3 minute read
Gardening Tips
Gardening Tips
Rosanne Fortier - News Correspondent
Vegreville Garden Club presented Sharon Wallish Murphy as their guest speaker on April 29 at Vegreville Agricultural Society.
Murphy welcomed everyone while she walked attendees through gardening trends for 2024 and ways to have the best food and flower gardens.
“The colour of the year is peach fuzz. If you want to know what colours are in, visit a shopping mall, whatever colours are in fashion will be in homewares and will be in, in the garden.
Perennials are great for sustainability as they decrease your footprint and many have deep tap roots. Those tap roots make them heat tolerant. They also have bulky roots. It is the bulk and sugar that is stored in those roots through the winter, which is what keeps them from freezing. The way they store sugars for the next year will make them zone-hardy.
When you grow perennials, I always say the first year treat them like an annual. Be nice to them so they can get established. The third year is usually the magic year when they are blooming and doing great.
Food gardening is getting hot as people are concerned about food security, what is in their food and food prices.
We can grow berries that are better for you than mangos because berries are a little bit lower in sugar.
Raised bed gardening is super popular as the advantage to being in a raised bed is that the soil gets nice and warm. Also, depending on your mobility level, you can build them higher so you don’t have to bend over in the garden, just add extra compost and mulch.
Another tip is to get your cool crops in first: Swiss chard, radishes, and head lettuce like it cool. Then when it gets warmer, plant the leaf lettuces that are way more heat tolerant later. Tomatoes also like heat.
There are vegetables you can grow in containers. When you are growing vegetables, they need six to eight hours of sunshine. No vegetable likes to grow in the shade.
Containers need fresh soil each year; unless you have a bigger planter, if you refresh the top 10 inches; that would be good. Also, make sure you have good drainage holes. I use mulch in all my containers as this helps to hold moisture in.
When you have a small garden it is important to have this in the right location and know where the sun and wind exposure are. With compatible food gardening; tomatoes and basil are good together in the same spot. For more ideas, look this up online.”
