Covering your garden bed

Benefits of using a Cover Crop
Cover crops, also known as green manures, are grown to improve and protect your garden beds. They are a natural way to suppress weed development in your soil by providing a little healthy competition for those unwanted intruders. Cover crops also reduce soil erosion and loss of nutrients leaching out of your soil because of the stabilizing effects of it’s root system.

Cover crops can also provide a home for beneficial insects such as ladybugs. Their root systems help loosen and aerate the soil, which improves rooting of future crops and promotes a healthy population of soil microbes. A variety of crops can be used such as field peas, fava beans, crimson clover, buckwheat, corn salad and fall rye. Each cover crop has specific benefits and care requirements.

How to Grow
A cover crop can be seeded anytime there is a bare area in the soil, however they are most commonly used in late summer or early fall when the vegetable crop has been harvested and the soil is bare. Another option is to sow cover crops around existing vegetables that are close to maturity, which allows for the cover crops to establish when the veggies are harvested.

To seed a cover crop simply broadcast the seed thickly over the soil and rake or till the seed to ensure good seed and soil contact. If the cover crop survives throughtout the winter, be sure to chop it up and till in into the ground to make sure it doesn’t grow too big. Wait two to four weeks after tilling-in a cover crop to start new seeds to allow for proper decomposition.

Different types of Cover Crops
Legumes, such as crimson clover, fava beans and winter field peas make an excellent cover crop because of they are nitrogen fixers. Legumes’ symbiotic relationship with soil microbes allow them to capture nitrogen from the atmosphere and make it available to the plant, thus building up the nitrogen reserves in the soil.

Cover crops add an amazing amount of nitrogen to the soil. An acre of fava beans grown and worked into the soil is equivalent to using about 10 tons of manure.

Grasses, such as fall rye, can be planted in the fall and tilled the following spring. Grasses are not high in nitrogen but grow rapidly creating a living mulch that prevents weeds and produces lots of organic material.

Another non-traditional cover crop is Corn Salad. It’s winter hardiness and ease of tilling in the following spring make it an excellent candidate. You can also snack on the leaves in the winter.

Sowing a mixture of the leguminous and grassy-type cover crops will increase your coverage and provide nitrogen for the plants to come.

Fall Hanging Baskets

Have you seen the Proven Winners Fall hanging baskets? They are beautiful and the answer for people looking for replacements for their tired summer baskets. Using combinations of colorful and interesting perennials, the growers for Proven Winners products have masterfully created gorgeous hanging baskets that will look good well in to the fall. With protection from the elements they will last through the winter and will resume growing in early spring when the daytime temperatures warm up and the days begin getting longer. They do not have to be hung. They can be set on plant stands by front doors and look great! However you choose to display them, we guarantee you’ll be happy with these fall beauties!

Planting Winter Pansies

Everyone likes the cheery face of the pansy! Why not plant some this fall to enjoy in autumn and then again in early spring? Winter pansies are so named because they bloom in the latter part of the year when not much else is in bloom. A true winter pansy will have a bicolor face rather than a solid color. The best time to plant them is in September if the weather is not too hot. All pansies are cool weather crops so plant when the weather is cooler. When planted in September or early October they will have
time to root-on as the soil temperature is still warm but the air is cool. This will put them in better shape to survive the winter and will give them a head start in early spring when the temperature warms up again. Be sure to deadhead regularly to promote continuous blooming. When the thermometer drops below 5 degrees Celsius pansies will curl downward. They are simply going dormant until warmer days arrive. By March they will be rising up and blooming once again. That is always such a welcome sight after the long winter months. We currently stock many beautiful fibre packs of pansies in assorted colors. Stop by soon to pick yours!

Plan for a Colorful Spring Now

The Fall Bulbs have arrived! The Fall bulbs have arrived! This change up in seasons is always exciting for us Nursery staff. Every year we open each case of bulbs with the eagerness of a child on Christmas morning. You would think after years of seeing them come in we would get complacent but each year we delight in seeing all the fun varieties of daffodils and tulips and plenty more. They are referred to as ‘Fall bulbs’ because they are planted in the fall for blooming the following spring.

An afternoon of digging and planting is all that is required for a spring color show. Simply dig, drop,
done! It is probably the least amount of work for the greatest reward. Each spring day new blossoms
will emerge from the earth. Purchase bulbs soon (as some varieties sell out quickly) and store in a cool, dry location until October when they can be planted. They will root in the warm soil nicely before Old Man winter arrives and be in good shape for spring blooming. This year extend beyond the standard daffodils or tulips and try different flowering bulbs like snowdrops and glory-of-the-snow and more!

