Spring Gardening

 I am distracting myself with the different plants in our yard. Our daughter, Alicia, really enjoys gardening with all of its successes and a few disappointments. She plans a few extra plants most years and finds gardening to be a real stress reducer. I am hoping that our outdoor spaces will prove to be relaxing to me too during this really difficult year.

Bob and Alicia got a few plants from the store, and Alicia started a few seeds, and a few plants volunteered and came back this year.

We have barely started working on our yard. I don't think it is a week since we had nights with temperatures falling below zero. In Manitoba, it is understood that you really shouldn't be putting out your plants before Victoria Day, which will come this weekend.  Winnipeg's average first frost-free day is May 25th, and we expect the first frost of the winter around September 22nd. 

We have to start plants inside or consider using plants with very short growing periods and plan how to protect them if there is an early frost. Trees and perennial plants have to survive extremely cold winters.  I am sure its year will be different in the garden, but it will still be a retreat for us. With all the Covid issues in our city, I don't think we will be wandering around shopping for our regular annual plants, so we will try and be creative this year.

I will miss being out in nature at our cottage. I don't think I will get to our lovely island Lake Cottage for months, and when I do get there, it is going to be hard moving around and even just getting from the dock up to the cottage. I am planning on creating a few restful places to enjoy and relax in our city yard. The family is doing most of the work, but I will put real thought into how to make more of our yard more accessible for me this year and for the future. 

Let's call these "before " pictures, so hopefully, you will be much more impressed when I share more photos over the next couple of months. Bob put in a lot of work today, and it already looks a lot better than you see here.

Planters of Coleus hanging off our front porch railing.

One of 3 hanging Begonias from Costco

Two new Clematis vines for our backyard

Chives divided and shared by the neighbour.

A new little plum tree going to the cottage.

Tulips at the front of our house are just opening up.

A single red tulip among the yellow.

What happens to tulips when rabbits visit your yard.

Wave Petunias from Costco

Looking up under my 50-year-old apple tree.

A planter for a picnic table

Lilies planted last year & a couple of Dust Millers that self-seeded.

A sad Ivy that doesn't look like it will survive.

The little tree we brought home from the lake last fall to use at Xmas 

Some garlic cloves from the kitchen.

The change from storm and winter to serene and mild weather, from dark and sluggish hours to bright and elastic ones, is a memorable crisis which all things proclaim. 

                                                        ~Henry David Thoreau

My Herbs of 2020

I keep trying to grow herbs. I have them indoors, outdoors, at the lake, in the city and even at work in the Personal Care Home. I love how beautiful and fragrant they are and, potentially, how useful as an ingredient when cooking.  I believe that many herbs have great healing properties and can be very nutritious and good for you, but that is not something I have ever studied. I do know that the act of growing and nurturing the plants is fun and also good for you.  It gives me joy just to play in the soil, handle the plants, look at the lovely flowers and leaves and smell all the different fragrances!

I really would love to have many kinds of herbs growing in the ground and coming back year after year, but I only have a couple. The light is not great or the area doggie free in most of my spaces, so I like to make good use of container planting. This year I have a couple of pots growing on my patio at home and they are so lovely and fragrant! Two of my coworkers are growing indoor herbs at work as a program with the seniors, so it is one of my big topics of the summer. I have herbs everywhere!

The pot below is my mixed one. It has some sage, sweet marjoram, and new to me,  two kinds of licorice plants.  I have seen and tasted wild licorice a few times but I have never grown any.

The next picture is a pot full of different kinds of basil. I had excellent success with basil two years ago so, this time, I thought I would get creative. This pot has Italian Large Leave Basil shown at the front. That is what I have grown before, and it was easy to grow and yummy. The one with the purple flowers is called Cinnamon Basil, and the one with the white flowers is called Spicy Globe Basil. It was flowering when we got it. It would probably do best if we trimmed off the flowers and encouraged leaf growth, but I am just loving the look of it and haven't talked myself into pruning it yet.

