April 2006

City

   GARDENING

 

SPRING SNOW – IT’S THE CANADIAN WAY TO GO

But the Garden Season Opens to One and All With Lots to Plan, See and Even Do

Here’s Our Guide to Preparing for Happy, Healthy Horticulture

also the best independent garden centers in southern Ontario to shop at

plus yet more limericks governing  gardening and nuts to you for children

along with gardening web sites, horticultural happenings and news of interest

 

The common European plant vervain (Verbena officinalis), is now found in many parts of the world, including waste places around North America. Another and very ancient name for annual is Herb of the Cross. The Crusaders believed that the plant sprang up at Calvary when the nails where driven into Christ’s hands. In medieval times people bathed in water containing the plant in an effort to foresee the future and have their wish come true, according to researchers Wee and Hsuan (1990). The plant was also used as a love potion, they note, as well as to ward off evil spirits and to prevent dreaming.

Unfortunately vervain is not present at this season to deter that especially evil spirit Sciurus carolinensis, the eastern grey squirrel. These tree rats have been aloft in maples, nipping twigs to lap up the sweet sap that oozes out. But with the first bud blooms of bulbs emerging down they descend intent like so many uncouth youths on dastardly destruction.

Frequent dusting with cayenne pepper is an excellent deterrent. And no, it does not cause them to scratch their eyes and go blind, a dubious tale made up by some groveling greenies. Blood meal fertilizer is often recommended but has to be re-applied every few days. This results in over fertilizing and probable pollution – if the family pooch doesn’t lick it up first. They then excitedly breath fetid fumes in your face. A fertile source of further information is www.squirrelproof.ca.

There is poo power awaiting you elsewhere also, particularly if you want to discourage such other evil spirits as vampires from the garden. How about going for garlic sets, small bulbs to set out in the vegetable patch early, getting them off to a jump-start? Allium sativum is the botanical name for the plant, allium being what the Romans refereed to it as. In the days of ancient Greece and Rome, it was the plebian masses that gobbled garlic down. Their betters in the upper classes ruled it vulgar to reek of the aroma.

There is plenty of post-winter clean up to complete though before planting.

Shear the dead stems ornamental grasses along with any flowerheads or other foliage left for decoration over winter. Check shrubs for dead, diseased or dying wood and remove. Ditto for suckers emerging from the bases of grafted trees and bushes.

If not already cleared away, gently rake off any mulch from the flower borders and dig into the vegetable bed. If there is no space for the latter, add old, spent mulch to the compost heap. Watch out for emerging bulbs and perennials.

Many popular guides suggest dividing perennials at this time of year. We suggest waiting until fall. There is plenty else to occupy you in spring. Moreover, September and October are also much better months in which to reconfigure perennial borders – and for planting although commercial sources are not keen to advertise this.

If you haven’t commenced fertilizing indoor plants this year, get going right away. An old favourite of ours is the all-natural Canadian fish-based ‘Muskie,’  applied every couple of weeks.

Use a turf knife (also known as a turf edger) to clean up the bedraggled edges to beds, borders and where ever lawn meets patios, walkways or drives. Like spades, hoes and other cutting tools, the work will be far easier if a flat file is first used to sharpen those leading edges. Such edging maintenance cannot be achieved with that instrument of perdition, the filament weed trimmer. Leave such for immature men and other maintenance morons to mess around with.

If you neglected to fertilize the lawn last fall, April is the time to do so, otherwise leave until next month or even into early June. Lawns that were established on clay soils and older, neglected ones should first be aerated, either with specially designed hand tools or mechanically. Next, evenly spread the fertilizer of your choice – natural or artificial. In the olden days, a quarter-inch of fine compost was raked over the grass (this was before metrification was ordered by a defunct prime minister).

Now you are ready for the most important weeding of the season. Down on knees, hand fork in phalanges, loosen the soil across the entire flowerbed and work each weed out by the roots. This includes those embedded in clumps of perennials, too. Leave these weeds all day on patio or drive to shrivel in the sun, then add to the composter. Yes, this actually means dirty hands!

Take a break on Friday, 21^st April, to raise a beaker to Queen Elizabeth on her 80^th birthday. Her Majesty may not share the enthusiasm for gardening shown by many of her ancestors and her eldest son, the heir to the throne. Still, she has one of the world’s most popular roses named after her – and she is our Queen despite the very best but ultimately futile efforts by aforesaid defunct prime minister.

When the forsythia buds show yellow, not before, it is safe to uncover, prune and mulch hybrid tea, floribunda and grandiflora roses. Remove all except the strongest three to five stems, then cut these back to an outward facing bud about four inches from the ground. Apply a granular fertilizer and then mulch heavily, if possible with composted cattle manure.

The same, or any other mulching material, will be beneficial for all flowers, herbs, shrubs, vegetables and fruit. Three- to six-inches will reduce weeding and watering, cool the soil in the heat of summer and help add organic matter and nutrients.

