When you plant your garden this spring, think multi-purpose. Consider what plants grow without fuss, look gorgeous, add fabulous flavour and health-boosting goodness to the meals you prepare — and, all the while, support our besieged bees. This is what my co-author Sharon Hanna and I pondered for more than a year in our gardens while writing The Book of Kale & Friends: 14 … [Read more...] about 5 bee-supporting perennial edibles to grow
April in the garden
5 tips for shopping for new plants
When shopping for new plants, it’s important to choose healthy, well-grown specimens that will rebound quickly after they’re transplanted into your garden. This is especially crucial when buying trees and shrubs — they’re a larger investment than annuals and perennials, and you want them to be with you for a long time. 1. Selecting annuals and perennials Healthy annuals … [Read more...] about 5 tips for shopping for new plants
Hepaticas: harbingers of spring
What garden event signifies to you that spring has really, truly arrived in your part of the country? Here in Atlantic Canada, we have had what has felt like an interminable winter, with so many snowstorms that we began to joke that if it was Wednesday, we’d have a snowstorm. Finally, however, all but the most determined snowdrifts in woods, ditches and fields have relinquished … [Read more...] about Hepaticas: harbingers of spring
When to apply spring fertilizers
Often gardeners in the early days of spring have an impulse to apply fertilizer to help plants restore themselves, but acting too quickly can sometimes interfere with what they really want. Plants make their own food through photosynthesis, and they really don’t benefit if I rush around with emergency meals. Their biology is capable of manufacturing basic carbohydrate energy … [Read more...] about When to apply spring fertilizers
It’s tulip time
Tulip season starts in April with smaller species tulips, such as yellow-and-white Tulipa tarda and violet T. pulchella, and ends in early June with parrot tulips, late double and peony-flowered tulips. May is prime time for tulips, and perhaps you have some thick stands of stems with buds beginning to turn colour. What I have is a lot of wide, fleshy tulip leaves and not so … [Read more...] about It’s tulip time