As the Garden Grows

What's blooming today?


You are here: Home / Archives for Toronto

Cut your energy bill this holiday season by switching to LED Holiday lights

by

We had our first snow last week. That’s a little early for Toronto, especially to have snow that actually stayed on the ground for a few days.

I was taken by surprise by the early snow and it made me realize that we’d better get the Christmas lights out and start decorating the house before it snows again and makes it difficult to get the lights up.

Have you started decorating your home for the holidays yet?

We’ve pretty much switched over to LED Christmas lights. With the cost of energy these days it’s nice to know that LED lights are 90% more efficient than standard incandescent lights.

Did you know that this past Spring Toronto’s CN Tower, one of the tallest free standing structures in the world, got new lights? Yes, they equipped the tower with thousands of LED lights. Now at night the CN Tower is lite up with a variety of colors or pasterns. I think they change the colors and patterns daily. By patterns I mean that on Canada Day the tower might be light up with a flag totally made of LED lights or on the 4th of July there could be an American Flag showing. It’s beautiful. Plus, it doesn’t cost the city very much to light the tower. Only $1000 per month! That’s pretty good for a gigantic public building and tourist attraction.

So … if even cities are starting to use LED lights maybe you should too if you haven’t already made the switch.

A few other things that I like about using LED Holiday lights is the fact that the bulb is encased in a very hard plastic which makes them extremely durable. I’m sure you know how easy it is to break glass incandescent bulbs – especially the ones you use outdoors! LED lights are also long lasting. They’ll operate for 50,000 hours or more! That means years and years of use before you need to replace a string of lights.

As you know we try to be as green as possible with our gardening and the products we use around our home. I consider LED lights a green product because they are energy efficient and also because they last so long.

How many of you already use LED Holiday lights?






I’m back from Vegas

by

Sorry for the lack of posts since Wednesday. I had planned to write regularly while I was in Vegas, but I barely had an internet connection in my hotel so I was unable to make any new posts!

That was such a drag! I was in Vegas for two blogging conventions and ended up with out internet access. How Ironic huh?

Well, I can tell you that the weather was much nicer in Las Vegas than it was here in Toronto while I was away! As our plane took off on Thursday afternoon I noticed what looked like snow flurries hitting the planes window! Ah it was snowing!

Last year you might remember that Vegas had snow in December, A few inches I believe, and we hadn’t even had snow here in Toronto by that time. Quite the change this year!

Las Vegas was a little warmer this past week than it normally is around this time in November. I’d say it averaged about 80 F during the day and low 70’s at night. Very comfortable temperatures since there was really no humidity to speak of at all.

I got home late last night or perhaps you might say early this morning and I already miss the Las Vegas weather. It was raining and cold and just plain gloomy looking outside today! Not inviting at all.

It won’t be long before the cold weather sets in, I’m sure of it.

We still had our patio table and chair set up outside so my husband tried to spend some time outside this afternoon in order to take them apart (they are metal and glass) and store them but he only got the job half done as it started to rain heavily.

Tomorrows supposed to be cool but mainly sunny. Perhaps we’ll get that patio furniture put away tomorrow and if I’m feeling up to it I’d better start working on putting the garden to bed for the winter too!

Have you finished all your autumn garden tasks yet? Is your garden all tucked in and ready for winter?

Time to bring the tropical plants indoors!

by

It’s cooled down here in Toronto quite a bit over the last week. In fact, some night’s have started to get close to freezing temperatures.

So, I think I’m going to bring all my tropical plants indoors again. I did put all the tropicals like the passionflower vines, the jasmine, ornamental peppers and so on inside the enclosed back porch a couple of weeks ago. We even put two tomato plants that had been growing in large pots inside the porch too.

The plants have all done well in there and the tomatoes have really taken off and have produced a number of green tomatoes. Most are large enough to begin ripening and as far as I’m concerned that’s just in time as the porch will be too cool soon for the tomatoes to survive.

I think that I’ll bring the tropical plants inside and place them in our sunny spare bedroom upstairs.

I do this every year, but I’ve found that not all of the plants make it through the winter. We have a humidifier that we use upstairs in the winter time, but I think that the plants find the air too dry even with the extra humidity we try to put in the air.

Perhaps we’ll get another humidifier or vaporizer to put right in the room with the plants. That will certainly increase the total humidity upstairs!

They have to combat dry winter furnace heated air and the occasional white fly or other pesty bug attack. I do give the plants a spray with a mild soapy water solution occasionally.

Anyone have any other tips for me as to how I can make sure my passion flower vines and other tropicals make it through the winter inside the house?

Meta