look for tiny sedums and thrift, ageratum and Delosperma, or ice plant. Little sprigs of cotoneaster make good shrubs. Scotch and Irish moss make great groundcovers and chia makes lovely grass. There are a handful of small hostas to watch for, like ‘Mouse Ears’ and ‘Cracker Crumbs’. Small-leaf succulents are also good. When choosing plants, consider Issue 1
how much effort you’re willing to put in. Some plants are slow-growing and don’t require much attention. Others require almost constant upkeep, from tiny amounts of water to steadfast trimming. Is your fairy garden just for show, or do you want to tend a tiny garden in microcosm? Guiding principle Here is something nobody talks about online, but it is crucial to me. What is the fiction of the world you are creating? Do the fairies have their own miniature world, where pets are tiny? Or do they live in our world, building things out of real-sized items? In the second case, a sparrow would be the size of an eagle for five-inch tall fairy, and a grain of rice would be like a baked potato for the tiniest fairy. For pets they might have butterflies or lady bugs because there are no itty-bitty cats and dogs. Breaking the rules Of course, this is your garden. You make the rules. Have comparatively giant fairies and little houses and inch-long bunnies cavorting. Trust your judgement. Do you think it’s cute? Then it is! C localgardener.net
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2020 • 17
Have you ever tried
Growing pineapple?
The fruit of the pineapple plant.
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rowing a pineapple in your house in Canada isn’t easy and takes a lot of time. If you just want a pineapple to eat, don’t bother. But if you like a challenge, let’s go. It’s a plant Pineapples don’t grow on trees. They grow one per plant, and the plant is big: between three and six feet wide. In addition to a tropical climate, you need a lot of land to grow pineapples. A plant looks like a bigger version of the top of a pineapple, and that’s what it is. Big, strappy leaves grow from a thick central stem. Eventually, that stem will grow a spikey inflorescence with about 200 blooms. As those blooms mature, they fuse together to form the fruit. Pups will grow from between the leaves, and these can be removed to make more pineapple plants. In fact, this is how most pineapples are grown. Pineapples are self-sterile and require a different pineapple variety to be pollinated. In nature, hummingbirds do the pollination. The flowers don’t require pollination to set fruit, though. Origin Pineapples are native to Paraguay and Brazil, and they have been cultivated in South and Central America for about 4000 years. Christopher Columbus found the fruit 18 • 2020
in the Caribbean on his second voyage and brought some specimens back home to take Europe by storm. So impressed were people with the fruit (and so unable to grow it for a couple of hundred years) that it became quite a status symbol. There are reports that you could rent a pineapple to show off to guests or to bring to a party with you in the 18th century. You wouldn’t eat a pineapple until you’d showed it off and it was starting to rot. Missing fingerprints? Pineapples contain bromelain, which is known to break down protein. That’s why pineapple juice will tenderize meat, but also why some pineapples make your mouth hurt: the enzyme is eating away at your flesh! There’s a rumour going around that pineapple juice will erase your fingerprints and that people working in pineapple canneries have lost their digital identifiers. It’s not true… well, not exactly. First, people who work with the raw pineapples wear gloves because the bromelain does damage the skin and it’s quite painful. Second, while bromelain can reduce fingerprints temporarily, they will regenerate. As for using pineapple to tenderize meat, go for it! But recognize that bromelain is so good at this job that the meat will turn to mush if you leave it for too long; an hour is the maximum. Issue 1
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Pineapple plant in blossom.
In addition to breaking down proteins, pineapple will also make gelatin unable to gel. Heat makes bromelain ineffective, so cooking pineapple thoroughly will make it useable with gelatin. How to grow your own pineapple Pick up a fresh pineapple. Grasp the head of leaves at the base and twist. It should come out of the pineapple. Peel away about an inch of the leaves, starting at the bottom and pulling sideways. Now look closely at the freshly exposed part. You should see some little brown dots or even some small white or brown roots wrapping around the stem. Plant the stump in potting soil, water it and put it in a sunny window. And wait. Within a couple of months, you should see new greenery
growing from the top. Congratulations, you have succeeded. The original leaves may turn brown and die; you can tear these off. You’ll know that your stump is developing roots if you give it a light tug and it doesn’t come out of the soil. Water the pineapple from the top only when the soil has dried out. Water will collect among the leaves. This is good. In a short two or three years (!) your pineapple should bloom. If it doesn’t, some people recommend putting ripe apples, cut in half, on the soil; the ethylene gas from the apples should make the plant bloom. Don’t expect to grow a pineapple to feed the masses. It will be small. You simply cannot give it the amount of sunlight that it would get in the tropics. But you will have triumphed where many before you have failed. Huzzah! C
The top of the pineapple. localgardener.net
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2020 • 19
The unhumble dandelion and its imitators By Dorothy Dobbie
The Dandelion O dandelion, rich and haughty King of village flowers Each day is coronation time, You have no humble hours – Vachel Lindsay
20 • 2020
Botanical illustration by Kräuterbuch Losch.
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he poor dandelion has been given a wickedly bad name, but are we assigning it some of the blame that should be attributed to look-a-likes? There are quite a number of these imposters filling our lawns and lurking in road allowances and ditches. Dandelion (Taraxacum officinialis) is a useful and benign plant. While it does nothing to enhance the look of a perfectly groomed lawn, in springtime its pretty yellow flowers attract children and bees to collect little bouquets of love and gain sustenance. All parts of the dandelion are edible and the fresh new leaves are a spring tonic in salads (they are full of nutrition, but get bitter as they mature), the flowers can be made in to wine or used to make yellow dye, the amazing tap root can be ground into a coffee substitute or made into a tea useful for everything from boosting liver, kidney and bowel function to, according to legend, increasing psychic abilities and, brewed with leaves, calling up spirits when set in a steaming tea beside your bed! But the tap roots are even more clever than that. Small pieces left in the ground can regenerate a new dandelion. While the roots do not travel horizontally, they certainly can travel deep, usually existing in the top 6 to 18 inches of soil but, when necessary, drilling down 10 feet. This is not a bad thing. The roots bring useful nutrients to the surface and while doing so, they aerate your lawn. By the way, rabbits like dandelions, enticing the critters away from your bulbs in springtime. Dandelions have a few other tricks. The flowers know to open an hour after sunrise. They close to rain and at night to preserve their pollen and nectar, and seeing petals close in daytime is a pretty good predictor of rain. Sap from the stems has been used to cure warts and corns. But that is just the common dandelion. There are several plants with dandelion-like blooms that are often mistaken for the sunshine rays of the dandelion flower. False dandelion Hypochaeris radicata or the false dandelion or cat’s ear stems can rise 20 inches. The leaves hug the ground in rosettes that resemble dandelions, but cat’s ear leaves are not as deeply notched. Like dandelions, their leaves are edible—and hairy. The stems are not hollow, they are branching, but they do emit a milky sap. Wild lettuce Lactuca virosa has oval leaves with prickles on the ends and stems filled with medicinal-smelling sap that has some
Dandelion (Taraxacum officinialis).
interesting properties. When dried, this sap turns brown and is known as lactucarium. It can be dissolved in wine to create a soothing drink to relieve pain and help sleep. The drink eases coughs and colic and is a diuretic like dandelion but doesn’t cause an upset stomach. Some of its common names are opium lettuce (all lettuce is somewhat narcotic, but the leaves of this plants deliver the most potent dose), bitter lettuce, and green endive. Hawkweed Heracium aurantiacum flowers are orange and occur mainly in BC in Canada, where they are invasive nusiance. It has underground creeping roots that quickly populate large areas and outcompete other plants because they release a chemical to discourage germination of competing plant seeds. The yellow-flowered variety of hawkweed (H. umbellatum, some call it H. canadense) can be found throughout Canada. It can get quite tall, growing at much as six feet Issue 1
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Botanical illustration by Jean Henri Jaume Saint-Hilaire.
Botanical illustration by Amédée Masclef.
Botanical illustration by William Curtis.
Wild lettuce (Lactuca virosa).
Hawkweed (Heracium aurantiacum).