The most successful herb for us has been a mint patch that has been located outside our back door for over a decade. At one point, it got really huge, but with time, it has shrunk down and gotten spindly. Trees have grown much taller around it reducing the light and I am sure the soil got depleted. It has been banged around with its location beside the door and even abused a little by our dog who is very fond of sniffing it. This year we cleaned up that area by that side of the house and added sod but we still left a little square for the mint. We worked in some compost and it seems to have perked up to a reasonable size for our use, and big enough to share slips with a few friends. I warn everyone that it can spread like crazy, and you should put a collar or barrier into the ground around it in order to keep it where you want it and out of the rest of your yard.

We keep trying out different herbs at the cottage and we have real issues with rodents and birds eating them and some that we have put in the ground simple have not overwintered well.  I usually have a pot of parsley inside on the window by the kitchen sink and make good use of it and our little raised bed garden has a big patch of chives growing. I love how gorgeous the chives look with their pretty purple flowers and how they provide us with a great ingredient for cooking and salads all summer long. They also act as a good companion plant by acting as a deterrent and keep away some bugs and critters from the raised beds.

I really like telling jokes so here are a few for you.

 ..Not necessarily hilarious ones, but it is still all part of the fun!

A girl told me that she recognized me from the local vegetarian club, but I’d never met herbivore.

I’ve got a device to fetch futuristic herbs. It’s a thyme machine.

I saw a new book about cooking with herbs. It’s about Thyme.

I was going to send back my fish in a herb sauce at a restaurant the other night, but I wasn’t sure if it was the thyme or the plaice. (Hint: Plaice is a kind of flatfish)

I know someone who was habitually late until his doctor recommended sleeping in a herb garden. Sounds odd, I know, but now he wakes up on Thyme.

I used to work with a very wise herb gardener. He was well known for his sage advice.

Thought I’d purchase a tall herb plant but actually turned out to be tiny. No big dill 

I like to put coriander on my blended tomatoes. It’s "soup herb".

I went to a restaurant the other night and asked for something herby. They gave me an old Volkswagen Beetle with no driver.

😀

My Cute Rock Garden

I want to introduce my little plant friends. Curly, Larry and Moe. They don't care if I water them or not, how good the light is or if the temperature drops below freezing!  We have had very inconsistent weather around here, and last night, we had a couple little, late-planted sprouts freeze to death. It can get kind of discouraging. I thought it would be fun to share this little project today.  That real Aloe plant was safely in my bedroom window last night and just went outside to photobomb the little guys.

The pots I used were just cheap plastic mini pots that we had kicking around in my garage, but it would have been really nice with those tiny terracotta pots that are available at the dollar store. 

•  3 pots
• 3 rocks that can fit in each pot snugly
• 3 shades of green acrylic paint 
• white acrylic paint
• average size paintbrush
• fine tip paintbrush 
• filler for the bottom. I used white play clay from a dollar store.
• sand or small stones or aquarium gravel 
• Googly eyes
• craft glue
•  mod podge (optional)
  

I washed and dried the rocks carefully. Next, I set them up on some newspapers and gave them a coat pf green paint with the bigger brush. It was good with just one coat. I went over the rocks once they base coat dried with the white acrylic paint to create different styles of marks with the small brush. My intention was to suggest they were assorted types of cactus.  When they were fully dry. I attached their eyes and promptly started laughing at them because I thought they were so cute. In a while, I decided that they really did need a glossy finish. I was a bit sloppy and wished later that I had been more careful beside the eyes because I required some very gentle clean up on the plastic eyes.  

I tried to just balance them in the pots initially and decided they needed a little more secure of a resting spot. I added a bit of play clay in the bottom to stabilize them and raise them up a little higher in their pots. The plastic pots have a drainage hole on the bottom so I didn't try sand.  Since I have put stones around my aloe plants I thought these little guys needed a finishing topping of stones as well. I had a small bag of leftover aquarium gravel for that little finishing touch. 

This project would be appropriate for all ages and skills. You can get a lot more detailed painting each cactus if you are up for a challenge or just leave them a  solid colour for an extra easy craft.  Bigger rocks in bigger pots would be a fun accent to an outdoor garden, but you would want to seal them with something more weather resistant than craft strength mod podge.

 

I might use these as a craft program at the personal care home some time. Wouldn't they make cute centrepieces for a Western event or a Cinco De Mayo party?

Cute as can be Curly

Meet Moe

Lovely Larry

The Whole Gang.

