We spent yet another weekend – Or rather at least one day this weekend doing some more yard work in order to prepare our garden for winter. This time we were busy putting away things like our solar lights, garden ornaments and trimming back some of the plants that had become overgrown. I also took some time inspecting my rose plants and I cut out any dead branches that I noticed.

When the trees finally start to drop their leaves we’ll gather up some of the leaves and put them on our garden beds as we normally do each year. A good layer of maple leaves on our plants seems to help protect them through the winter.

Most winters we don’t get a lot of snow. Oh we get snow, but it snows, then it melts and we have a week or two of deep cold but no snow cover .. so if the plants are bare and exposed to all that cold it can really hurt them – so at least the deep leaf cover helps. Then of course it will snow again and our garden will have a foot or two of snow on it for a week or two until it melts again and that will keep the plants and ground insulated for a short while .. but the temperature changes the garden goes through through the winter because of our lack of good snow cover yet fairly cold temperatures can be quite hard on the plants if they aren’t prepared in the fall.

Do you put mulch or leaves on your garden beds in late fall to protect your plants over the winter?

Anyway … Last weekend I decide it was time to get a start on preparing the garden for winter so we got to work at putting away our patio furniture and tidying up the garden beds to some degree. We still have a lot of work to do, but at least we got things started.

While I was working in the garden I noticed that quite a few of my fall flowers were blooming so I got out my camera and took quite a few pictures. Here’s a few of my favorite garden photos from last weekend:

Toad Lilies! The only time of year that I can see lovely Toad Lilies blooming is in late September through October. Aren’t they absolutely lovely?

Then there are these lovely chrysanthemums. I have a large planter of them on my front porch blooming their pretty little heads off.

Sedum always shines at this time of year. I always think of it as kind of a filler plant in the spring and summer, but come Autumn it’s a star when it begins to bloom and turns lovely colors.

Monkshood is another Autumn favorite of mine. I have two types of Monkshood growing in my backyard garden. I believe the type in the photo below is Monkshood Azure.

This last photo is my favorite. Of course it’s a rose. This rose is Chicago Peace. It’s not as colorful as it would be in the Spring or early summer … but it’s still lovely. If it weren’t for the little tiny green leaf on one of the petals I think this would be an almost perfect picture of this rose.

Do you still have flowers blooming in your garden? If you do what’s blooming?

You see, we had my neighbors putting in a new fence on one side, and the neighbors on the other side don’t take care of their yard at all so there’s always weeds creeping into our yard from their side, so the month started out in battle mode and it didn’t look good.

I’m quite happy to report that after several weeks of giving our garden some tender loving care – ie lots of compost, mulch, planting new plants in the bare spots, making up my special alfalfa tea to fertilize the garden beds and so on … the plants are looking quite happy.

I’ve actually been out in the garden taking quite a few pictures in the last week, maybe an extra 200 pictures! You see we just got a new cellphone. It’s a Nokia N8 and it has a 12 mpg camera inside it and it takes fabulous pictures and video! I was going to post an HD video that I took with the phone in this post but for some reason I’m having trouble posting it to Youtube. Youtube keeps saying it’s going to take about five hours to upload a 7 minute video. Crazy! So for now … I’ll just post a few pictures and I’ll try to find a way to get my garden tour video in another post soon.

Here are some lovely White Petunias. I always put a few Petunias in hanging baskets near my bird feeders. They help attract more birds, even hummingbirds if I plant red or pink ones.

Another flower that’s blooming like crazy right now is this Octavia Hill Rose, isn’t it pretty?

My Lavender plants are just beginning to bloom. I believe I have 7 or 8 Lavender plants scattered throughout my garden beds. The ones in the sunniest spots are flowering the most right now, but the others will catch up quickly I’m sure.

I also have several Clematis vines in both my front and back yard garden beds. This lovely pink/red clematis flower is one that grows on a trellis at the front of my house. The plant climbs along the trellis about 12 feet up the wall. It’s beautiful when it’s in bloom.