Sow thistle (Sonchus oleraceu).
and as small as six inches. Both varieties have milky latex sap in hairy, branching stems, 10 to 36 inches tall. The lanceolate leaves are not notched and have sharp teeth intermittently along the edges. Their dandelion-looking flowers have notched tips on the petals. As do all the others, hawkweed produces wind-blown parachute seeds. Sow thistle Sonchus oleraceus or milk thistle is another look-a-like, but it truly is a thistle with prickly leaves. It is closest to wild lettuce in appearance. A good host to aphids, it will grow in the hardest clay soil and comes in both perennial and annual varieties. Surprisingly, rabbits like this one, too. Coltsfoot Perhaps the most interesting of the group is coltsfoot localgardener.net
Botanical illustration by F. E. Köhler.
Botanical illustration by Norman Criddle.
Cat’s ear (Hypochaeris radicata).
Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara).
(Tussilago farfara). So named for its rounded leaves that are said to look like the foot of a colt, the flowers are not as similar to dandelions as some of the others, but they grow close to the ground in multi-stemmed, 4 to 10-inch clumps with the leaves emerging after the flowers are done. The plant grows from rhizomes as opposed to taproots. It is primarily the leaves that are of interest to foragers and herbalists. They can be rolled, dried and smoked as a treatment for lung inflammation, or used to make a soothing drink. The flowers can be tossed in a salad or mixed with honey. Coltsfoot has the taste of licorice or anise. The downside is that some coltsfoot constituents are carcinogenic, and overuse of the plant can damage the liver. If you are ever desperate for salt, however, you can burn the leaves and use the heavy part of the residue as a substitute. Some people like it very much. C Issue 1
2020 • 21
Cheating the climate gods Photos by Dan Bostan
The unheated greenhouse under a blanket of snow.
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ngineer Dan Bostan says you can grow peaches in Winnipeg and pomegranates in Toronto by using his methods to build a “Plus4Zones” greenhouse. Does it sound too expensive for you? Well get this: it requires no outside energy at all, relying instead on various types of passive heating. Dan lives in Montreal. Over the past several years, he’s built six different greenhouses in his urban back yard to grow apricots and sweet cherries. Then a couple of years ago he found an old barn with, walls of corrugated metal and plywood, to change into a greenhouse. He shares his experience in a few videos on Youtube, the most complete at the QR code His principles are these: Snow is a good insulator. Air is a good insulator. Earth is a good insulator. To build his first greenhouse in his back yard, he dug down three feet next to the house, and built walls six to eight feet high from the bottom of the excavation. Not one to do things by halves, the total area of the greenhouse was 14 feet along the house by 9 feet. He left the bottom of the walls as exposed earth and above that installed plywood with spray insulation on the inside. Outside the walls he used the earth that was excavated to build up berms. For a roof, he installed plywood 22 • 2020
Inside the greenhouse is an abundance of life.
with spray insulation, having run out of time and needing to get a bunch of sweet cherry saplings protected. There was no light, but his cherries survived. Though the temperature dipped to -21 Celsius, inside the greenhouse it did not go below freezing, bottoming out at 1.7 Celsius. At the beginning of March, he removed the plywood roof and installed a roof of two layers of plastic sheeting separated by two-by-fours. The cherries came out of dormancy with the sunlight, blooming by end of March. Issue 1
The next winter, Dan kept the double plastic sheeting roof and found the temperature in the greenhouse got as low as -2.9 Celsius. It’s below freezing, but still perfectly acceptable for sweet cherries; I’ll add that it’s also warm enough for figs and even limes. What amazed Dan that year was that after the roof was covered in six inches of snow, the greenhouse was a few degrees warmer than when it was covered with only an inch of snow. In building another greenhouse in his yard, he discovered that vertical localgardener.net
Peaches.
Cherries.
Figs.
Grapes.
gardening on the walls of a greenhouse in summer is an excellent insulator for the building in the winter. Vegetables like lettuce, spinach and radishes will grow quite happily on a south-, eastor west-facing wall. The activity of the microorganisms in the soil keeps things warmer through the winter and through the growing season, you can really increase your planting space. When he came upon the barn that would become his biggest greenhouse, it had a metal roof and a concrete floor. The first year, he had to remove the concrete floor and bring in compost to plant his trees before winter. The trees spent the winter in the ground under the metal barn roof. In May, he removed the metal roof leaving only the localgardener.net
Scan me Find out more about Plus4Zones unheated greenhouses in a video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnmpeYFBm54
rafters throughout the growing season. The trees bloomed and produced fruit, and for the next winter, Dan covered the roof with plastic sheeting and then installed a ceiling of plastic sheeting below that. He also installed shelves on the inside walls to enable planting and filled them with compost and soil. These would capture the sun’s heat Issue 1
during the day and keep the greenhouse warmer at night. Dan has found he is able to raise his USDA Zone 4 garden to Zone 8, which is Canadian Zone 5 to Zone 9 (roughly speaking). I’ve used the USDA Zones because that’s what Dan uses and because they only take temperature into account. Canadian hardiness ratings take snow cover and length of time the coldest temperatures occur into account; nevertheless, adding 1 to the USDA Zone gives a rough equivalent. He has been able to grow sweet cherries, apricots, figs and peaches in the greenhouse and managed to do it all organically. C 2020 • 23
Growing hot peppers – what makes them hotter? By Robert Pavlis
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The jalapeno pepper seems so quaint now, but for most people it’s more than enough heat. 24 • 2020
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ou are trying to grow hot peppers and you find they just don’t have enough heat. What are you doing wrong? What can you do different to grow really hot peppers? People who love the heat from hot peppers are almost religious about making them hotter and hotter and this has resulted in a lot of online suggestions; many of them are just myths but some actually work. It’s time to separate fact from fiction and check the science to see what makes a pepper hot, and what can be done in the garden to make them hotter. What makes a pepper hot? We are talking about the flavor here and not their sexy look. The hotness in peppers is due to a group of chemicals called capsaicinoids and the most important of these is capsaicin, pronounced “cap-SAY-sin”. “The effect of the capsaicin has been described as delivering rapid bites to the back of the palate or a slow burn on the tongue and mid palate,” according to Rosie Lerner of Purdue University. Capsaicin has no flavor or odor but acts directly on the pain receptors. The largest amount of capsaicin is found in the white pith tissue that surrounds the seeds. The outer fleshy part of the fruit has significantly less and contrary to popular belief, there is almost none in the seeds. The venom of some tarantula species and capsaicin activate the same chemical pathway of pain and both have been used in research to study pain. If you want heat in your peppers, you need more capsaicin. The pepper heat scale How hot is hot? Scientists have developed a heat scale called the Scoville scale which measure the amount of capsaicin in SHU (Scoville Heat Units). Sweet pepper: <100 SHU Jalapenos: 2,500-8,000 SHU Tabasco: 30,000 – 60,000 SHU Spicy habaneros: 100,000-580,000 SHU Ghost: >1,000,000 SHU ‘Carolina Reaper’: 1.5 – 2.2 million SHU localgardener.net
The ghost pepper is so strong that protective gear is recommended when handling them.
