WhatFinger


April City Gardening

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.

Diversion No. 1

Ever wondered how über tree house dwellers live? Check out Britain’s Blue Forest at www.blueforest.com and discover what the Tunbridge Wells-based luxury tree house company offers for around £250,000. These fairytale treetop palaces are the latest in a global trend for bespoke garden living, claims director Simon Payne, 33. High living, indeed. Sure, there are innumerable listings for garden plants on the web. Many are just that – lists with nary a notation, simply repeating what is available through other websites. So a new Canadian plant reference site hosted by Michael Pascoe, professor, program coordinator and director of gardens at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario is a much-needed addition. Visitors to www.canadaplants.ca can search for photos and information, as well as Pasco’s opinions on woody plants, perennials, bulbs, annuals and tropicals, as well as wildflowers and weeds, notes periodical Landscape Trades. The publication quotes Pascoe as saying, “There are no bad plants, only bad uses of plants.” Exactly.

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How come garden centre tomatoes and other small transplants are compact and bushy but yours are straggly, stringy, flopping everywhere? Simply explanation: they are grown ‘dry.’ At least, that’s the horticultural expression. It doesn’t mean bone dry, or even allowing the plant to wilt. Just avoiding overwatering. Such plants tolerate later stress better as they have “memories.” Incredible? Perhaps, but recent research has proven just that. A study that appeared in the journal Natural Communications confirms for the first time the scientific basis for what home gardeners and nursery professionals have often learned through hard experience: Transplants do better when water is withheld for a few days to drought harden them before the move, noted Science Daily. Last month, a conference was held in Singapore under the banner Tobacco or Health. The apparent aim is to make the world tobacco free by 2040. Can’t you just see it: secret patches of Nicotiana tabacum in the woods, flourishing under fluorescents in basements, the phrase “smokin’ hot” taking on a completely new meaning, websites offering illicit seeds and growing advice . . . all to the resurrected song "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes".

Diversion No. 2

A pair of Canadian economists urged Ottawa to add GST to food and other exempt items, claiming it would benefit the poor. One of them from the University of Toronto resounds in the name of Michael Smart. Gooseberries are hard to find when in season these days. Short of growing them yourself, the only option seems to lie in locating a pick-your-own operation that can provide the delectable fruit. Things have changed since the mid-nineteenth-century when Britain boasted some 700 shows devoted to displaying the largest and heaviest gooseberries. Alas, there are but eight now left. One of the oldest is North Yorkshire’s Egton Bridge Gooseberry Society, founded in 1801, whose annual contest is held the first Tuesday of August. Should you be raising Ribes crispa fruit to peak perfection and wish to compete you must become a paid-up member by Easter Tuesday, 10 April.

Diversion No. 3

A council in eastern Victoria, Australia, has issued a warning about potentially dangerous pinecones falling from a tree in the town of Warragul. The Baw Baw Council says pinecones from the 120-year-old heritage-listed bunya pine at the Courthouse Hotel weight up to 10kg each. Mayor Diane Blackwood says the cones are potentially lethal. “They are the size of a watermelon, falling literally out of the sky from potentially 20m high. So you wouldn’t want to be under one, I tell you,” she told The New Zealand Herald. A persistent pest of Betula is the birch leafminer, Fenusa pusilla. The larvae burrow between the leaf surfaces, leaving unsightly brown tunnels. In days of yore, a potent control was Cygon 2E, painted in bands on the tree trunks. This was potentially the most poisonous of any chemcial control available to the home gardener. Today, Natural Insect Control (NIC)’s Birch Leafminer Guard provides a gentler and more environmentally friendly solution. A single package contains around 5 million voracious nematodes isolated from Canadian strains and harvested daily to ensure best quality. A single application is recommended later this month or in early May. The eastern tent caterpillar (Malacosoma americanum) is another pest that emerges this month from overwintering eggs. The caterpillars form a silk tent in which to spend their larval life, emerging to feed on their host tree three times daily – around dawn, mid afternoon and again at dusk so long as the weather remains dry. Wait until the little beasts are ensconced in their shelter, slip a plastic bag over the tent, tie or tape tightly, and then prune off the stem and dispose of in the garbage. The biological spray containing Bacillus thuringiensis var. kurstaki, often abbreviated simply to ‘Bt’ will destroy young caterpillars but should be applied at twilight, as they emerge to feed.

Diversion No. 4

“If permafrost continues to melt, I would think it likely that a small fraction of ancient seeds will germinate, survive and grow spontaneously,” Buford Price from the University of California, Berkeley told New Scientist, commenting on the recent revival of 30,000-year-old plant material from Siberia by Russian researchers. The expression “the root of the matter” originated with Job of biblical fame (19:28) and will be appreciated by any vegetable-growing gardener. The oft-despised turnip has an early Canadian connection, having been introduced to the continent by Jacques Cartier in his Quebec veggie garden in 1541. These provided nourishment for him and his team as they searched for diamonds and gold in what was to become la belle province. Rebecca Rupp writes of the distressing mineralogical results in her How Carrots Won the Trojan War (2011). What Cartier, no geologist, collected turned out to be iron pyrites and quarts crystals, which inspired the contemporaneous French expression “fake as Canadian diamonds.” We simply cannot resist the timely information that Newfoundland is home to the geographical feature Easter Tickle. Non-Newfies, particularly those lacking nautical knowledge, should realize that a ‘tickle’ is a narrow stretch of water separating two islands or an island and the mainland.


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Wes Porter -- Bio and Archives

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.


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