What’s blooming in your garden this month? Is your garden just gorgeous right now? I know I’m loving mine at this time because I have so many roses in bloom that whenever I walk outside all I smell is lovely old rose fragrance. It’s beautiful.

Our garden was on hold for a good part of that time. Oh I did regular garden maintenance on it, such as pruning the roses of dead branches after the long cold winter and making sure the garden beds weren’t full of weeds. However, I didn’t put in any new perennials or plant any annuals until after the fence went in. The shared fence didn’t start going in until the 6th of June so I’ve spent the last two weeks playing catch up with my garden … oh and giving the plants along the new fence tender loving care since new post holes and a big trench had to be dug which likely disturbed some of their roots.

I’m exhausted … but I have to say, here on this first day of Summer, that my garden is starting to look the way I want it to. I must admit that a few weeks ago I was certain that my garden would pretty much be a write off this year. Oh and when the fence was going in I thought that my roses were going to be damaged. I have some very special roses along that fence line – Prince Napoleon, Sympathy and my gigantic William Baffin. I’d hate to lose any of them, but of the eight roses along that fence line Prince Napoleon and Sympathy would have been the worst ones to lose. As it was, we had to lean a few of the roses over while the fence work was being done and Prince Napoleon was leaning right over onto other roses and plants. I thought it was a goner for sure. As it is, it has a terrible case of Black Spot right now because of lack of air circulation due to basically lying on other plants for a week.

Since we’re in Garden and Yard sprucing up mode we sanded off the old paint on the doors of our storage areas under our enclosed back porch and I spent several hours yesterday repainting them. Wow .. everything looks so nice and new now.

Perhaps by this weekend I’ll have slowed down from my outdoor activities and I’ll get around to moving some of my photos from my camera to my computer. If I do I’ll post some pictures of the new fence and how the garden looks now. It does look pretty good if I do say so myself.

We’d driven past the site a few times in the last couple of weeks and when I took a look at their website I discovered that they have a “no tax” Wednesday every week … so we figured we might save some money if we went shopping for our plants last night.

It turned out that they were having a 20% off sale … so we got that instead of the “no tax” as that saved us an extra 7%. They had a great selection of plants in a variety of sizes and the prices were ok … I’d be happy if the prices were the lowest I could find, but the discount and the quality of the plants made me a happy gardener.

We ended up spending more than I thought we would. You see we have several hanging planters, window planters and 7 balcony boxes (those large low rectangular planters) to fill with annuals.

I did grow some of my own annuals this year, but not nearly as many as I need.

So … what did we end up getting?

A flat of Impatiens, 2 nice double flowering Begonia, 2 small Fuchsia, 6 dwarf Dahlia’s, 6 Gerber Daisies, a few Coleus, several Lobelia and Petunia plants, dwarf white night scent Nicotina, several Marigolds in vibrant orange and yellow and I’m sure a few other plants that I can’t think of right now.

I also picked up some early Girl tomato plants, Sweet cherry 100, English cucumbers a few types of lettuce and Swiss Chard.

The only plants I couldn’t find, but ones that I usually use in my garden or planters were annual Geraniums and Cleomes. When I found the dwarf Dahlia’s I thought I’d use them instead of the Geraniums but if I can find some Geraniums this weekend I might use both.

As for the Cleomes I did find some at Reeves but they were single plants in 4 inch pots at 2.99 each … and I need about 20 of them to border the back of my garden beds so I’ll have to find cheaper ones. Oh and I did take some seeds off the plants last year so I’ll be planting some of last years seeds in the back of the garden beds this weekend too.

Earlier in the week we’d been to another garden center. I wanted to find a replacement for one of my roses – Chicago Peace – as it didn’t seem to come back this year. With the great weather we’ve had all year I’d think it would show signs of life by now, especially considering that all the rest of my roses are 3 to 7 feet high, full of leaves and rose buds … but no luck.