Common suggestions for growing hot peppers The internet provides a variety of suggestions for growing hotter peppers, including the following list. Most claims use some form of stress on the plants. • Choose a hot variety • Reduce watering • Keep nitrogen levels low • Add sulfur to the planting hole • Avoid cross pollination • Let them age on the vine • Feed less • Epsom salt Let’s have a look at each of these to see what science says. Choose a hot variety There are many types of peppers and some are certainly hotter than others. Select ones that meet your needs. Reduce watering One common tip is to reduce watering so that the plants are stressed. This is normally done just after fruit set and some suggest giving plants a drink only when the leaves start to droop. UC Cooperative Extension has been testing ways to make jalapeños hotter. Research in hot climates like Mexico, Spain and Thailand have shown that water stress can increase hotness, but testing in California showed that water stress made them milder. Other researchers have found significant increases in capsaicin due to water stress. Watering peppers less may produce hotter peppers, but these plants are localgardener.net
sensitive to water levels. Water stress should not happen until after fruit set to ensure the flower is properly pollinated and fruit starts growing. Waiting until leaves droop is probably too extreme. Keep nitrogen levels low by feeding less Most of these claims are very vague and say things like, “fertilize less than normal.” How does that help? You might already be under fertilizing. One site said, “Nitrogen makes plants grow big at the expense of the fruit,” and then goes on to suggest, “use a slower and gentler type of fertilizer such as rotted manure or compost.” Side dressing with rotten manure is not going to keep nitrogen levels low! Good thing we have science. Habanero peppers grown at various nitrogen levels showed the highest capsaicin level at very low nitrogen and at high nitrogen. The low end represented a stress condition. The high nitrogen level produced hot peppers as well as increased flowering and fruiting. High nitrogen gives you both hotness and high yield. Varying potassium levels had no effect. Similar tests on jalapeno peppers showed a steady increase in capsaicin as the nitrogen level increased. Fertilizer stress did not increase hotness. This study, as well as the one above were done using containers in a greenhouse. Padrón pepper plants produced hotter fruit with higher fertilizer levels. There seem to be few field studies that would translate directly to a garden, but the science indicates stressing plants Issue 1
with low nitrogen is not the best way to grow hotter peppers. A homeowner never knows how much nitrogen they have in soil, so it is difficult to manage nitrogen levels. All you can do is use a high nitrogen fertilizer and add extra to hot peppers. Add sulfur to the planting hole It is believed that sulfur makes peppers hotter. The solution is simple. Put a strike-anywhere match in the planting hole and the sulfur in the head of the match will make peppers hotter. Sulfur does add an acrid flavor to things like onions, so maybe people associate this with being hot? Or they think a hot match will make peppers hot? Whatever the logic, it’s flawed. The chemical formula for capsaicin is C18H27 NO3. You will notice it does not contain sulfur, so it is unlikely that sulfur plays a significant role in the plants ability to make capsaicin. Besides the amount of sulfur in the head of a match is extremely small, it’s in the bottom of the planting hole, and plant roots will spread four feet in all directions. A match will have no effect. All plants need some sulfur and if the soil is depleted, adding more will help the plant grow. Peppers like a slightly acidic soil with a pH of 6 to 6.8 and adding sulfur to alkaline soil can reduce the pH. However, there is no indication that sulfur makes peppers hotter. Avoid cross pollination with sweet peppers The logic goes like this. If you grow sweet and hot peppers together the sweet peppers can pollinate the hot 2020 • 25
peppers, resulting in fruit that is less hot. This seems very logical, but it’s wrong. First of all, peppers are mostly selfpollinating which means a flower pollinates itself. It rarely uses pollen from another plant. Secondly, even if the flower is cross pollinated, the fruit will have the characteristics of the mother plant, not those of the father plant. Any collected seed from a cross like this will have properties somewhere between the parents. Cross pollination will never cause hot peppers to be less hot or more hot. Let them age on the vine The claim is that pepper fruit accumulates more capsaicin as it ages. The longer it is left on the vine, the hotter it gets. If you wait for those green jalapeños to turn red, you will have a much spicier pepper. Testing of serrano peppers found no change in capsaicin during ripening of the green, yellow and red stages. The two main capsaicinoids, including capsaicin, increased until day 40 (after fruit set) in cayenne peppers. This was followed by a sharp decrease and then a more gradual decrease until day 80. Testing 3 types of hot peppers that are widely used in Mexico, found that capsaicin levels reached a peak at day 45 to 50, from fruit set, in habanero and de arbol and after 40 days in piquin. After that levels declined. This research indicates that leaving peppers on the vine past 40-45 days (end of the growth period) will result in less heat. If you want super hot peppers, harvest them when the fruit stops growing in size. Epsom salt I thought I had made it through the list without seeing Epsom salt, but no such luck. “Epsom salt delivers an immediate shot-in-the arm of magnesium to the plants and boosts growth”. There is no logic or scientific evidence that magnesium affects hotness. What makes peppers hotter? The heat in peppers is dependent on many factors, including plant genetics, climate, geographic location and stage of ripeness. Warm weather regions generally produce hotter peppers than cooler areas. Warm nights, in particular, seem to be responsible for the higher capsaicin content. 26 • 2020
The ‘Carolina Reaper’ is considered the hottest pepper in the world according to Guinness World Records. Protective gear is recommended if you are handling ‘Carolina Reaper’ peppers.
Wild populations of peppers get hotter when attacked by insects and a fusarium fungus. They respond by producing more capsaicinoids which slows down microbial growth, protecting the seeds. Maybe a few insect chew marks on your peppers will heat them up? Short of moving to a warmer climate, what can you do in your garden to make them hotter? Water less once fruit has formed. Issue 1
Fertilize more, especially with nitrogen. Even if the peppers don’t get hotter, you should get a higher yield. Harvest 40-50 days after fruit set, or when the pepper stops growing in size. Don’t listen to nonsense on the internet. Robert Pavlis lives in Southern Ontario, Zone 5, and has been gardening for over 45 years. He has published several gardening books; Soil Science for Gardeners, Building Natural Ponds and Garden Myths. localgardener.net
Dealing with deer Story by Shauna Dobbie
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eer are beautiful and graceful, but make no mistake: they are wild animals. And they will do the easiest thing necessary to feed themselves. I learned this the hard way. Many years ago, I had my first up-close-and-personal encounter with deer. I was in Nara, Japan, a city where deer are traditionally considered sacred. These are sika deer, smaller than our white-tail deer, and quite accustomed to humans in Nara. There is a park where they roam free and there are vendors who sell deer crackers you can buy to feed them. The deer watch for people to go to the vendors and then they attack the purchaser to get the food. It turns out that deer bite. And they butt you with their heads. The encounter was not positive. I do still find them beautiful and graceful, but I don’t think deer are meant to be hand-fed by people. And I understand why people don’t appreciate deer feasting on their hostas and hydrangeas. Fencing The one sure-fire way to prevent deer from getting at your garden is to completely surround it by a fence that is 10 feet high. But you aren’t allowed to build a 10-foot-high localgardener.net
fence anywhere that is residential. The height varies slightly, depending on where you live, with back-yard fences allowed at six feet in cities. You can build a fence to the maximum height that isn’t see-through, though. Deer are very cautious about jumping over something when they can’t see what’s on the other side. You’ll need to make sure there is room for air to get through depending on the material the fence is made of. You can also build an outside fence and an inside fence four feet apart. These don’t need to be more than five feet high, which is good because double the fencing is double the money. It is an option, though, if you have space. Alternatively, you can build a cage around your most important plants for a vegetable garden; this won’t help you for ornamental plants though. Sprays Several repellent sprays are effective against deer. Bobbex is a favourite amongst our staff at Canada’s Local Gardener, and there are a few others as well. The problem with sprays is that you need to spray them again after a couple of weeks. And the effective and long-lasting sprays cannot be used on plants you will eat. Issue 1
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Lady’s mantle.
Canadian wild ginger.
Caryopteris.
Lily-of-the-valley.
There are recipes online for home-made deterrents involving hot pepper oil, garlic and eggs. Some of them smell awful and all need to be reapplied frequently. Other solutions are to scatter grated bar-soap (Irish Spring is a favourite), or to use human pee. All of these may work for some, but none of them work for everyone or forever. Scare tactics Motion-sensing sprayers like ScareCrow do a good job at first and you can enjoy watching deer scamper away when they’ve been scared by a blast of water. You will need to move these devices frequently, though, because deer are smart and will learn how to approach a garden without triggering them. Also, they won’t do much good in winter. Other sensors emit a high-pitched sound, out of the hearing range of people and within the hearing range of deer. Those may work if you don’t have the same deer all the time; if you
do, they will keep trying to get to the good stuff they’ve had before and will eventually become accustomed to the sound. One sound-maker is best left to remote areas, like a field with no houses close by; it emits a huge spark and a loud bang. Some will turn on bright lights or flashing lights or will shine two red lights to look like a predator’s eyes. Again, these will need to be moved every couple of days so deer don’t get used to them. While scare tactics may work, you have to ask yourself, is it okay to scare the pants off deer to keep them out of your yard? If you answer no, keep looking for a solution. Deer-resistant plants There are several plants deer find distasteful, though there are few that none of them will eat. They tend to dislike plants that are hairy, spiny or heavily scented, yet there are gardeners whose prickly roses aren’t safe.
