By Wes Porter ——Bio and Archives--November 1, 2019
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“Getting mulch?” enquired Ontario farmer Charlie Farquharson. You should be. Snow cover is becoming increasingly problematic, perennials are increasingly exposed to winter destruction. The answer, as Charlie knew, is a good thick mulch. Unfortunately home compost, superior in every respect, is too often a thing of the past. Composted livestock manure would be an acceptable substitute but the price by the bag . . . If not manure by the cubic yard, then consider straw. Check garden centres for bales left over from Halloween décor. After the ground freezes, break up and spread several inches thick and water down to prevent straw being blown over the rest of the garden – and the neighbour’s.Noticing more roadkill round Toronto? enquires CBC News. The city says it’s dealing with a backlog of 260 requests to dispose of dead critters. Normally, it’s supposed to take between 48 and 72 hours – but in a tweet, 311 Toronto warned that because of the high volume, it could take up to 10 days for the city to collect animal carcasses. While Toronto Animal Services will pick up larger animals, the city’s Solid Waste Management Services will pick up smaller wildlife, like mice, rats, small birds, or chipmunks. Faced with odoriferous rotting roadkill, residents voice their displeasure. So why not dump them outside their city councillors’ community offices?
“Adam was a gardener and God who made him sees/That half a proper gardener’s life is spent upon his knees,” penned the poet Rudyard Kipling. Alas, weeds form a large part of such gardening. Enter next season with a clean slate, so as to speak, by preparing now. Remove every last pesky invader before it distributes seeds. Encourage birds to feast on any missed. Hoeing, if done early on a dry, windy day will kill those easily reached. Slip the blade just under the surface to cut weeds from their roots. Chopping up soil will expose long-buried seeds to infest anew. But for those damned invaders taking up residence within clumps of perennials, Kipling was right. It remains a hands-and-knees task.
“In Flanders fields the poppies grow/Between the crosses, row on row,” wrote Canadian field surgeon John McCrae while serving there in World War I. The red corn poppy, Papaver rhoeas, was once regarded as a weed of grain crops. Since then though, it has come to symbolize the appalling waste of war. In the opening days of every November, leading up to 11th November, Remembrance Day, they will be seen in lapels. P. rhoeas can also, however, be grown as a garden annual. The seeds are available online from many mail order suppliers. The original, wild red poppy has now been joined by white, pink, rose, peach and lavender selections.
Diversion No. 3A Brit water firm threatened flood-hit customers with a hosepipe ban, according to The Daily Mail. Affinity Water e-mailed households to warn ‘we are now in a drought’ and measures had to be taken to reduce usage. The firm was fined £8-million recently because it failed to reduce leaks in its system.
Back once more is the tale of a ‘sheep-eating’ plant, said to trap animals with its sticky leaves and gets nutrients from their decaying corpses. This time, far from it’s native haunts in Chile, one has been reported growing in a flower bed in the centre of Truro, Cornwall in southwest England. Yes, the Puya berteroniana exists if not exactly up to its fearsome name. It is a bromeliad, related to the familiar pineapple and, like that plant, with leaves bearing sharp, pointed spikes. These have given rise to the popular name and alleged ability to dine on decomposing mutton. However, it is dubious of even the most woolly-brained sheep could be so ensnared. File alongside New Zealand’s notorious cat-catching tree, Pisonia brunoniana . . .
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A horticulturalist gave a Gardeners’ Question Time audience the giggles when she revealed that she once used a vibrator to help pollinate 32,000 tomatoes, reported The Daily Mail. BBC Radio 4 Gardeners’ Question Time audience in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, had a laugh when horticultural expert Christine Walkden revealed on a Sunday show she had used a hand-cranked vibrator. -
Celebrities are turning to organic gardening – or are they? Two decades ago, under Canada’s 26th Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson (1999-2005), her official residence Rideau Hall’s 32 hectares of landscaped gardens included an organic vegetable garden – cared for by staff. Later, down south Washington way under President Obama, wife Michelle installed similar plantings in the White House garden. Now, in the last few months, the delightful Duke and Duchess of Sussex have assigned a portion of the newly landscaped grounds at their new Windsor residence to organic veggies and fruits. It might be a social disaster of any of these people turned up at social functions with aching backs and dirt under their fingernails but . . . wouldn’t it be more believable if they realized such vegetable and fruit gardening is not a some-time, part-time proposition?
Mark These in Your Journal for NovemberWho thinks these up? Who registers them? Ah well, a day without a smile . . .
5 Gunpowder Day: Guy Fawkes attempts to blow up English Parliament
7 Bittersweet Chocolate with Almonds Day
10 Forget-Me-Not Day
13 Sadie Hawkins Day: girls in Dogpatch, USA propose to their boyfriends
16 Have a Party with Your Bear Day
23 Eat a Cranberry Day
23 National Cashew Day
24 Evolution Day
28 US Thanksgiving
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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.