As the Garden Grows

Happy New Year!

I’m hoping that all of my fellow gardeners and gardener wannabees are happy and healthy as we start this new year.

I know for many of you your gardens are now dormant since it’s winter and it’s too cold for leaves on our plants let alone flowers! However I’m sure many of you are making plans for Spring.

I haven’t done this for a few years, but this year, cme February or so I’m going to set up my seedling trays and start planting seeds. If I remember correctly you have to start Asters, Impatiens and a few other plants quite early in order to have big enough plants for the end of May or early June planting. Of course, the majority of plants that I’ll start indoors don’t need to be planted until March ie Tomatoes.

Luckily I have a good stock of seeds in my cool basement storage. I hope that most of them are still viable! I also collected seeds off a number of my plants this year ie Cosmo, Cleome, Liatris etc so I’ll be planting some of those in little pots and others right in the garden beds ones the soil is thawed in the Spring.

I know that growing some of my own plants will cut our costs greatly. As I said I haven’t grown my own seedlings for a few years now … instead I’ve purchased annual flowers and some veggies at a nursery in late spring or early summer … but enough of spending money on things i can grow on my own! I just have to get started early enough.

Do you grow some of your own seedlings? If so – what types of plants do you start indoors during the winter?

Well, for the first time in a few years we had a green Christmas here in Toronto.

I think in the time I’ve lived in Toronto (about 25 years now) we’ve had more green Christmas’ than white ones, but for the last few years we’ve had lots of snow at Christmas.

It actually rained quite a bit on Christmas day and the following day. Kind of nice to have the mild weather – at least we didn’t get the freezing rain and ice storms that so many people in the US seemed to have during the holiday!

Did you have a green, icy or white Christmas in your area?

Normally in the winter time I hope for a good snow cover for my garden as the harsh winter winds and low temperatures are hard on the plants if they don’t have some snow cover to insulate them … but as of right now it’s fairly mild out and the garden and lawn got lots of moisture with all that rain!

Hopefully when it starts to get really cold here again we’ll get some snow. Yeah … I think I’m wishing for some snow – odd I know!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of my regular readers and new visitors. I hope that you had a great time visiting with family and friends!

I know it’s not winter yet, but it sure feels like it here in Toronto.

Last week we got our first real snow. It wasn’t much – only about 2 cm and it was pretty much gone by Saturday when the weather warmed up and it started raining.

As sad as it is to say goodbye to the garden for the winter, it was nice to see the plants dusted with snow, and roses and rose buds lightly dusted with frost.

Last week when the snow storm hit we had heavy winds and it looks like at least one of my roses took a beating. The rose had a growth spurt in September and even though I wanted to cut down it’s extra long stems I didn’t because they had buds on them and I hoped to see their blooms before it got too cold here (I did, once it was freezing!). So the rose got battered in all that wind and it looks like two long stems broke off. They’re still attached, but hanging by just a bit bark.

Have you had your first snow yet? Is it starting to get “winter cold” in your area? If so, how is your garden fairing, and does it look nice even when covered in snow?