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Geranium cransesbill.
Feverfew.
Bleeding Heart.
Forget-me-nots.
Plant more of the distasteful plants, particularly toward the perimeter of your garden, and you’ll have more luck. Carolyn Singer, who wrote the definitive guide on the subject called Deer in My Garden, has found that there are few plants that deer will always pass up. Here they are: Aegopodium podagraria (goutweed) Alchemilla mollis (lady's mantle) Asarum caudatum (wild ginger) Campanula poscharskyana (Serbian bellflower) Campanula species (bellflower) Caryopteris clandonensis (blue mist) Cerastium tomentosum (snow-in-summer) Convallaria majalis (lily-of-the-valley) (most of the time!) Dicentra species (bleeding heart) Geranium x cantabrigiense (hardy geranium) localgardener.net
Helleborus species (hellebore) Lamiastrum galeobdolen (golden archangel) Lamium maculatum Leucanthemum x superbum (Shasta daisies) Myosotis (forget-me-not) Origanum vulgare ‘Aureum’ (golden oregano) Phlox subulata (creeping phlox) Potentilla canadensis (creeping cinquefoil) Rosmarinus (rosemary) Salvia officinalis (common sage) Tanacetum parthenium (feverfew) Thymus species (thyme) - green-leafed varieties only in partial shade Veronica peduncularis ‘Georgia Blue’ Veronica 'Waterperry' Viola (violets...but only those with small leaves!) C Issue 1
2020 • 29
End of season tool care
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top! Don’t pass this article by, thinking “ach, I’ll do it some day.” Today is the day. Wouldn’t it be great to keep your current garden tools forever? Or do you like shelling out for a new trowel every two years? Clean off dirt and rust Get grime off by soaking in soapy water for a few minutes. Sap will require WD-40 or Citrasolv to clean off, or a whole lot of elbow grease. Get rid of the sap so your tools will be sparkly at the end of all this work. Rust can be removed with a wire brush, steel wool or fine-grit sandpaper. You can take secateurs and loppers apart if you’re ambitious. If not, just do your best to get them clean around the joint. Sharpening tools Now is the time to sharpen your shovels, secateurs, hoes and scissors. If you have a place to take them for service, go for it. Otherwise, set aside an hour and do them all. If you don’t enjoy it, well, it’s just once per year. If you have a shop with a table vise, it will be easier. Otherwise, clear a table. Ask for this at your hardware store: a bastard mill file. It’s a good place to start. A mill file means it’s flat and a bastard file means it’s of medium coarseness. Also pick up a diamond file, which is embedded with diamond dust. The mill file is for shovels and hoes, the diamond file is for secateurs and scissors, which need a more finely sharpened edge. The cutting edge of a tool is bevelled. Place your file at the angle of the bevel and file toward the cut edge. Apply medium pressure. Do this all along the blade until the bevel is shiny. Then turn the tool over and do a smooth, flat pass with the file to remove any burrs. Finish and hang With everything clean and sharp, you can go a little bit further by giving wooden handles a bit of effort. Sand them smooth and rub oil into them. Put your jointed tools back together (if you took them apart). Apply a little oil to the moving parts and adjust the nut so that the tool moves with ease but is tight enough to be effective. Finally, one of the most impor30 • 2020
Taking care of your tools ensure they’ll be around for many more seasons.
Scan me Watch this video on how to clean a folding saw blade. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7TqOuox2u4
tant things you can do: store your tools. Keep the working end of longhandled tools off the floor and keep all tools out of the rain, snow, sleet and sun. Easy way to keep tools happy Get a bucket, like a 5-gallon (19-litre) one. Home Depot sells them for about $4. Fill it with sand. Where do you get sand? If you don’t have a source, buy it from the same place as you bought your bucket. Hardware stores sell sand in 20- or 25-litre bags. You can use play sand, but construcIssue 1
tion sand will work better at honing tools. Put the sand in the bucket. Add four cups of oil. What kind of oil? Doesn’t really matter. You can use machine oil, mineral oil, baby oil, even vegetable oil. You can mix it if you want or leave it for the oil to permeate the sand. When you’re done using any kind of metal tool, plunge it into the bucket a few times to clean it. Keep the bucket of oily sand next to where you store your tools. It’s too heavy to move. Through the gardening season: dealing with diseased plants You’re forever being told to clean your tools between cuts when dealing with various nasty diseases like verticillium wilt, as well as between plants. Don’t use bleach for this job because bleach pits metal and kills the plants it comes in contact with. Use rubbing alcohol or Lysol. You can spray or dip and wipe the tool dry. C localgardener.net
The seasons are changing, what to do now? By Ian Leatt
Your tools work hard for you - why not show them a little love?
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he weather has changed, no more warm summer breeze. Now a north wind starts to blow, the nights are drawing in, while a light frost greets me in the morning. The leaves have changed from a lush dark green to orange, red and vibrant yellow. Clearing up the leaves, I start to think about what’s to come. It is at this time of year when one should look at cleaning all the tools of spring and summer and like the many perennials in the garden, put them to slumber, clean and ready for next year’s use. Many of us tend to just put tools to one side and forget about them until we need them once more. Something about this and my growing up; my father’s words embedded inside my mind: “Always clean your tools after use Ian, so that when you next need them, they are ready to go!” I never really understood the reasoning when I was younger, I mean why would I, a tool is a tool, is it not? Now that I have aged somewhat I have to agree. Not only that but I get so many more years out of them! Moving into a new home and not having anywhere to put tools can be a bind. I happened to have mentioned it to the old dawg. “Why don’t I stop by one of these days and give you a hand?” localgardener.net
Scan me Click here for a tutorial on tool care by the Two Olde Dawgs! https://www.localgardener.net/ putting-your-garden-tools-to-bed/
Gord mentioned. Always helps to know someone who can, right! As I start to gather the fallen leaves a truck pulls up behind me, “Hey there,” I hear a voice call out, followed by a smiling face. Gord never frowns, always happy. “You have a long way to go brother,” he tells me pointing at my pile of leaves, or rather small pile; I hadn’t been gathering the leaves that long. “I have a couple of hours to spare and figured that now was as good a time as any to show you what I do with my tools through the winter time.” Gord strapping on his tool belt strolls over to the garage. Scratching his head, he looks back at me “you haven’t done anything yet!” Issue 1
“Um, well I didn’t know you were coming over. Anyway, you never did explain what you had in mind.” I replied, trying to defend myself. “Simple really,” he says. “All you need are some old 2-by-4 pieces of timber and some nails.” I scurried along behind as he whittled out what I needed to have. Hammer, nails, drill, drill bit, screws, spirit level. All collected and ready for the task at hand. “First off, have you cleaned the tools that are not going to be used through next year?” Gord asks. “Cleaned yes, even WD 40’d.” I replied, smiling as if I was trying to impress a school teacher. “Right, this is all you need do. Line up the tools along the wall, so we get an idea as to what will go where. Size is always important. It is a bit like a jigsaw puzzle, everything has a place.” Once we are both satisfied Gord then places a piece of timber on the wall with the level on top, ensuring we put it in the correct place, then screwing in several screws each end we slowly start to fill the wall. As each piece finds a new home tools are marked as to where they will reside. Once finished, Gord and I stand back. Simple, clean and tidy. Every home should have one. C 2020 • 31
Tree diversity
A popular concept but not without concerns Story by Wilbert Ronald, photos courtesy of Jeffries Nurseries
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he buzz word in tree production and planting is the word “diversity” and it is impacting what trees are grown and planted as tree producers try to expand the range of trees available for use, particularly on city boulevards. There is consensus among tree specialists that overuse of a limited range of tree species can make for extreme vulnerability to disease and pest losses. We can see this confirmed as we look at fungal diseases causing losses to native American elm from Dutch elm disease, to Shubert cherry from black knot and to the columnar aspens from bronze leaf disease. A range of insect pests as well are on the horizon, as with the emerald ash borer introduced from northeast Asia. There are some important concerns as the range of tree species is expanded and the limitations of certain species becomes more noticeable. We discuss some of the limitations that a number of trees have and how careful use can help in managing these limitations. We will start at the roots and move up to the fruit and discuss the issue of hardiness. Transplant ease Some of the trees such as oaks, buckeyes and the butternut and black walnut group have deep coarse roots which make transplanting and tree establishment a challenge. Nursery growers have responded by developing procedures for root pruning to develop fibrous roots, by using larger root balls when transplanting hard to establish trees and by growing more trees in large containers to help reduce transplant shock. One danger of using containers for slower growing trees is that trees can become root bound in the container as they spend 2-3 years growing to saleable size. Any encircling roots need to be severed and the root ball somewhat trimmed so that the long-term planting success can be assured. We now see many of our oaks and buckeyes grown for three to four years in the field and then potted for one to two years to give a five- to six-foot 32 • 2020
Container grown trees like oaks are likely to survive transplanting.