So … I thought I’d replace that rose with perhaps a Weigela or another type of flowering hardy shrub since I’ve now lost two roses in the same spot in the garden. I did pick out a purple Weigela that I love, but then I found yet another Chicago Peace … so I guess the Weigela will go in another place in the garden and I’ll try the rose for the third and final time in my small oval patio garden bed.

All in all I think I picked up 75 or more plants! You know what I’m going to be doing this weekend … planting, planting, planting. I’ll also be pulling out all my seeds and get some veggies and a few other annuals started by seed.

Hows the weather in your area? Are you going to be planting this weekend too?

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It’s hard to believe but November is here.

It’s starting to get colder and the leaves are falling off the trees and my garden plants. It’s time to start putting the garden to bed for the winter.

As far as gardening goes I dislike this time of year the most.

Yes I still have some flowers blooming, but it won’t be long before the first snow arrives and my garden will be awash in white. It’s a long wait until spring and new garden life – isn’t it?

In the last two weeks I’ve spent some time closing down the garden. Trimming plants and removing plants that have died down. We’ve put away our patio furniture and just this past weekend all the solar lights and torches were put away for winter. Tropical plants such as my Passion Flower vines, Hibiscus and Jasmine have all been brought inside as they can’t withstand our very cold winters here in Toronto.

There isn’t much left to do, other than cover the garden beds with tree leaves that have been falling heavily over the last few days. Soon the trees in the area will be bare – but their leaves will be protecting my garden beds.

I still have to cut down the sunflowers that I grow in the front boulevard …

They are still blooming and most look pretty good – but I know that won’t last. Perhaps next weekend we’ll chop them down … oh yes I mean chop, normal garden pruners just don’t do the job on Sunflowers thick stems.

Have you started getting your garden ready for the long winter? What do you do to prepare your garden?

What I mean by this is that from early April until last week or so, every time I visited my garden I had work to do! From spring clean up, pruning the roses and other plants to weeding to planting annuals to finally completing the big task of adding approximately 30 bags of red cedar mulch on my back and front garden beds.

We put mulch on our garden every year, but the last two years we only topped up the beds with a light layer. This year we noticed that the previous applications of mulch had really broken down, so we made sure to add a 3 inch layer this year – hence all the big heavy bags of mulch!

Other than doing a little pruning here and there as the roses grow and become floppy, and or staking the roses and other plants as they grow, most of the work is done. From here on in the main gardening job will be keeping it watered.

Actually there’s at least one more job. My husband and I made up a large garbage pail of Alfalfa tea about a month ago and it should be just about ready to be applied to the garden. Alfalfa seems to contain a growth hormone that causes the plants to row quite well once either alfalfa pellets are added to the soil and break down, or in our case once our evil stinking brew of Alfalfa tea has been applied. It’s a great natural fertilizer.  Obviously it’s also organic.  We are organic gardeners and never use chemicals on our plants or lawn.

We just have to make sure that we apply it to the garden when most of our close neighbors are indoors! It’s stinky! We usually apply alfalfa tea twice a year – once in early June and then again near the end of July, but we’re behind this year, so the garden might only get one dose this year.

Speaking of enjoying the garden … The first huge flush of roses is just about over. The roses started blooming in early June and now that first flush seems to be dying down. Most of my roses are re-bloomers or continuous bloom … but nothing beats that first Spring flush of roses as it’s usually the largest!

Other plants in bloom include Lavender, Salvia, Heuchera, some of my hostas, some of my clematis, Gazania, Marigolds, Petunias, Dianthus (Sweet William), Impatiens, Alyssum, Portulaca, Hollyhocks, Lilies, Daylilies, Maltese Cross and the list goes on. More plants will begin to bloom soon as well!

We also have a number of veggies growing ranging from Tomatoes, Tiny tom and Cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, peas, a variety of lettuces, spinach and carrots. Plus we also grow strawberries and raspberries. Yummy.