If all this is not enough for you, many hardier vegetables and herbs can be seeded directly in situ this month. Gardeners with heavy clay soils might wish to wait a while – but then such soils are not the best for vegetables and herbs anyway. A good rule-of-thumb (hand? arm? back?) is if you can cultivate the soil, you can sow the seeds. Chard, spinach, beet, radish, green onion, broad bean, white turnip, carrot, lettuce, peas are just a few to try. Hardy herbs that grow easily from seed include parsley, chervil, sage, thyme, dill and chives.

The late Bennett Cerf was a major publisher, columnist, television personality, lecturer, author, anthologist – and lover of limericks. He was particularly appreciative of trick spellings, hence this somewhat appropriate offering presented here but we hesitate to recommend given our climate: 

                                           Said a calendar model named Gloria,

                                           “So the men can enjoy real euphoria,                                        

                                           You pose as you are

                                           In Jan., Feb., and Mar.

                                           Then in April they want to see moria!”

Thoroughly exhausted it is time to call for the spouse to take over in the garden while you relax with suitable beverage and the latest Vineland Nurseries catalogue. They may not have a web site (really!) but Jim and Simone Lounsbery are the people to call on when space is limited and the planting urge is upon one. From Abelia to viburnum, this little nursery with a plethora of perfect evergreens and deciduous miniature shrubs has what it takes – and then some. A pleasant drive down the QEW to just this side of St. Catharines, telephone or fax 905-562-4836 for directions.

 

 

 

                       Garden Centre Awards Excellence

Where to shop in Ontario for plants and, perhaps, supplies this spring? Near the end of every year the trade association Landscape Ontario presents the Garden Centre Awards of Excellence in different categories. Last season’s winners were:

Outstanding Display of Annuals and/or Perennials:

Gardenland Garden Centres Inc., Dundas, Ontario www.gardenland.ca

Humber Nurseries, Brampton, Ontario www.gardencentre.com

Vermeer’s Garden Centre & Flower Shop, Welland, Ontario www.vermeers.ca

Outstanding Display of Deciduous Shrubs and/or Trees:

Vermeer’s Garden Centre & Flower Shop, Welland, Ontario www.vermeers.ca

Permanent Display Gardens Over 500 square feet:

Mori Gardens, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario www.morigardens.com

Pathways to Perennials, Ketteleby, Ontario www.pathwaystoperennials.com

 

 

 

                                              A Garden of Limericks (2)

Groucho Marx once noted that, “Many people don’t seem to realize that the first thing which disappears when men are turning a country into a totalitarian state is comedy and comics.” This might not seem too obvious to those happy horticulturists who dwell outside such centres as Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal. Perhaps this explains why a few years ago, after offering up a modest collection of gardening-associated limericks, the demand has never ceased for more of the same mainly from beyond those areas of alleged civilization.

The limerick, for those who love to laugh, is the ne plus ultra of humour. This despite dire warnings by many an anonymous addict, such as the one who warns:

Well, it’s partly the shape of the thing

That gives the old limerick the wing;

These accordion pleats

Full of airy conceits

Take it up like a kite on a string.

So to the delight of most and the distress of a few others, here is the second selection from our current cultivation of Hibernian versification. The late Isaac Asimov, no slouch at the written word, dearly loved delving into limericks, composing not a few himself:

The Homeric young fighter Achilles

Was great with the fair Trojan fillies

But Paris said, “We’ll

Just aim at his heel.”

Now Achilles is pushing up lilies.

 

Whether Asimov was aware of the association of Homer’s hero with gardening is unknown. Those well-versed in such matters (groan) know that thanks to his treating of wounded comrades with yarrow, that herb is commemorated with the generic name of Achillea. Thus it often leads the list of perennial border plants botanically while relegated to the rear in common parlance as is, morbleu, Mia:

The figure of lovely Miss Farrow

Resembles not willow but yarrow.

‘Twould be rather a fraud

If you called her a broad,

For she goes with her beaux like an arrow.

 

Elderly females were a favoured target of W. S. Gilbert, he of the Savoy Operas fame and no mean composer of limericks himself. Alas, these ladies remain so among the anonymous sect:

I once knew a gardener whose aunt

Sat down on his favourite plant.

He said, “Would you tell ‘er

My feelings, old feller?

I’ve a wife and six kids, and I can’t.”

 

There was a young gent in Laconia

Whose mother-in-law caught pneumonia.

He hoped for the worst

And just after May first

They buried her ‘neath a begonia.

 

Returning to more literary allusions we squeeze in first certain artists pursuits if only owing to the colour, then to a prickly problem for rosarians and reflecting on narcissus:

Once Titian, while mixing rose madder,

Spied his model high up on a ladder.