tree ready to transplant. Larger oak trees and other tap rooted species are moved or dug with a tree spade quite successfully. Different moisture requirements A number of trees such as the silver and sugar maples as well as all linden species require higher moisture levels than previously planted elms and ash species. Everyone must be educated to provide additional watering. Some Amur cherry and cherry hybrids such as ‘Ming’ like good moisture levels but will not take excessive moisture or roots sitting in water. These plants cannot survive where basement sump Issue 1
pumps leave root zones flooded so be careful to choose the right location. Soil pH and salts Maple species in general do not tolerate highly alkaline soils whereas elms and ash are very tolerant of alkalinity. This means that maples may see limited use in areas where soil pH above 7.8 is not uncommon. Likewise, salt spray drift from speeding traffic or the ocean can affect trees such as lindens much more than the elms. Lindens are often recommended more for lower traffic and slower traffic streets including residential and collector streets. localgardener.net
Winter damage always takes its toll on tender trees.
Large fruit, fruit drop and excessive seeds Several tree species such as Ohio buckeye, butternut, black walnut, bur oak and Ussurian pears produce large volumes of larger fruit which drops to the ground when mature. Some homeowners don’t mind cleaning up the fruit, but others would regard excessive fruit as a really negative issue. Obviously if we use these trees in larger green spaces and parks the fruit will be less of an issue. Some trees such as Amur maple and particularly boxelder maple produce such large quantities of seed that they can be regarded as weed trees. There is even a danger that excessive seed can lead to invasiveness issues in non-native trees. Tree breeders have responded by breeding trees in some species that have no seed either because they are mostly sterile or are male individuals bearing no seed. In a number of cases trees have been developed that have small fruit that are retained on the tree avoiding any mess. Marginal hardiness As the tree producers have widened their tree production the natural inclination is to look south and try to find more species which may prove to be marginal in hardiness. We see a large number of localgardener.net
Excessive fruit fallen from a Ussurian pear tree. Issue 1
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Small fruit on ‘Starlite’ flowering crabapple are great.
‘Autumn Blaze’ maples sold in Zone 3, where it is marginal, for example. Remember that trees must survive many climatic extremes over many years as they mature. Animal, bird and rodent damage American elm and ash were reasonably resistant to most of this damage but as a wider group of trees are used it produces a bigger “buffet” for wildlife. For over 10 years at my nursery we have used and recommended tree guards which expand as the tree grows and effectively limit most rabbit and mouse damage which can be severe on flowering crabapples. Another advantage of tree guards is found in their value as trunk 34 • 2020
Tree guards are the best investment you can make.
protection during the summer season when mowers and weed eaters can cause trunk damage. If you wish you can put the tree guard away for the summer but make sure it is reinstalled by November. Sap suckers can be a problem to the trunks of birch and alders and must be controlled. Many of the above issues should be evaluated when choosing what tree to plant and where to plant. In summary, there are trees suited to certain sites and not to other sites. Using container stock solves many problems for “hard to transplant” trees. Hardiness and adequate moisture remain are key factors that determine what tree to plant. A shelIssue 1
tered site may entice you to try some out-of-Zone trees, but a windswept site will demand more hardy trees. Whatever you do, keep planting trees and work through any difficulties you encounter. To obtain diversity it is going to require a range of trees on different sites to reach your goal. There are some good trees including northern sugar maples, seedless ‘Silver Cloud’ maple, ‘Ming’ cherry, Asiatic elms that are Dutch elm disease-resistant, Amur cork tree, new oaks and linden hybrids which are increasing in use. Just remember there are few trees as tough as elm or ash and be prepared to give that extra care to establish your favorite tree. C localgardener.net
Things plants know By Dorothy Dobbie
Researchers have found the sensitive plant (Mimosa pudica) can learn.
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ver the past few years, we have been discovering that plants “know” a lot more than we used to think They have memories and learn from experience. They can sense objects around them and can detect presences beyond their own. They have complicated inner clocks that tell them when it its time to wake up or go to sleep or set blossom, seed or drop leaves. Plants can learn the habits of animals and take advantage of those habits. They adapt to invaders and form co-operative relationships. They know when there are enemies in the area and produce chemicals to ward them off or even to lure them to their demise. They have a secret underground relationship with families of fungus and bacteria that not only carry messages to other plants but practice trade, exchanging digestible minerals for carbohydrates produced by the plant. Physically, although they aren’t mobile, plants have learned how to have long distance sex, rejuvenate lost body parts and, what’s more, some can live for hundreds, even thousands, of years. Don’t laugh. All these things are being seriously studlocalgardener.net
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Photo by Pharaoh Han.
Acacia trees and ants work together.
ied. Leading the debate on plant intelligence is Australian Monica Gagliano, an evolutionary ecologist, who started out as a marine scientist. “I realized only in hindsight that the same question I had about the animal transferred onto the plant. The main realization for me wasn't the fact that plants themselves must be something more than we give them credit for, but what if everything around us is much more than we give it credit for, whether it's animal, plant, bacteria, whatever?” Plant memories Mimosa pudica, otherwise known as the sensitive plant, has taught us through some scientific experiments that it can learn from experience, remembering what happened when it went through a jarring experience created by Gagliano, who dropped the plant gently over and over again. The first few times, the sensitive plant reacted as one would expect, closing its leaves. But after many repetitions, it started ignoring the action even though it reacted to other stimuli. Monica left the plant for a few days, came back, and it still didn’t react to the drop. Even after a month had passed, the learned behaviour prevailed. House plant growers will know this if they think about it. Plants that are stressed often learn to adapt to the stress by modifying their responses, storing more water in leaves and roots if their keeper is a light waterer, 36 • 2020
for example, or becoming less sensitive to cold when in a persistent draft. So, when you hear someone exclaim. “Oh, I only water my plants once every two weeks and they are all right,” you might want to credit the cleverness of the plant over the ingenuity of the gardener. Plant memories can be stimulated by one or several things: cold, light, hydration, air vibrations caused by insects or other stimuli, chemical triggers. . . it all adds up to a little more than we once gave plants credit for. Plant defenses Plants have a powerful arsenal that can be used to defend themselves or go even further and attack. It all depends on the type of plant and the nature of the threat. The list of plant-based chemical defenses is long and deadly and includes cyanide, glycolates and razorshaped crystals of calcium oxalate as in what dieffenbachia, a common houseplant, can release to predators that dare to taste their broad leaves. This nasty defence mechanism can paralyse a browsing animal’s tongue, giving the plant the common name of dumbcane. Chemical defenses can be delivered through aerosols, roots, touch and even by employing the assistance of beneficial bacteria and fungus such mycorrhizae that live in symbiosis with the plant. Mutualism Symbiosis or mutualism is another way plants have of protecting themselves and taking advantage of resourcIssue 1
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How were outside tobacco plants able to tell indoor tobacco plants about aphids?