Now if only it would get a little warmer here in Toronto. It’s been kind of cool the last two weeks with below average temperatures. It looks like it’s supposed to warm up a little bit this weekend, but overall it will still be below normal temps for a while. I do hope summer starts to feel like summer soon.

The only good thing about the slightly cooler temps is that I haven’t had to water the garden daily or even every second day and we haven’t really had the air-conditioning on. So we’re saving money on water and electricity. But enough already … It is after all supposed to be summer!

How is your garden doing this summer? Are you finished most of the hard work and like me find it’s time to sit back and enjoy the garden? And is your weather a little cooler than normal too?

Over the last week my husband and I have put down about 23 bags of cedar mulch on the garden beds. I think we still need to put a little bit more down to get a nice thick layer as it’s supposed to be warmer than usual this summer so the more mulch on the garden the less it will dry out and the less we’ll have to water.

I have tons of photos that I’ve taken over the last month or so, but due to updating WordPress to the new 2.8 I can’t use the visual editor so I can’t add photos properly or adjust their size … so no pics in this post – not until I get my WordPress fixed up!

All of my roses are blooming or just about all of them. If you don’t have roses or don’t have many you probably can’t imagine what almost 60 rose plants blooming at once must be like. I’ll tell you – it’s heaven! Especially since many of my roses are fragrant. Oh lovely!

Right now my garden is all about roses, but earlier in the month the German Irises, columbine and Clematis were the stars. Some of the Clematis are still blooming, and so are my two honeysuckle vines.

How is your garden doing? If you are like me, most of the major work such as weeding and adding mulch is probably done so now it’s just maintaining the plants by watering and occasionally doing a bit of pruning and deadheading – right?

It’s been cooler than normal here in Toronto. They say our average temperature at this time of year is about 23 C (74 F), but it’s only been about 18 C (64 F) or cooler most of the month so far. I guess the aphids and slugs love these kind of temperatures, but so far it doesn’t seem like the Lady bugs do! I only saw on lonely Lady Bug feasting on aphids as I did my garden rounds.

Since the Lady Bugs aren’t going to eat all the aphids before they destroy my lovely roses I decided I’d have to go out there and fight them. So earlier this evening I went outside armed with a spray bottle full of water and a squirt of dish detergent and I sprayed all my rose plants and rose bugs with the mixture.

Die Aphids! Die!

I fully expect to go outside tomorrow and see dessicated aphid bodies stuck to my rose buds. Victory!

I’m glad it’s so easy to kill them!

As for my roses, so of the first flowers came out earlier this week. As usually Morden Sunrise was the first rose to bloom. It was quickly followed by Stanwell Perpetual and Charles Albanel. All of these rose are at the front of my house – surprisingly, since the majority of my roses are in the south facing back yard. You’d think the roses in the back would bloom first, but I guess not.

In the backyard, William Baffin has one rose open and so does Parade … all the rest of my many roses have buds that are in various stages – from just forming to just about to bloom. I’m sure that by the weekend most of my roses will have a few to many many blooms. It will be lovely.

Now we just need it to start getting warmer! Oh well … at least we don’t have to have the air-conditioning on so we’re saving money!

How’s your garden doing? Have you noticed a lot of aphids or other garden pests on your plants? How do you get rid or them.

I just remembered, we have one other major garden pest – the Lily Beetle. My lilies look awful this year. Their foliage is all raggy and they aren’t growing as well as they normally do. Anyone know of a non-toxic (no pesticide) way to get rid of lily beetles?

How do you know if you have slugs or snails in your garden?

Well if you notice that your plants leaves have irregular holes in them or perhaps slime trails on the soil and leaves you probably have slugs or snails. You might also see them crawling on your plant leaves in the evening after dark.

Slugs can do a lot of damage to young plants and seedlings. They can literally strip a young plant bare or even eat it down to the ground. You might try cutting a 2 Liter pop bottle and creating a collar to place around young tender plants if you have slugs in your garden as this will help protect them.

