Category Archives: Bees & Pollinators

Bees & Pollinators, Drought, Garden Design, Perennials

The Plant Lover’s Guide to Salvias (Book Review)

October 1, 2018 peterboroughmastergardeners Leave a comment

By: Mary Jane Parker, Master Gardener

If you care deeply about natural gardening and attracting bees, insects and hummingbirds to your garden, then salvias should be one of your go-to plants. They have wonderful flowers and fragrant leaves and for me, they bloom almost all summer.

In this very readable book, The Plant Lover’s Guide to Salvias, John Whittlesey outlines designing with salvia plants in different climate zones. We learn that salvias are generally hot climate plants and many have low water requirements but some of the perennial ones can be treated as annuals in our climate. Some are rated for zones close to ours and will survive here as perennials. I have had Salvia glutinosa growing here for many years and the book rates that one only a US zone 6a. Culinary sage (Salvia officinalis) has overwintered for me also for a number of years.

The author next goes through and discusses 150 species and exceptional hybrids, their country of origin and specific cultural practices for each and any notable characteristics such as a strong hummingbird attractor.

Finally, he discusses general cultural techniques and then provides a listing of sources for plants and seed. After having read the book and descriptions of different salvia species, I have ended up with a two-page list of interesting species I wish to try.

The Peterborough Horticultural Society has this book available in their lending library or you can purchase from Timber Press.

Bees & Pollinators, Compost, Garden Design, Perennials

New Garden Planning; a Look Ahead

September 17, 2018 peterboroughmastergardeners Leave a comment

By Cheryl Harrison, Master Gardener

Fall is a great time to get a head start on the new garden that you have been dreaming about for next year.

Deciding the new garden’s location depends on the purpose of the garden. Will it be a quiet area for relaxing? Look at the view from outside and also through the windows from inside your home when assessing potential locations.

Consider the growing conditions. Is the potential location windy, sunny, shady or combination sun/shade? It may be important to know the location of utility lines and pipes depending on how radical the planned change to the landscape. Do you have access to water? New plants usually need supplementary water for their first year. Also check the area for flooding and provide drainage when necessary.

Think about garden structures……perhaps an arbor, fence or pergola or maybe a bird bath or bench? For larger structures, you may need a construction permit. A landscape professional can be a great person to consult at any stage of planning.

Soil condition is vey important to the growth of plants. Newly built homes often have very little topsoil layered over nutrient poor subsoil. It may be necessary to dig out some of the subsoil and replace it with good topsoil. This “digging” step is when to be aware of the location of your utilities.

Create a new garden by edging the chosen area with a sharp shovel or edging tool then placing the material (usually a combination of grass and soil) into the centre of the new garden location. Smother unwanted growth by covering the area with 4-5 layers of newspaper, or cardboard, and water it down. Then layer topsoil about 15 cm (6 inches) on top and add additional organic material like composted manure. Finish the new garden bed with a 7-10 cm (3-4 inch) layer of mulch. The newspaper/cardboard layer, and the mulch will eventually decompose to become part of the garden’s soil.

Your new garden bed is ready for planting. Choose plant material by looking at plant catalogues and on web sites. What a great way to spend a fall or winter afternoon!

Bees & Pollinators, Herbs, Perennials

Herbs: Humble & Useful

June 11, 2018 peterboroughmastergardeners Leave a comment

By Vince Picchiello, Master Gardener in Training herbs-2523119_640

Perhaps one of the least celebrated plant family in our gardens is the herb. Many gardeners show their prize possessions of roses and hydrangeas, yet others will speak endlessly of their succulent tomatoes and robust peppers and of course others will offer baskets of pears and pints of raspberries. Few however, honour the forgotten herb.

Herbs are among the oldest cultivated plants. Their early domestication was due to their aromatic, culinary and medicinal qualities. Herbs are attractive plants and some even bear lovely flowers — such as lavender and chives to name but a few. For the home cook, the ease from garden or container to the kitchen provides the tastiest and freshest example of ‘local shopping’ and sustainability.

Maintenance and Care

While most herbs will survive in virtually any soil, a well prepared soil amended with mature compost and organic material virtually guarantee success.
Most are easily started from seed indoors and can be planted as seedlings in spring (or you can purchase from the nursery).
Mulches help to retain moisture and prevent weeds when planted in the garden.
There is no need for fertilizers as this may encourage ‘legginess’.
Most enjoy full sun with moderate moisture requirements. Others though, may require more moist conditions such as dill, mint, and parsley to name a few.
Many are also hardy, which make them tolerant of successive frosts. Some, however, are tender and don’t do well in frosty conditions. Examples of these are basil, marjoram and parsley.