es. One of the most common examples is the relationship between the plant and the pollinator. The plant gets the ability to propagate while the pollinator gets food during the exercise. The African acacia gives a home to the acacia ant, which in turn prevents rampant vines from invading their tree-home by chopping off the vines’ tendrils as soon as they being to wind around the tree. The ants will also go after invading insects as large as grasshoppers. The tree feeds as well as shelters the ant in hollowed out thorns where they also raise their ant offspring. This is just one of the many ways plants have of using outside resources to survive and thrive. We all know how they employ birds and squirrels and certainly humans to disperse their seeds. Plants also respond to sound, something that perceptive gardeners have been saying for years. We now know that plants will respond with a chemical weapon when they “hear” a caterpillar chewing Plant feelings Lately we have been learning that some plants “scream” when under distress from events such as drought. They produce ultra sonic squeals, but we aren’t quite sure why, yet, unless it is the answer to the old question of how a tobacco plant in a closed environment was able to signal an aphid attack to another localgardener.net
tobacco plant outside. In that case, it seems that the warning was to protect the species and we have known for some time that plants will warn others in their vicinity of danger from predator attack. Some do this by sending out chemicals. Some change their shape or colour when they are under stress. This new research from Israel was conducted to see if detecting sound could help in developing more precision response to the needs of agricultural crops. Using tobacco plants as well as tomatoes, scientists then introduced different artificial stresses to different plants and attached listening devices to each. They responded with sounds which were different in response to each set of challenges. We also know that plants produce electrical signals throughout their structures, from the petals of flowers to the roots, leaves and stems. Some scientists believe that electrical signals in plants could carry and process information. In conclusion, Monica Gagliano says, “ …plants have taught me a lot and through the process of working with them I have learned a lot about who they are and who I am as well in relation to them, I needed to go through that first phase of interacting with the animal world and realizing that there is much more there than we are allowing them to show. There is more here than we're actually acknowledging.” C Issue 1
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Beautiful Gardens Lynne and Michael Knowlton Durham, Ontario Story by Colin McAllister and Justin Ryan, photos by Suech and Beck.
Their brand-new book, Escapology, having just published, designers and TV hosts Colin and Justin discuss the social science of getting away. In essence, they say, it’s all about retreating to a special place—a cottage, vacation home or cabin—to decompress. Prepare to swoon as you browse 24 inspirational respites, and 150 beautiful rooms…
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ow, perhaps more than ever before, escape is something about which people dream, and upon which they focus. Few would disagree that life, over the last few months, has changed for us all, huh? But what if your exotic destination were closer to home? Maybe even in your own back yard… Enter Lynne and Michael Knowlton of Durham, Ontario, who decided to convert a former kids playhouse (to the side of their home) into a quirky, inspirational holiday destination. Little did they know, back then, that it would quickly morph into their own favorite holiday destination, whilst topping the wish list of an international coterie of Airbnb’ers who long for quality hammock time perched high above ground. For Lynne, a freelance stylist who works predominantly in the home decor and magazine environment, it’s a dream come true: one that provides endless inspiration to her followers at lynneknowlton.com (one of North America’s most popular lifestyle destinations) who love elegant, casual style and the way in which the tree house blurs the lines between indoor and out. Expanding the living space on warm evenings. 38 • 2020
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The treehouse among the trees.
Seriously, it’s just oh-so-special. The tiny, elevated structure sits within the limbs of a densely wooded copse, which means that, during summer months, when leaf coverage is verdant, the achingly cool nest is shielded from view, cosseted by verdant foliage across its every elevation. When fall arrives, however, and Mother Nature sheds her plumage, the tiny nest is gradually revealed, in all its rustic glory. And it’s a breathtaking affair… The 200-square-foot main tree house, built for the most part from salvaged cedar, oak and pine, 40 • 2020
boasts one room and a mezzanine that provides ample space for sleeping, reading or daydreaming. The 185-square-foot cabin at ground level includes a secondary lounging area, a full kitchen and an additional bedroom. Accessories and decorative layers feel lovingly curated. Wooden surfaces, everywhere, are exactingly sanded, and linens, textiles and cushions are immaculately groomed to provide visitors with that first-time feeling. Nothing, as we see it, feels in any way forced, it all Issue 1
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Inside the treehouse, a kitchen and a loft.
appears to have come together over time, each artifact and each layer a jigsaw puzzle piece building the bigger picture. It’s a credit, at all times, to its visionary, Lynne and to her daughter Tristan whose familial and creative input helped bring the project alive. Painting, in a predominantly white palette, ensures proportions feel as generous as possible. The most important note however, is contrast, which in this case is telegraphed via multiple wood finishes, occasional colour pops and generous natural wood detailing. localgardener.net
When colouration is significantly monochrome, it’s important to add extra textural layers to provide depth. Failing to do this can make visuals appear somewhat one-dimensional. Think, for instance about painted wood, rough linens, smooth cottons and faux fur. Yes indeed, when adding visual texture, it really is a case of the more the merrier”. Many of the furnishings that pepper the tree house interior were auction finds, salvage items, or pieces bought from consignment stores. After stripping paint to reveal the natural wood grain, or white Issue 1
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An outdoor sink.
Under the treehouse.
washing to provide contrast, they were carefully arranged to proffer a lived-in, time-worn aesthetic. When confines are tight, examine creative ways in which to make space function better. If you don’t have a dining room, for example, do as Lynne did and take it outdoors. The underside of the tree house is arranged as an ideal spot for al fresco eating, and a space in which to lounge in hammocks or swing chairs on balmy evenings. Beset as her vacation retreat is with compromised 42 • 2020
living space, Lynne also arranged ancillary fresh-air living quarters to maximise the lifestyle quotient. On the manicured gravel perimeter, outdoor furniture and a modernist, faceted steel fire pit create a cosy, living-room vibe. Yes indeed, for Lynn and her guests, the great outdoors is a critical part of the overall offering: convenient, being that the surrounding landscape of softly undulating fields is so commanding. To this end, together with her husband Michael Issue 1
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Relax in the hammock.
and daughter Tristan, Lynne capitalised on the outdoors by adding a beautiful pool, an outdoor kitchen and an inviting cabana area. We can attest it’s a beautifully appointed space, everything built within the perimeter stone walls of the previously derelict barn which once occupied the space. So, perchance to dream. Perchance to hide away, far from the madding crowd. The Knowlton vision, it’s fair to report, delivers everything the artistic— albeit demanding—creative could want in a modern localgardener.net
rustic bolthole. Just imagine hiding away, high above ground, as that beautiful cradle of branches sways gently… and you fall softly asleep. Can you feel the decompression? Aye, it’s a truly perfect escape… C Escapology (Figure 1 Publishing) by Colin McAllister and Justin Ryan is available now from Chapters/ Indigo, Amazon and all good book shops. For further information about The Tree House and Cabin Retreat, visit www.lynneknowlton.com Issue 1
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A garden with a view.
Beautiful Gardens Victoria Beattie Calgary Story by Dorothy Dobbie, photos by Dorothy Dobbie and Shauna Dobbie
Victoria Beattie. 44 • 2020
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Hiding up there lies a garden in the sky.
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ictoria Beattie is one of those women who reach for the sky, no matter what their occupation. Maybe that’s why she has developed a little beauty of a garden near the top of one of Calgary’s downtown high-rise condo complexes . . . and why she is able to do it so effectively. It may also be the reason she has been so successful in her business. This petite woman owns an industrial construction company. Square in shape and facing southwest, her courtyard garden has three protective walls instead of the usual one of most terrace gardens. This should help with the wind but at five o’clock every afternoon, a little whirlwind is generated as the heat of the pavement rises to meet the colder upper air and causes a mini maelstrom. “It’s all over in an hour and a half,” Victoria laughs, “but from 5:00 to 6:30, the wind is so strong, it can pick up a table umbrella and turn it into a weapon of destruction.” By dinner time at seven o’clock, it’s all over. The wind is gone and it becomes very quiet. This is just one of the fascinating things about gardening in the Calgary sky. “I used to live in Edmonton,” Victoria explains, “and it is a completely different zone.” She has had to learn to live with sudden snowstorms followed by sudden thaws, or spring temperatures diving localgardener.net
Multi-tiered planters for purple petunias and calibrachoa.
