Impatiens Downy Mildew, Begonias, Watering

As we warned last month, impatiens down mildew is expected to hit again this season. It has already been reported devastating plantings of this most popular annual in Florida. Some Canadian gardeners blamed overwatering for last year’s impatiens collapse. Alas, it was anything but, although watering at night is said to encourage the disease’s spread. Following last season’s experiences, many Canadian garden centres are battening down the hatches, stocking fewer flats and suggesting tuberous or multiflora bedding begonias as a substitute.

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Perhaps only unfamiliarity with flowering tobacco, Nicotiana, is preventing this delightfully old-fashioned plant from making a comeback. While brightly coloured forms emerged some decades ago, these lack the glorious evening scent of the original white flowers. They may also come under aphid attack, something the original defends its against with copious production of nicotine poison. Are the prospects really that appalling for 2013, queried the Chicago Tribune? Greg Stack, a horticultural educator with the University of Illinois extension service told the newspaper: “If it were me, I’d be looking for some alternatives I should be planting.”

Diversion No. 1

No wonder Prince Charles talks to plants – his father likes chatting to bushes, suggested U.K.’s The Mail on Sunday, as the Duke of Edinburgh was greeted by camouflaged snipers as he inspected soldiers of The Royal Canadian Regiment’s 3rd Battalion in Toronto.

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One of the most delightful of begonias has been finding its way into Canadian garden centres this season. Hybrid ‘Waterfalls Encanto Orange’ is a profusely blooming variety suitable as with most begonias for light shade. It bears profuse single blooms of bright orange throughout the season up to first frosts. Three to a 10-inch hanging basket or in an 18-inch window box, combined with purple sweet potato vine and asparagus fern is a definite showstopper. As Bunny Guinness once wrote of such new offerings in The Sunday Telegraph, “Think of plants like friends – it is often refreshing to have the opportunity to widen your circle, new ones are different and often exciting.” Even better for those that wish to extend the season at either end, this begonia seems remarkably cold hardy – ours survived the Mother’s Day dose of ice pellets and frosty winds just fine. As with so many begonias these are also said to do well as houseplants albeit it appears to be an annual one.

Diversion No. 2

Thanks to its warming climate, farmer Bob Duncan has been growing a piece of the subtropics on Vancouver Island for 20 years now, reports the National Post. Duncan and his wife Verna, who own Fruit Trees and More Nursery in North Saanich, has had thousands of customers interested in growing lemons and other produce common to the Mediterranean. “I think it is within the reach of every homeowner right now living on the south coast of British Columbia to grow their own citrus and these other types of Mediterranean and subtropical fruit,” says Duncan.

Water is essential for garden plants – even occasionally for xerophytes, which have been defined as plants living under prohibition. It’s been a reasonably moist spring but as we move towards summer doubtlessly dry periods will occur, perhaps even a drought. The secret phrase is ‘deep watering.’ Spraying anything and everything with the hose may cool the hoser. However, it does about as much good as urinating on the garden. (And we examine such practices in a separate column.) Encourage roots to go deep in search of life-giving H2O. Apply a half-inch of water every three days. At average city water pressure, this is achieved by leaving the sprinkler in the same spot for an hour.

Diversion No. 3

The City of Toronto has taken to the skies to fight gypsy moths. A helicopter is being used to spray the biological pesticide Bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki to control the European gypsy moth population in several neighbourhoods throughout the city. We are indebted for this item to the perhaps not inappropriately named 24 Hours writer Don Peat.

It was a late spring, both here and in the U.K. But there is a brighter side to the doom and gloom – bountiful blossoms on fruit trees. With luck, this could later lead to a humongous harvest. The bees are happy, home horticulturists are in good humour, pomologists are proud of their orchards. Only garden centre operators are upset at the delayed spring followed by mid-May’s cold snap playing merry havoc with their stock. Another cheerful note has arisen from the deciphering of spruce genomes by Canadian and Swedish scientists. Cheerful because it gives welcome rebuttal to those that downplay of not downright sneer at our enthrallment with plants. Swedish scientists have mapped the gene sequence of Norway spruce and established it is seven times larger than that of humans. Not to be outdone, Canadian scientists released the genome sequence of the white spruce, finding it to be, at 20-30 billion base pairs, up to 10 times larger than the human genome. And that is without the girth of many of humanity.

Diversion No. 4

Michael York, the 71-year-old star of Logan’s Run and The Three Musketeers has disclosed he has been fighting a battle against amyloidosis, a rare blood disorder that nearly killed him. Ironically in his 1991 autobiography he wrote of he and his wife’s health concerns were centred on a tiny, fruit-eating fly and Los Angeles’ controversial programme of aerial spraying with malathion “a dangerous poison first developed by the Nazis” to control it.

Almost impossible to find for the last fifty years in the urban environment are traditional nurseries that actually raise plants as opposed to garden centres that sell them. However, major cities are often ringed by such, as attractive it gardeners as catnip is to our feline friends. As Bunny Guinness, quoted above, has observed: “Buying plants from a plantsman’s nursery, as opposed to a garden centre, is rather like buying food from a gourmet delicatessen instead of a supermarket. It widens your horizons, and, with luck, you will meet the grower of the plants and have to opportunity to collect great advise and top-quality plants.”

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