Uses for Herbs

CULINARY : herbs are used in pesto’s, soups, salads, and flavours for vegetable preserves. Mint can be used as garnish in a drink or tea , parsley or cilantro on fish dishes

HEALING : Valerium and Chamomile are used as calming sedatives and for anti-anxiety, there are herbs for digestive issues, liver cleanses, anti-inflammatories, breath fresheners (mint or basil), first aid (plantain is great for scrapes and insect bites) and if you get industrious one can learn to make slaves, tinctures, and infusions all with many backyard/ container plants.

AESTHETICS: Lavender, lemon balm, roses, and lemon grass make great aromatics – Lets not forget their sheer beauty as some become lush with green foliage others provide lovely flowers

PRACTICAL: Many plants can be grown indoors or outdoors and in containers or in the yard.

In the coming days and weeks as you find yourself plotting and planning your garden/containers for an upcoming season, don’t forget the humble herb.

Bees & Pollinators

What is a “Bee City”?

March 20, 2018 peterboroughmastergardeners Leave a comment

By Suzanne Seryck, Master Gardener

beecitycan In the summer of 2017 the City of Kawartha Lakes was officially recognized as a Bee City by Bee City Canada. I live in Lindsay and heard this first through our local newsletter last summer. Since then I attended our local horticultural meeting in January and heard Susan Blayney, who had spearheaded the project, give an interesting and enthusiastic talk on what exactly this means to the City of Kawartha Lakes and how a city can officially become a Bee City.

Pollinators are vital. They are responsible for 1 in every 3 bites of food that we eat, as well as the reproduction of 90% of the world’s wild life plant species. The approach of Bee City Canada is to bring first nations, cities, campuses, schools and communities together to promote and protect pollinators, encouraging a natural, pollinator friendly approach to gardening and farming, where ecology is respected and biodiversity is the goal.

Bee City Canada was launched in Canada in 2016 by Shelly Candel after being inspired b nature-3240902_640 y the success of Bee City USA. Bee City USA is a non-profit organization, which was started in 2012 to help motivate communities to sustain pollinators. There are currently 62 cities and 33 campuses or educational institutes recognized through Bee City U.S.A.

The official vision of Bee City Canada is ‘Communities across Canada, connected in the protection, promotion and celebration of pollinators, enjoying the benefits of healthy ecosystems’. The first city to be recognized by Bee City Canada was Toronto in 2016, and since then 10 additional cities, 8 schools and 3 businesses have been recognized. The City of Kawartha Lakes is the first municipality to be recognized, and is unique for both its size and its agricultural component.

lavender-1537694_640 The City of Kawartha Lakes has a number of initiatives that they are working towards, the largest being the Fenelon Falls Pollinator project. Last year, a 1.5 acre decommissioned parcel of land on the Fenelon Falls landfill site was reseeded with a pollinator friendly seed mix. This project is an ongoing pilot that is being monitored by students from Fleming College along with the Ministry of the Environment. Other initiatives that are being planned include pollinator gardens, a 100 garden challenge, education in schools and seed bombing along trails, roads and parks.

It is important for all of us to recognize how necessary pollinators are, and to do whatever we can to encourage and support them. For anyone with a garden, we can all create pollinator friendly spaces, growing plants that will provide food, creating shelter, leaving space undisturbed for pollinators to build nests in the soil and creating a safe, pesticide free environment.

Bees & Pollinators, Compost, Garden Design, Vegetable Gardening

The Evolution of Gardening

February 5, 2018 peterboroughmastergardeners Leave a comment

By Amy Woodward, Peterborough Master Gardener

Last year I went to the Master Gardener Technical Update at Toronto Botanical Gardens. One of the keynote speakers was Mark Cullen and he was discussing how Canadian Gardening has evolved. The way we garden is constantly changing by utilizing small spaces, composting and appreciating insects and the natural environment.