Her position to Titian

Suggested coition,

So he climbed up the ladder and had ‘er.

                                               

The pink buds refuse to unclose.

The aroma’s not much for the nose.

Gardening’s been luckless

For Alice B. Toklas,

But a rose is a rose is a rose.

 

Narcissus achieved his ambition:

He was taught by a mathematician

To perform with great ease

A Mobius-strip tease,

With an autoerotic emission.

 

Then we have that precocious Young Man from Australia who followed Titian in his own antipodal inclinations, of which there are not a few varying versions. The three most presentable we have found are:

There was a young man from Australia

Who painted his rear like a dahlia.

The colour was fine,

Likewise the design.

The aroma – ah, that was a failure.

 

There was a young man from Australia

Who painted himself like a dahlia.

The colours were bright,

And the size was just right

But the smell was a definite fahlia.

 

There was a young man from Australia

Who painted his ass like as a dahlia.

The colour was fine,

The art, divine –

The scent ah, that was a failure.

 

Then there was a lass from the Land of Oz, doubtlessly sister of the above loopy lad:

There was a young girl from Australia,

Who went to a dance as a dahlia;

When the petals unfurled,

It revealed to the world

That the dress, as a dress, was a failure

 

And so to complete this session, a couple of bedding finalists:

To her gardener a lady named Liliom

Said, “Billy, plant roses and trillium.”

Then she started to fool

With the gardener’s tool,

And wound up in the bed of sweet William.

 

There was a young wench of Adowa

Whose face was as fair as a flower.

She couldn’t say “No, no!”

To General de Bono,

So they called off the war for an hour.

 

 

 

Children’s Gardening

                                                                   Nuts to You!

Peanuts, Arachis hypogaea, are also known as monkey nuts in Europe, groundnuts in UK – and are not nuts at all. They grow underground on a plant belonging to the pea family. Although often seen more as a snack food or in confectionary in advanced cultures, in more primitive parts of the world, nut trees are still highly valued for a constant and reliable source of nourishment, whether wild or cultivated.

The Empire Loyalists, fleeing what they believed were the dubious advantages of the American Revolution, followed the Trail of the Black Walnut. They knew it grew on rich soil, suitable for agriculture and it led them to such in Upper Canada, later to be southern Ontario. Other walnut facts:

• A substance in the roots of black walnut can kill or stunt many plants growing near by
• The Romans used walnut leaves to kill weeds
• Walnut husks were used to produce dyes
• English walnuts are not originally from the Britain

Then there are other nuts:

• Cashews are extremely poisonous until they are roasted while extracts from cashew fruit have been found to kill mosquito larvae
• Macadamia tetrophylla is an Australian tree, the source of commercial Macadamia nuts and grown on Hawaii where film star Julie Andrews once owned a plantation of them.
• Brazil nuts come from the Amazon rainforest tree Bertholletia excelsa and are gathered from the wild very carefully as they drop from a hundred feet aloft in cannon-ball-size cases.
• The spice nutmeg is the ground powder of the nut from a tropical tree native to present-day Indonesia, now also grown in the West Indies
• The oil from the West African Shea Butter Nut, Butyrospermum parkii, is valued in the cosmetic industry but comes entirely from wild trees growing in savannah woodlands.
• Cola soft drinks obtain their flavour – and caffeine – from kola nut extracts. Cola acimunata is a small tropical African tree bearing the nuts in long pods.
• European hazel nuts are also called “filberts” after a saint of that name on whose day in August they are supposedly ready for harvest
• Much of the commercially raised hazel nut harvest comes from Turkey but leaves behind enormous amounts of nutshells. One suggestion is to process them into bio-fuel to power vehicles.
• “Texans will buy anything with pecans in it,” claims one authority. There are an estimated 70-million pecan nut trees planted in Texas.
• Grimo Nut Nursery, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, advertises its telephone number as 1-905-YEH-NUTS or, less fun, their website is www.grimonut.com
• Coconuts, along with the achenes of palms in general, deserve an entire article to themselves but, thanks to a Canadian study, it is revealed that the next time you vacation beside a tropical beach you are more likely to be killed by a falling coconut than by a shark.

An old English song claimed, “Here we go gathering nuts in May!” Nuts, despite their value for food, oil and other uses, always seem to make people laugh. In fact, a person’s head may be sometimes called his or her “nut.” So we have:

• Nuthouse
• Off his nut
• Nuttier than a squirrel’s nest
• Writer Richard Gordon described someone as being, “Nuttier than a vegetarian’s cutlet”
• Gilbert the Filbert, Colonel of the Nuts, an army officer invented by author P. G. Wodehouse

There have even been a couple of “nutty” movies”

• Nuts in May a two-reel 1917 film with Stan Laurel
• The Nutty Professor with Jerry Lewis

Less insultingly, we may talk about:

• In a nut shell
• Kernel of truth

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