Slugs are particularly fond of Hostas and Delphiniums. However having said that I’ve seen them on about half the plants I grow in my garden so keep any eye out for signs of slug damage.

Some tips on keeping slugs at bay

• 1. Stir up the earth in your garden beds in the spring. This helps to expose the slug eggs/ larvae and causes them to die from the exposure.
• 2. Don’t put mulch down until early June (at least here in this Zone 5b area, might be earlier in your area)
• 3. Add used coffee grounds to the soil or apply around the base of plants troubled by slugs.
  • Each year we make several trips to coffee shops and ask for their used coffee grounds. Most will give them away to the public as they are just throwing them out in the garbage anyway. Some will even take a bucket from you and fill it up throughout the day. We add the coffee grounds to our garden beds, especially around slug troubled plants like Hostas and we also add the coffee grounds to our compost container as they help make a rich compost when they break down.
• 4. Crushed egg shells around troubled plants is said to deter slugs as they don’t like crawling over abrasive material. Sand, wood shavings, diatomaceous earth, hair or ash can be placed around susceptible plants as an abrasive barrier as well.
• 5. Copper tape, used wet or dry, is one of the most effective barriers. When slugs and snails make contact with the copper, there is a toxic reaction, similar to an electric shock, which repels them. The minimum width for the copper barriers needs to be at least two inches; slug barriers sold in nurseries are often smaller and should be doubled or tripled when installed.
• 6. Slugs and snails tend to feed at night so you can go into your garden at night and literally pick the slimy slugs off your plants and dispose of them.
• 7. You also might try setting some bait for slugs in shallow containers. A popular slug trap is baited with beer, but people have also tried using yeast, damp dog food (dry pellets), and a potato cut in half.
• 8. You might also try purchasing Nematode worms from a garden supplier. Nematodes also help to keep other garden pests from the garden too.
  • Nematodes aggressively search out and attack slugs. They enter the slugs body through a hole behind their heads (the pulmonary aperture that they breathe through to be precise). Once inside they release a bacteria which stops the slug eating. The nematodes then start to reproduce inside and within 7-10 days the slug is dead. The nematodes continue to reproduce as the body breaks down. This new population enters the soil and searches out new slugs to attack. This is a natural, non-toxic product that is safe for both users and wildlife. The nematodes stay active for 6 weeks so a single dose protects plants when they are emerging in the spring and are most vulnerable.
  • Nematodes can only be used in late spring and summer when the soil has warmed up (to above 5°C). On heavy, waterlogged clay soil, the nematodes can find it difficult to move, so Nemtodes can be less effective in these conditions.
• 9. Use plants that slugs dislike to repel slugs – Ginger, garlic, mint, chives, red lettuce, red cabbage, sage, sunflower, fennel, foxglove, mint, chicory & endive seem to be less prone to slug attack. Plant them around the perimeter of your garden to keep them from infiltrating, and or plant them near troubled plants such as Hosta.
• 10. Make your garden bird friendly by putting out a feeder. The birds might pick off a few slugs while they’re visiting your yard. Also if you have frogs or snakes in your garden they will often eat slugs and other garden pests.

And a bonus tip … Slugs love moisture, so if you want to minimize slugs in your garden keep your garden as dry as possible (without killing your plants), especially in the spring when there are slug eggs in the ground. Dry soil could kill them or at the very least cause them to move to an area that suits them better – ie your neighbors yard. That’s one reason why I suggested turning your garden soil several times in the spring, preferably before your soil temp reaches 5 Celsius, as you will likely expose slug eggs and they will die because they’ll dry out.

As you can probably tell I’m not into using pesticides to get rid of slugs and other bad bugs. in fact here in Toronto they’ve banned most pesticides and herbicides so it’s a good thing I’ve been gardening without chemicals anyway! LOL I have a lot of success with these methods – particularly the coffee grounds, turning the soil and hand picking slugs and snails off my plants and as a result I don’t have too many slugs in my garden beds.

May your garden be slug and snail free this year!