Gardening Spaces

Many in urban areas are limited to the space they can garden in. There are numerous examples of minimal space gardens such as in apartments, community allotments, rental properties and new homes with smaller yards. A change in my gardening pattern has been from the old fashion long vegetable rows to square foot gardening. Mel Bartholomew, creator of square foot gardening, was disenchanted with long rows that took up too much space and involved too much weeding. He came up with the square foot method of gardening that takes up much less space, less weeding and minimal maintenance. This method is very popular amongst our Master Gardener Organization and for those short on space. Other approaches to limited space are container gardening, rooftop gardening and lasagna layering.

Composting

trees-1789120_640 — Leaves 1789120 by pixel2013, 2016, used under CC0 1.0

Although composting has been around for many years, we have seen changes in the way people compost. For instance, in the past, leaves were known as a nuisance and people would rake them, bag them and wait for the municipality to pick them up. Now it is recognized that leaves are a great addition to the compost pile. Leaves are rich in carbon and balance out nitrogen rich green material. You can also use leaves as mulch. Simply rake leaves onto the garden and the leaves will keep the moisture in and weeds out. Leafs are also used to improve soil texture and encourage earth worms to reside there.

Pollinators

nature-3076891_640 — Nature 3076891 by hettyvanderzanden, 2015, used under CC0 1.0

The public is now more educated and interested in how to save native pollinators such as flies, wasps, beetles, birds, butterflies and most importantly bees. Unfortunately, pollinator populations are decreasing. A number of steps have been adopted to protect pollinators including choosing native plants, planting milkweed, decreasing pesticides and installing insect hotels. The critical role that pollinators play is why the public is so concerned and methods of gardening are changing.

Overall, gardening continues to change and evolve. It will be interesting to see what our future has in store for us.

Bees & Pollinators, Bulbs, Perennials

Perennial Plant of the Year 2018: Allium ‘Millenium’

January 29, 2018 peterboroughmastergardeners Leave a comment

Adapted from perennialplant.org allium millenium

Allium ‘Millenium’ has numerous virtues to add to the landscape setting and will not disappoint. It boasts low-maintenance, dependability, and is not invasive.

Soil: Grows best in well-drained soils.

Uses: Full-sun gardens–where its sleek structure can complement many other growth habits. Cut flowers retain a blush of their summer color.

Unique Qualities: Allium ‘Millenium’ is a butterfly magnet. The plant is interesting through multiple seasons for both foliage and large, gorgeous blooms. Reseeding is much less a problem than in other alliums.

Maintenance: Allium ‘Millenium’ is subject to no serious insect or disease problems. Deer and rabbits usually avoid ‘Millenium’. Alliums are bulbs that are available in stores for fall planting.

Growing best in full sun, each plant typically produces an upright foliage clump of grass-like, glossy deep green leaves reaching 10-15” tall in spring. In midsummer, two to three flower scapes rise above the foliage with each scape producing two or three showy two-inch spherical umbels of rose-purple florets that last as long as four weeks. Alliums are sometimes avoided due to their reseeding behavior. Fortunately, ‘Millenium’ exhibits 50% reduced seed production, raising less concern for self-sown seedlings.

Blooming at a time when most of our garden begins to decline in the tired excess of the season, ‘Millenium’ offers much needed color. It is truly an all-season plant that offers attractive shiny foliage spring through summer and caps off the season with its crown of perfectly round rose-purple flower umbels.

Bees & Pollinators, Links, Perennials

PlantWatch

March 23, 2017 peterboroughmastergardeners Leave a comment

by Cauleen Viscoff

(previously published in the Peterborough Examiner)

Now that the weather is softening, and we are convinced that spring really is around the corner, there are reasons to herald its arrival other than with Easter eggs, birdsongs and flowers to pick.

There is a little-known group of folks around the world who are quietly making a difference. They are monitoring birds, insects, frogs and plants. Recording the blossom times of some plants are good indicators of climate change. We all know that our climate is making some subtle as well as some not-so-subtle changes – some better and some not so much. So what does watching plants have to do with climate change?

Plant-watching has a long tradition and a rich history throughout the world. In 1750, the Swedish scientist and artist Linnaeus, turned plant-watching into a systematic science. He made calendars of flowering times for 18 places in Sweden, noting the exact climatic conditions at the time of blooming.

This became the foundation of modern plant phenology (the science dealing with the influence of climate on the recurrence of such annual phenomena of animal and plant life as budding and bird migrations- Dictionary.com). Phenology then spread to many European countries and revealed, over the centuries, that some spring wildflowers are super-sensitive weather instruments.