Light Up Your Patio

This is the time of year when we all are outside enjoying the lovely warm summer evenings. What is more enjoyable than having soft lighting surrounding us as we sit with friends, wineglass in hand, around patio tables? We stock many different options for just that purpose. Starting from the small, we have the tabletop Décor Solar Light Jar in assorted colors for only $8.50. Next we have the Décor Solar String Light strand of 10 dragonflies with color changing LED for only $16.50. Then we have the Garden Meadow Solar Lantern in assorted shapes for $25.00 that will shine for 6-8 hours! Also fun is the Paradise Flameless Candle on Stick which looks great sunk into flowerbeds or lighting pathways. It is priced at $13.00. Be sure that these solar powered items are placed in direct sunlight all day for maximum charging. Stop in soon and check these and more fun stuff for tables and patios soon!

The Forgotten Vine

In this new era of high density living, customers are increasingly asking for plant material to provide
privacy. Many homeowners have installed large trellises with the hopes of having something full and lush to cover it. The most common requests are for clematis, ivy and honeysuckle. These are all lovely vines but for sheer wild and unabashed growth look no further than the classic grapevine! The amount of growth in one growing season for young vines can be staggering. We received our 2012 stock of assorted grapes in early March. Since then I have hacked them back twice (I even considered using a machete they were so tangled amongst themselves). These were only small one gallon pot size starter vines! My own Niagra white grape (pictured here) at home has also been ruled in sharply twice this season before it completely covers my greenhouse. It is only 3 years old!

Of course, there is the added advantage of the fruit your vine will produce. Clusters of red or green grapes are lovely to look at and feel oh so Mediterranean! If you really want an Italian garden look, then plant the deep purple/blue Concord variety. If wildlife is a concern where you live then snip off the clusters as they develop and simply enjoy the vine for its classic grape leaf. All that is required for a successful growing site is as much sun as possible and plenty of room to ramble. All the other common sense requirements apply; good soil, light feedings regularly and ample water until established. We still have plenty of inexpensive starter varieties of grapevines left. Give this overlooked vine consideration!

Sweet Success!

I will be forever grateful to a customer in May who took the time to chat with me and tell me his secrets to growing great cucumbers. He said he only grows Sweet Success cucumbers. They are a long English type. He explained he grows them on 8 foot lengths of rebar, continually tying them as they climb to the sky. I was so intrigued by his passion for Sweet Success that I planted a few myself.

As you can see from the photos of my garden, I was blessed with a bumper crop of long, textbook
perfect cucumbers! I’ve been bringing armloads to work to give to my co-workers, handing more over the fence to neighbours, and feeding the family plenty of cucumber salad. From only 3 plants, I’ve been astonished at the volume they have produced.

I only used 6 foot garden stakes and that proved to be inadequate. Remember that close to a foot will
be buried in the ground so now you are left with only 5 feet. Next year I’m going to be prepared and use 10 foot long 1”x1” cedar stakes from the lumber store. Growing long English type cucumbers vertically ensures they grow long and straight. When allowed to ramble along the ground, they still taste the same but are no longer straight but curled.

Growing them in a raised bed proved to be the key to their survival. During the 6 week period from late May through all of June, when we were inundated with cold and wet conditions, I watched the wee transplants sitting in the soil shivering. Every week I thought oh well, they’ll not be able to withstand this cold any longer. But hang in there they did! Once the sun finally came out, the growth took off like gangbusters. Having them in raised beds kept their roots from rotting as the soil has no choice but to drain because of gravity. There is also the added benefit of warmer soil temperature so all and all, raised vegetable beds are an efficient method of successful growing. Be sure to try the Sweet Success cucumber next year. I guarantee you’ll be happy you did!

Fabulous Fall Containers

Now is the time to freshen tired summer containers with fresh fall plantings. Many summer annuals will be past their peak and there is plenty of gorgeous plant material available that will provide color and interest well into autumn. Choose from among purple asters, ornamental kale, wispy grasses and the ever-popular garden mums. When planning your arrangements, always keep in mind three elements: color (either foliage or bloom), texture and form.

Color: asters, mums, pansies, heucheras, rudbeckias

Texture: ferns, hypericum (with its berries), kale

Form: ornamental grasses, New Zealand Flax, cordylines

Be sure to include something for height (grasses will provide this), fullness for the center (this is where your color choices will come in) and something to spill over (think ivies, periwinkle or creeping jenny). Following this simple formula will give you a professional looking planter worthy of placing at your front door or on your deck!