Bicoloured verbena. Issue 1
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to -30 degrees Celsius and killing all the nascent buds on her beautiful Japanese lilac as happened this spring. Facing south-east, the garden gets the morning sun all the way until two in the afternoon, a perfect exposure. As the day heats up, the sun disappears around the corner leaving the patio perfect for evening enjoyment. And there is a lot to enjoy. And every year it is brand new—literally! Every October, Victoria lines up all her perennials, the hosta, the astilbe, the Lady’s mantles and perennial bachelor buttons . . . whatever caught her fancy last May. She gets out a five-gallon pail of water, pulls up the perennials and then carefully rinses the soil from their roots. She lays the plants flat, bare root, in her “perennials suitcase” ready for an immediate flight to Vancouver, where she takes them to her daughter’s acreage and plants them. “They are all very healthy and happy at the end of this ride,” notes Victoria, who bids them an unregretful good bye, her mind already on the newcomers that she will have assembled by her favourite greenhouses next May. But the trees stay. She keeps them happy and under control. They are pruned to size; especially the pretty dogwoods that do so well up here and whose seven-foot, red stems please her eye all winter. “They look so pretty with the snow on them,” she says. She is not the only one who loves the trees in the garden. This past summer, she had two nests full of baby birds which she got to watch as they fledged and learned to fly. Sadly, a magpie got one of them. That five-gallon bucket of rinsing water is returned to the trees, full of the undigested but collected nutrients around the perennials’ roots. Then the trees get some loving care once it’s time for freeze-up. Victoria wraps them tenderly in packing blankets, made snug with bungie rope. This past season, Victoria added to her weeping caragana collection so now she has three to supplement the dogwoods, the two six-foot trembling aspens and the three Norwegian spruce. She even had a ‘Blue Moon’ wisteria that rewarded her stingily with two blossoms over its sojourn in the garden. But this year, they have all been
A bird feeder full of seeds.
Room for bird visitors. 46 • 2020
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Pots of grasses and evergreens along the railing.
Hostas in different colours provide a backdrop for other plants in this high-level wonderland. localgardener.net
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Young evergreen potted up by the window.
'Night Sky' petunias shine brightly.
Another mass of plants. Do you see the strawberries at the bottom? 48 • 2020
banished, at least temporarily, to a new home as the “house” is being renovated, and that includes the balcony. Next year’s garden will be a thing of even greater splendour based on Victoria’s experience after three years of building this world of wonder. She now knows what grows best. “The herbs were unbelievable this year,” she says. “It was so hot.” You name it in the kitchen spice closet and it seems Victoria has it: chives, basil, thyme, parsley, and oregano . . . no need to worry about mint taking over this garden. How does this all happen without flooding the folks below? Victoria has an irrigation system hooked up so that he plants all get a nourishing drink for 10 minutes every night. Plus, when it gets hot and dry, she has one of those wonderful shrinking hoses that she can use to spritz her hostas and other big-leafed plants. There is no need for drainage this way and the plants are very vigorous, getting just the right amount of Issue 1
water every day. You should see her fat and satisfied tomatoes. Nor is anything wasted; she empathises with the heavy lifting her husband, a “very sweet man”, had to do to fill all those containers in the beginning. The pots are filled with equal parts of topsoil and composted manure. Cow’s manure is best, she says. She uses the soil from her denuded perennials to form the basis of her next year’s potting mixes for the new plants that arrive on that glorious weekend in May when she indulges in an orgy of planning and planting. When winter comes, it is not over. The patio opens off her bedroom. The trees are out there, the scarlet dogwood limbs shining red against the brick and the snow. She keeps the birds fed and happy with the luxury of a heated birdbath. This provides her with a morning pageant that gladdens the spirit. “It’s quite enchanting to lie in bed and watch them through the patio doors,” she says. C localgardener.net
A view of some skyscrapers just beyond this table for two.
A herb garden and tomatoes.
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Discover the gold standard in home improvement television with Emmywinner This Old House and its spin-off, Ask This Old House, airing back-to-back Thursdays at 7pm.
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Beautiful Gardens Helen Hogue Winnipeg Story and photos by Shauna Dobbie
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nly about 5 percent of monarch eggs reach adulthood, but when Helen Hogue gets hold of them, the number increases to over 90 percent. This 83-year-old woman, living at the very western edge of Winnipeg, took to butterfly husbandry a few years ago. Her first monarch experience was at Prairie Originals, a nursery in nearby Selkirk. She was on a tour, and at the end, the leader brought an envelope out of the fridge. The envelope had a monarch in it, kept in diapause by refrigeration. “Would anybody like to release it?” the tour leader asked. Helen raised her hand and a passion was born. Helen also volunteers at the local school, where the Kindergarten kids bring in purchased tiny painted lady caterpillars as part of the curriculum. She helps the children foster the butterflies through the caterpillar and chrysalid stages then invites the wee ones with their butterflies to release them in her garden. The last few years she has been raising monarchs on her screened porch. Milkweed is the only species monarch caterpillars can eat. Helen goes out every morning in her housecoat to bring in milkweed leaves from her garden and her neighbour’s. Some have monarch eggs, some have tiny caterpillars, and all are great food for the caterpillars already housed in butterfly cubes on her porch. The stems of the milkweed go into floral tubes— the bulbs filled with water you find on long-stemmed roses—and those tubes go into upside-down egg cartons covered in plastic wrap. Covering the egg cartons in plastic wrap makes them easy to clean, which is something a butterfly raiser must deal with a lot. Helen cleans her habitats up to three times per day. Monarchs eat a lot, especially as they get bigger, and that means they leave a lot of frass (poop) behind. If you don’t clean up the frass, the caterpillars may take bacteria with them when they form crysalides, which can lead to death. 50 • 2020
Helen’s house, early in the season, ready to burst forth with blooms and butterflies.
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Hostas will attract butterflies when they bloom.
A girl steps timidly among the alyssum.
It takes about five weeks from a newly laid egg to a butterfly, and in that time the creature goes from the size of a pin head to six or seven inches across. This year, Helen raised 366 monarchs with 16 dying before she could release them. They can die for a host of reasons, from a chrysalis falling when it is newly formed and still wet, to genetic issues. Helen’s numbers are good news for a species that numbered around 1 billion in the 1990s and was reduced to just 56 million a few years ago. That’s a 95 per cent drop. There are several reasons posited for the decline in monarchs, but the eradication of milkweed is a big one. Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) has been the bane of farmers since they arrived in Canada. It spreads by underground rhizomes, which makes it difficult to get rid of in a field; livestock poisoning themselves by eating it has also been expressed as a worry, but most livestock won’t bother with it. Helen grows them anyhow. “The flower on it is a huge, big pink, and it smells almost like lilacs,” she enthuses. She also grows a couple of other varieties of milkweed that are less invasive. She’s been gardening since her kids were teens, but lately her tastes are moving towards native flowers; a favourite is Joe Pye weed, which is incredibly attractive to butterflies because of its high nectar content. But she isn’t a purist and plants zinnias every year to give plenty of colour in the fall while adding to the butterflies’ food source. C
Butterfly lingo
Blind man’s bluff! 52 • 2020
Chrysalis: when the butterfly hangs from a surface and morphs into a hard shell, between caterpillar and adult. Chrysalid: the adjective form for chrysalis. Chrysalides: the plural of chrysalis. Imago: the adult stage of a butterfly. Instar: one of several stages of the caterpillar between egg and chrysalis. Monarchs have five instars. Eclose: when the butterfly comes out of the chrysalis, kind of like hatching from an egg. Issue 1
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The cycle of raising Monarch butterflies Photos by Helen Hogue
Caterpillars swarm the milkweed, eating fast.
Helen’s ingenious invention: an egg carton covered with plastic wrap! It makes cleaning so much faster.
Chrysalides at different stages of development at the top of the butterfly habitat, ranging from green, newly formed to black, ready to open.
Newly eclosed butterflies, drying their wings.
Zinnias in the floral tubes, to offer a first meal to new butterflies.
One of the butterflies, ready to take wing.
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These flowers in Helen's garden
A basket of petunias and dusty miller.
Delphinium.
Milkweed in bud.
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are butterfly magnets
Black-eyed Susans.
Ratibida.
Sweet peas.
Mallow and larkspur. localgardener.net
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One of the things that makes Roy’s gardens so spectacular is the borrowed scenery of beautiful New Brunswick.