Growing a Garden with Catherine and Phil

Please welcome my friends and Guest Bloggers, Catherine and Phil. They love their little urban garden and I was so happy when they agreed to share about how they grow a Winnipeg garden.


Joyful Planting

During a pandemic, it can be scary; in order to live through these scary times, one should focus on keeping healthy and protect yourself by sanitizing and social distancing. It's not easy as I'm a frontline worker at a Personal Care Home. I have to be extra careful, but in my house, it's hard to do. We try our best to make sure everything is sanitary.

Our home consists of my husband Philippe, my fur babies, Buddy the cat and Bella, the dog and me Catherine. Phil has the green thumb of the family. Phil grew up in the country and worked on a farm as a young teenager. Myself, city girl, I have a little green thumb. I've watched my parents' garden, and they taught me how to care for plants inside and out.

 I would help put seeds in the soil, pick out the weeds, and water the garden every chance I got. However, if there was a bee or wasp around, I'd be running for my life, leaving the water hose running waiting until that bee goes away. I did enjoy watching our plants grow through the years, especially my parent's apple tree.

Phil and I planted a garden since the day we met 13 years ago and through almost ten years of marriage. Anyways, due to the crisis, the world is going through now why not take the time to plant a beautiful life in the garden, it's the best place to spend time with each other.

Phil searched on the internet and found a way to plant seeds in a Ziplock bag. All you need is a tray, spray bottle, scissors, soil, paper towel, tweezers, planting containers and planting seeds.
All you have to do is you take a paper towel that's been cut to the size of the ziplock bag, spray the paper towel lightly with water. Then fold your paper towel in half with the seeds inside and insert it into the Ziplock with delicacy. The next step is to have an area in front of your window that gets the most sunlight and leaving on a flat surface, or you can get a thick string with clothespins hanging it across your window. Let it sit there for 4 to 6 days, checking if the roots are starting to grow.

Then when you notice that the root is growing, use tweezers or your lovely fingers to lightly grab the seed with the root. With caution, plant the seed into 3/4 cup of soil in any plastic or recycle containers of your choice that have holes on the bottom. Dig a little hole in the soil to add your seed with root facing the bottom, cover lightly with soil and spray with water gently over the top. Add the seeds by separating them a couple of millimetres apart.

Then each day in the morning you should continue to spray it with water as it grows. Make sure you put your lovely creation by the window to get sunlight for your garden to grow. It has been a wonderful experience growing our lovely garden every spring.

As time passes, your plants will grow. Once the risk of frost is gone, it is time to transplant your plant into your outside garden. Take your container with your baby plant and move it to the garden.

Dig a hole approximately the same size of the containers and gently remove the plant. Insert the plant with all its wonderful roots into the new hole that you have just dug. It's ok if you take a lot of soil with you as sometimes it's gets stuck to the roots. Once inserted into the new hole in the garden, bring more soil to the new plant to make sure that it's nice and full in the hole. Add water, and enjoy watching your wonderful creation grow.

After a few weeks of watering daily, your plant will grow. With plenty of sunshine, water, love and even some great companionship, your plant will grow big and tall and eventually will create beautiful flowers.

If you are planting flowers, enjoy your beautiful creation with a wide arrangement of colours and, of course, the smell. Flowers can give out lovely aromas, and every flower has a different scent, so make sure to try many different varieties.

If you are planting fruits or vegetables, your flower after a few weeks will slowly start to create a little spot. The petals from the flower will fall, but don't be sad because that little spot that appears will continue to grow and, after some time, will grow into a fruit or vegetable. You can slowly watch all your hard work grow into some wonderful food that you can soon enjoy.

After a few weeks of watering daily, your plant will grow. With plenty of sunshine, water, love and even some great companionship, your plant will grow big and tall and eventually will create beautiful flowers.

Once the fruit or vegetables are fully grown, you can finally harvest. Remove with care and enjoy the fruit of your labour.

Sometimes your plant will die, and sometimes it won't grow, but don't be disappointed because that happens to all of us.

All plants have different aspects to them that help them grow better. We learn a little more every year on how to plant better, and with patience, love and care, we will slowly become wonderful gardeners, and that will help us go through life.




Story and Photography by
Catherine Molina-Ross and Philippe Ross