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Just about time to put the garden to bed for the winter

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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?

Yellow Mums

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 …

Sunflower in the sun 2

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?






Time to enjoy the garden

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July has arrived and I think that I’m just about ready to sit back and enjoy my garden for the next few months.

back of garden - facing south

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.

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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!

IMG_5848 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!

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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?

Another gorgeous day

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I just love it when we have beautiful days in the dead of winter. It warmed up to 18 C or 64 F today … that’s almost unheard of here in Toronto!

I had to resist a strong urge to go out and putter in my garden! There’s still a little bit of snow out there – or at least there was some in the shady areas in the afternoon … it’s possible that it melted away by now.

So I was looking out at my garden from the kitchen window .. the leaves on the ground and in the garden beds, the roses that I didn’t prune in the fall, plants that needed to be pulled out after they died down last fall … and that’s when the urge to get out there and tidy up the garden hit me.

Of course it’s the beginning of March. I’m sure we’ll have one or two snow storms and some desperately cold weather before Spring really arrives … so no, I didn’t go out into the garden no matter how much I wanted to. It would have been a wasted effort and if I’d started pruning it might even have hurt the plants one the cold weather returns.

Instead my dog got an extra long walk in the afternoon and a long walk in the evening. She also was given a walk, as usual, in the morning by my husband. So we all got some good exercise and we’re able to enjoy the amazingly warm March weather.

Did it warm up in your area too? If it did, did you get outside to enjoy it too?

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