Yes, I've been gardening in Calgary for 10 years now (but only 4 years at my current house) so I've learned a lot. But I'm still learning and trying new things. That's what makes gardening fun! These lazy days of fall have given me time to reflect back on the year and what I've learned from the new things I've tried:
Tomatoes
1. 1. Don’t
start tomato seedlings until mid-March in Calgary unless you have a heated
greenhouse or cold frame! Mine got just
too big to handle in the house and it was difficult to move them in and outside
in spring.
2. 2. Plastic
pots of about 30cm diameter are not big enough for a typical tomato plant. The tomatoes I had in these pots didn’t do
well because they didn’t have enough root space and they probably dried out too
quickly. The ones in the big rectangular
“self-watering” pots from Lee Valley did fine.
Sun/shade experiments
1. 1. I
grew delphiniums on the north side of the fence and despite the fact they
supposedly need full sun, they did fine.
Maybe they weren’t as big or as plentiful in terms of blooms as they
would have been had they had more sun, but they looked OK (except that I didn't get around to staking them in time). In a yard where sunny spots (more than 6
hours) are almost non-existent, this was an important discovery!
2. 2. I
also have raspberries in a planter box on the north side of the house, where
they get only about 3 hours of sun per day.
Again, maybe I’d have got more in a sunnier spot, but the harvest was
still very good and they certainly did well enough for me to decide to plant
more there next year!
Gardening with kids
1. 1. For
young kids, a hide-away and a pathway through the garden (especially one where
they can run in a circle) ROCK. A place
to dig is also essential. We had many
playdates and parties in the backyard this year with kids running freely in the
backyard and no damage to the garden occurred at all. And they loved to play chase on the
pathways! The hide-away under a spruce
at the back of the garden even elicited a very enthusiastic ‘Cool!! A clubhouse
in the back of the garden!’ from one of my daughter’s friends. And the best thing is, no plastic was
required.
2. 2. I’ve
read it before and can now confirm from my own experience, kids do eat veggies
that are grown in the garden! My
experiment (with no controls and a sample size of 2) will be repeated next year
(with a sample size of 3 and a bigger veggie patch).
3. 3. Poles
of at least 8 ft long are required to make a decent bean teepee (tipi?).
4. 4. Chocolate
cosmos don’t smell like chocolate.
Other
1. Hummingbird
feeders make, um, nice decorations. I
enthusiastically hung one this spring and then found out that the nectar should
be changed and the feeder cleaned about every other day. Sorry hummingbirds, no time for that this
year! Visit the honeysuckle instead.
2. Hanging
paper bags to deter wasps from building nests in an area really seems to
work. Unfortunately, we neglected to
hang one in the back corner by the compost bins and they nested in a piece of
rolled up carpet we haven’t got around to throwing away yet. My husband discovered this when he tried to
throw the carpet away…
3. Blogging
is fun but time consuming! This is the
first year I’ve been a professional garden coach and also first year I've blogged and I was amazed by the amount of response I got this
year both business-wise as well as friendly comments from other gardeners
around the world. In the winter I will
have plenty to do, including finishing posting the information on the plants I’ve
catalogued, but what I'm really looking forward to is e-visiting other garden bloggers that I didn’t have time to
communicate with much during the summer.
