Late winter/early spring is a good time to prune your deciduous plants for structure, or to remove damaged, diseased and dead branches. The structure of the plant is more visible during the dormant season, which allows you to make more…
A wide variety of containers can be used to start seeds indoors – the containers that your salad greens came in, yogurt containers, pots that you have saved from last summer, purchased pots and cell packs from the garden centre. …
Start tuberous begonia tubers indoors about 6 weeks before the last frost date. Place them in a shallow container filled with a growing medium that is porous but moisture retentive and does not contain fertilizer or manure. Coarse sphagnum moss,…
Hard to believe when the ground is thick with snow and the air is frigid, but spring is not far away at all. Now is the time to prune out any damaged, diseased or tangled / crossed branches and stems…
Now that the days are getting longer, it is time to start to feed your houseplants. Give them half the recommended dosage of plant food every other week rather than full strength every month. Be sure that the growing medium…
A few days of unseasonably warm temperatures does not mean that summer has arrived. We live in Southern Ontario and weather can be variable. Before deciding on what gardening chores you can do now, check the long range forecast. Look…
The arrival of spring may show a vertical ‘split-like’ wound in the bark on the west or southwest side of a young or newly planted tree. This wound, sometime called sun scald, is the result of the sun heating up…
Seed packages indicate the number of weeks needed to have a seedling ready for planting out. Add on a week for ‘hardening off’ your seedlings. To calculate the date for starting your seeds indoors, start with the date when you…
Bring some spring indoors with easy-to-grow paperwhite narcissus. Simply put a layer of stones or beach glass in a container and top with the bulbs. Place more stones or glass around and between the bulbs, leaving the tops exposed. Add…