WhatFinger


Wes Porter

Wes Porter is a horticultural consultant and writer based in Toronto. Wes has over 40 years of experience in both temperate and tropical horticulture from three continents.

Most Recent Articles by Wes Porter:

Origins of Acetylsalicylic Acid, ASA

Taking a daily 81mg aspirin tablet has found favour for many males over age 50 as protection against cardiovascular disease. Now new evidence recently published in The Lancet suggests the same can prevent and possibly treat a range of cancers, including bowel, lung and prostate cancer.
- Friday, May 4, 2012

Spring arrives—Canadian Style

Just as you fondly imagine spring has finally sprung, Mother Nature comes crashing down on your cranium.
- Tuesday, May 1, 2012

It Isn’t All Plain Snailing for Munching Molluscs

A mild winter and a warm spring delighted gardeners. Unfortunately it also encourages some of the most ubiquitous pests endured by the green thumb brigade everywhere: slithery slugs and snails.
- Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Corky-Fruited Water Dropwort Shoots Down Missiles

“To every thing there is a season” according to Ecclesiastes 3:1. And an insane season it is as London, England, gears up for the Olympics. Plans to use surface-to-air missiles to protect the skies over London during the Olympic could be thwarted – because they will disturb the habitat of a rare wildflower, The Mail on Sunday summed it up.
- Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Plants to Protect Your Property

The first commandment should be obvious: Though shalt not covet, much less steal, thy neighbour's tomatoes, cucumbers or peppers. But people do.” Robert Finn, The New York Times.
- Saturday, April 14, 2012

All of the Latest Poop on Compost

“It’s hard to compost in a hotel room,” Bette Midler observed last year in a fit of green gloom. Equally difficult, although some taxpayers might not believe this, for their representatives at city hall. But at least in Toronto, councillors can buy the stuff to give away to rapturous residents – using their office budget, of course. Last year, for example, Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker spent $5,500 on compost to constituents, no small portion of his total 2011 spending of $31,077.34.
- Sunday, April 8, 2012

Gardeners Welcome New Season

A tip of the gardening hat to Wiarton Willie the mammalian meteorologist. Emerging from his winter quarters in that Ontario community on 2 February, the groundhog predicted an early spring. Willie was right on the money.
- Saturday, March 31, 2012

Questions We’re Often Asked: Patches on Lawns

The snow disappears and the frost comes out of the ground to reveal a front lawn in sad shape. Patches of dead turf splatter an otherwise rapidly greening expanse of grass.
- Wednesday, March 28, 2012

April Fools Day, Gardening Style

Fooled you . . . or did we? Okay, maybe it’s still March but we figure you need plenty of time to prepare for the glorious First of April, when we dig up past idiocies. Or did they really take place? As a good gardener, you doubtlessly can separate the wheat from the chaff – or the fertilizer from the compost. But can the black thumb brigade?
- Friday, March 23, 2012

Growing a Gigantic Gourd Depends On the Preparation

According to a study by Queen’s University in Ontario, it is true: in spring, a young man’s (and woman’s) fancy turns to thoughts of love: teenagers, the researchers found, are more likely than adults to conceive during the month of March. The thoughts of gardeners, ever ready to march to a different drumbeat, turn to growing one of those enormous pumpkins that grace the pages of the tabloids early every fall.
- Saturday, March 17, 2012

Landscaping Loses Ground In Canada

“At least he cuts it up into stove lengths,” Grandfather Thurnow, quoted by Paul Hiebert (1947). And, lo and behold, that is what is happening to horticulture in Canada.
- Saturday, March 10, 2012

Celebrating St. Patrick’s with green

May the blessings of St. Patrick be upon you, as they say across the sea in the Emerald Isle, for the 17th March ‘tis the day upon which we celebrate everything Hibernian. This brings to mind the Irish-Canadian botanist who crossed a shamrock with poison ivy – and got a rash of good luck.
- Friday, March 2, 2012

Questions We’re Often Asked: Hormone Rooting Powder

Artificial rooting powders have been in widespread use for over half a century. The plant hormones auxin and cytokinin, usually naphthalene acetic acid (a-NAA), are often part of commercial rooting preparations.
- Saturday, February 25, 2012

Is Ornithomancy Strictly for the Birds?

In Ancient Greece, it was the practice to ornithological observation in the hopes of predicting future outcomes. The Romans, great admirers of all things Greek, adopted this form divination with gusto. According to British media, ever eager to enter into such suggestive behaviour, lasses looking for love on Valentine’s Day should turn to bird ornithomancy to discover whom they will marry. The practice dictates that the first bird an unmarried woman sees on Valentine’s Day is an omen of her future husband’s character.
- Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Orgasmic Orchids

“Despite these glorious shenanigans of blooms and birds and bees, plant sex is really plant-to-plant,” recently wrote Susan Milius in Science News. This research field, she explained is not just the familiar and huge endeavour to understand how flowers lure, manipulate and even betray the animals carrying pollen from he parts to she parts.
- Monday, February 13, 2012

Dion O’Banion – Chicago’s Famed Florist Revisited

Last November, we wrote of the life and death of Dion O’Banion, Chicago’s famed florist – and mobster. A correspondent and descendant residing in the southeastern U.S. has written to question whether O’Banion was indeed both a Roman Catholic and son of a recent Irish immigrant.
- Thursday, February 9, 2012

Winter half over:  Green thumbs are twitching

Halfway through winter and down in the valley the willows are indicating spring is on the way. Twigs of our native black willow, Salix nigra, have turned orange, while those of introduced weeping willows, S. babylonica, from eastern Asia are a bright yellow. Just a minute there – didn’t you just say weeping willows are from eastern Asia? So why does the botanical name suggest they originated in the fabled Babylon?
- Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Questions We’re Often Asked: Something’s Bugging My Plants!

First you notice something is amiss with your indoor plants. The foliage is becoming mottled. Eventually it dies and falls to the floor. As you pick up the leaves, you notice a strange substance like soot there. The remaining leaves are sticky with glossy patches and again, perhaps spotted with black powder.
- Wednesday, January 25, 2012

It’s the End of the World, Baby!

Yes, indeed: it’s the title of the 2012 Campari calendar featuring Hollywood actress and model Milla Jovovich in various fetching poses. This will make it the thirteenth edition of said calendar. But then if you suffer from triskaidekaphobia you will not want to have been counting to that dread number.
- Thursday, January 12, 2012

That Was the Year That Was

Unfortunately the editors of Bartlett’s and similar standard reference books seem singularly uninterested in quotations pertaining to horticultural affairs. In an effort to correct such erroneous exclusions, we have collected a few made over the past year by those either engaged or otherwise in gardening and associated pursuits.
- Monday, January 2, 2012

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