More than 100 years ago in Canada, Nova Scotia’s superintendent of education, Dr. Alexander H. MacKay, had students collect plant, animal, agricultural and weather phenology from 1897 to 1923. And then, in 1987, the Alberta Wildflower Survey started up and blossomed (pun intended) into a program that initiated the Alberta PlantWatch. This program then spread back to Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and now today, PlantWatch is part of our national Nature Watch series of volunteer monitoring programs designed to help identify ecological changes that may be affecting our environment.

There are PlantWatch programs in each province and territory.

PlantWatch enables “citizen scientists” (volunteers gathering research for scientists) to get involved by recording the flowering times for certain selected plant species and reporting these dates to researchers on the PlantWatch website. When the data is submitted electronically, it is instantly added to web maps showing bloom dates all across Canada … So those observations make a difference right away!

The collection of that much data across the vast expanse of our country would be impossible for the small existing group of scientists presently working in this field.

As Canadians, we are fortunate to live in a country with such a wide variety of plant species. By participating in PlantWatch, we can learn about our country’s great botanical diversity and at the same time, help scientists track the effects of global warming and climate change in Canada.

The plants chosen for this program bloom every spring, largely in response to rising temperatures. However, some species are flowering almost a month earlier than they were a century ago!. Some of these plants you are familiar with and grow in your own yards and gardens. Poplar, Common Purple Lilac, Dandelion (bet you have lots of those..), Red Maple and Trillium are just a few.

Scientists believe that climate change is affecting bloom times – a trend that is continuing. They predict that the greatest increases in temperature will be in Western and Northern Canada, while some parts of Eastern Canada may actually be cooling (although last summer was hotter than ever).

By reporting on the PlantWatch species found in our local communities, we can help researchers discover how common plants are responding to climate change, and track where those changes are taking place in Canada and at what rate.

And now, for the first time in Canada, the PlantWatch program has partnered with the Master Gardeners of Ontario. We are excited about our potential contributions to science because we believe that observing local plants can be fun, but more importantly, the data we collect can serve a greater purpose by assisting scientists, land managers and those responsible for our natural resources to help in the environmental decisions they will need to make both now and in the future.

We urge you to join us in making a difference. You don’t have to be a professional, or even a gardener.

Take a look at the website; the plants are described in detail with glorious photos. Gather up your your children, grandchildren, friends and neighbours – sign up, get outside and watch spring happen – make your observations and”¦.make a difference.

Peterborough gardener Cauleen Viscoff, PlantWatch co-ordinator, Master Gardeners of Ontario Inc., can be reached at plantwatchontario@gmail.com. For more information, visit www.naturewatch.ca

Bees & Pollinators, Perennials

2017 Perennial of the Year: Asclepias tuberosa

March 8, 2016 peterboroughmastergardeners Leave a comment

by Anne Milne

The Perennial of the year for 2017 is the Asclepias tuberosa, or as most of us know it, Butterfly Weed.

Butterfly weed is a hardy perennial that grows from 1/3 meter up to 1 meter (12 to 36 inches). It is a relative of milkweed, and is non-invasive. Butterfly weed is native to eastern North America. Its hardiness zones are 3 to 9.

Butterfly weed grows in clumps and produces orange or yellow clusters at the top of its stems. Blooms last from early summer to early fall. Keep the plant dead-headed to encourage reblooming. This plant likes full sun, and medium, well-drained fertile soils. It is drought tolerant, thus it does not like to be overwatered or overfertilized. It is also resistant to deer!

Butterfly weed attracts butterflies, and is also very attractive to humming birds, bees, ladybugs, and other beneficial insects. Monarch butterflies lay their eggs on the plant and the larva feed on its leaves. Monarchs also depend on its nectar as a food source.

Asclepias tuberosa can be grown from seed. Plant seeds in spring, after frost. Plants from seeds will likely not bloom for 2 or 3 years. Butterfly weed plants are also available at most reliable nurseries. Aesclepias tuberosa will also reseed itself. The seed pods will burst and float around your garden to start new plants.

Butterfly weed has few problems, but may have aphids or mealybugs. Because this plant is so vital to our Monarchy butterfly, rather than using pesticides, use your hose to spray and dislodge the pests from the plant.

Grow this plant in bunches, along with butterfly bush, bee balm and cone flowers, and you will make an outstanding display.