Beautiful Gardens Roy Morris
Upper Golden Grove, New Brunswick Story by Shauna Dobbie, Photos by Roy Morris 56 • 2020
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he way I look at things is, you can’t go wrong with green and beauty. So, I try to make the world a prettier place,” says Roy Morris. He’s on the phone, reflecting on the gardens he’s worked on in his 75 years. That would be gardens at the three houses he’s lived plus those of people he’s helped; he figures he’s put in over 100 ponds. Roy started gardening when he bought his first house. He put some plants in, and a new passion was born. Over the years, he started landscaping for others on his days off; he worked in quality control at Irving Paper. “Every time I would tackle a project for somebody, it localgardener.net
The sun setting behind the garden.
The front of Roy’s house. localgardener.net
Roy’s truck coming around the hydrangeas. He loves cars in addition to gardens. Issue 1
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A view from the window.
Some peonies and a climbing hydrangea to take your
gave me another way to sharpen my landscape skill,” he says. One of his biggest projects ever was at the home of the owner of a golf course. It involved putting in a 150-foot stream, and the owner had plans drawn up by a landscape architect. The project took two months and Roy had a team of five to resituate huge boulders and build the stream. But working from an architect’s plans is not how he does things. “For two days I tried to work off the blueprints, and I went to him and said, look, you can keep the blueprints, I know what I’m doing.” And he did know. The landscape turned out beautiful. I ask in an offhand way about how much a project like that would cost.
A mass of tri-coloured willows. 58 • 2020
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breath away.
A burbling fountain. localgardener.net
Is it nature or is it Roy?
Hydrangeas bloom with abandon next to Roy’s house. Issue 1
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Blue chairs in the fall. The flowers are hanging on to the last of the season.
A gravel path between the hostas and daylilies.
Echinacea. 60 • 2020
He’s not telling. He says a regular pond would cost about the same as a week down south, but this project was more like six months in China. A man of many interests, Roy is also a photographer. Gardening and photography have several things in common, including seeing where a minor change can result in a massive improvement. What’s more, he tells me, “I find photography teaches you how to see.” Where he makes his home now is about an acre and a half, all cultivated. “Oh yeah, I used to keep busy,” he says. “People say it’s a lot of work, but it isn’t work to me. My way of relaxing was to go out and Issue 1
put a plant in.” He used to give garden lectures to horticulture clubs. Today, though, he spends more time on another hobby; he’s also a car enthusiast. Most days he gathers at a coffee shop with other car nuts to gab. But he finds time to spend on Facebook groups posting breath-taking pictures of his garden and the environs of New Brunswick. “I just find I enjoy life better by finding beauty around me. It sounds kind of hokey, but that’s just how I see it.” Hokey? It doesn’t sound hokey at all, Roy. It sounds like you’ve got it all figured out. C localgardener.net
Roy is a hosta-holic. He collected specimens and has photographed them at different stages.
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How to get started
A
re you starting your very first garden? Congratulations! There are several little details to take you from the idea to your first year of blooms or food. Here is a primer that will get you through with most plants. This guide will be printed at the back of every issue of Canada’s Local Gardener. May you have a long future as a gardener, during which you add techniques from others and elements you discover that work for you. Happy gardening! How to start a garden 1. Make it smaller than you think you’ll need. 2. Mow the area, then lay down 7 to 10 sheets of newspaper over the grass or weeds. 3. Water the newspaper. 4. Pile on four to six inches of triple mix soil 5. If you want, pile on four inches of cedar mulch. 6. Plant bedding plants. Containers 1. Outdoor containers should be larger; smaller ones will dry out too quickly. 2. Hanging containers will dry out faster than those on the ground. 3. Drainage is important. If there are no holes in the container and you can’t put holes in it, put plants in a 62 • 2020
plastic liner pot and into the container. 4. Use potting soil for containers, not triple mix. 5. Feed container plants something like liquid kelp or Miracle Gro. They’re different from in-ground plants. Bedding plants 1. Water bedding plants the day before you plant them. 2. Dig a hole a little bigger than the pot the plant is in. 3. Remove the bedding plant from the pot. Squish the pot to get it out. 4. Gently spread out the root ball on the plant, put it into the hole and backfill around the root ball with soil. 5. Fibre pots: remove the plant and compost the pot. 6. Cell packs: if a plant comes in four or six attached plastic containers, they are four or six small plants, not one big one. 7. When you are done planting in a bed, water it well. Fall bulbs 1. Fall bulbs bloom in spring. They include tulips, crocuses and daffodils. You can plant them until the ground is frozen. 2. Plant bulbs in a hole that is three times the depth of the bulb. If a bulb is one inch high, plant it three inches deep. If it’s three inches high, plant it nine inches deep. Issue 1
3. You can plant each bulb in one hole or plant more bulbs in a wider hole. Leave one to two bulb-widths between them. 4. If you have chipmunks or other animals that will disturb bulbs, put chicken wire over the bulbs before filling in the hole with soil. Direct-sowing seeds 1. Prepare an existing bed by removing weeds and mixing in compost or topping with triple mix. 2. Either follow the directions on the seed packets, ask the person you got the seeds from, or follow the suggestions below. 3. Some seeds need light to germinate: ageratum, balloon flower, browallia, columbine, gaillardia, geranium, impatiens, lettuce, lobelia, nicotiana, osteospermum, petunias, poppies, savory, snapdragons. 4. Other seeds should be covered lightly with soil: alyssum, aster, balsam, beans, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, celosia, corn, cosmos, cucumbers, dianthus, eggplant, marigold, melons, morning glory, nasturtium, peas, pepper, radish, spinach, squash, tomato, zinnia. 5. Plant seeds about as far apart as you imagine the grown plant will need. Or plant them less far apart then thin them when they are too close together. Thin seedlings by snipping them off so you don’t disturb the roots of neighbouring plants. 6. Water new seeds with the mister on your hose nozzle so they don’t wash localgardener.net
away, but water them thoroughly. 7. Keep seedlings in a damp bed until they are one to two inches high. Weeding 1. Weed the day after it rains or the day after you water. It is easier to pull weeds from damp soil than from dry soil. 2. Hoe tiny weedlings in the spring. 3. If you don’t know what it is, wait until you do know before pulling it. 4. If you can’t pull a weed out, cut it off at ground level. Do this as often as needed, which could be daily. Eventually it should die from lack of sunlight. 5. Mulching can control weeds and make weeding easier. Watering 1. Always water new plants gently but well. 2. Water more deeply and less often. 3. Water the soil, not the plant, but don’t worry about plants getting wet. 4. Watering in the morning is best, but time of day doesn’t matter that much. 5. Outdoor pots need water frequently, possibly every day. Pests 1. Don’t treat for pests unless they are truly decimating your garden. 2. Many insects are beneficial to the garden. Several non-beneficial insects will attract beneficial insects to your garden. 3. Funguses and insect-eating plants will usually go away if treated with neem oil. 4. Aphids can be kept under control by spraying them off with water. It won’t kill them, but it will slow them down. Sun 1. Six or more hours per day of localgardener.net
Scan me Explore Canada’s plant hardiness site. http://www.planthardiness.gc.ca/
direct sun qualifies as full sun. 2. Three to six hours qualifies as part sun. 3. Less than three hours qualifies as shade. 4. Dappled shade can be any of these, depending on how dappled the shade is and for how much of the day. 5. Full sun is necessary for most vegetables. Part sun is acceptable for leafy vegetables.
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6. Pay attention to the tags on plants at the nursery. You can experiment with plants outside the recommended sun requirements, but be prepared for whatever the result is. Zones 1. Hardiness Zone is a number given to your geographical area to indicate whether a plant will survive the winter. You can find the hardiness Zone for your area online at planthardiness.gc.ca. Or you can ask at your local garden centre what Zone you are in. 2. Zones don’t matter for annuals. For perennials, they will give you an idea of what survives. For trees and shrubs, they are pretty accurate. 3. Canadian hardiness Zones and USDA hardiness Zones are different. A rule of thumb is to subtract one from the USDA Zone to get the Canadian Zone. 4. There are microclimates in every yard. Proximity to the house or a fence or position on a hill will change the climate. 5. Your local garden centre will not sell you plants that won’t thrive in your area. Or, if they do, they will issue a warning. Fall clean-up 1. Rake leaves off lawns and into flower beds. 2. Remove very diseased plants. Throw them out. 3. Everything else can be left for birds, insects and other animals. Much of it will compost in the garden over the winter. C
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