2012 Gardening Guru Sucesses: Part 1

By Melanie Mathieson
Gardening Guru

As I write my column each week I strive to provide information that will be useful to my readers. I do not write about myself and the trials and tribulations of my everyday life, but my columns do contain information that I have confirmed through my own gardening experiences. This column will summarize some of my best and not so best garden tips and tricks that I used in 2012.
This year was a special year for my gardens. First of all it has been five years since my husband and I relocated from Fort Frances to Thunder Bay and the original flowerbeds are now five years old and quite established. For the past five summers, we have worked tirelessly turning a yard with a few overgrown shrubs into a showpiece. All this work was rewarded by being chosen to be a feature garden on the annual Thunder Bay Art Gallery Garden Tour where over 600 people participated in 2012. This was quite an honour, especially when viewing my fellow featured gardeners’ gardens as well. There is certainly a great deal of gardening talent and pride in Thunder Bay. In addition, in June 2012, my work colleagues and I also presented a teaching garden tour as a fundraiser, for the Thunder Bay United Way, which was also a great success.
It was while participating in these tours and answering gardeners’ questions and receiving many compliments that I realized that, although my gardening knowledge seems rto come naturally, isn’t always that way for others, so I thought of this column to share some of my best tips and tricks. So here is the best of 2012.
Mulch – I have had many columns on mulch in the past but I cannot stress enough how important mulch is to keeping the weeds under control. This year all of the beds were topped up with fresh mulch. For the past 3 years, I have used black, coloured mulch. The best part of the black mulch is it looks like really rich black dirt from afar and is a fantastic backdrop that makes all the plants “pop”. Prior to both garden tours I was busy weeding but after the July garden tour, I did not have to weed again until the end of September. At this time, where there was mulch, I found only a few stray weeds needing to be plucked. When installing mulch for the first time over the soil, I always install some layers of newspapers that initially act as a weed barrier, later decaying and providing nutrients to the soil. The newspaper helps to ensure that the mulch provides an effective, weed barrier.
Containers – I spent a great deal of time planning the design of my planters this season because of the garden tour. One of the biggest attractions on the tour was our six large containers, along the driveway, planted with cosmos and wave petunias. At the end of July, the cosmos were at least 30 inches (75 centimetres) in height and grew to about 48 inches (120 centimetres) by the end of the season. This is the second time I have planted cosmos in this manner and they fool even the most experienced gardener. From the street, they looked like cedar shrubs and up close some gardeners thought they are cosmos but were afraid to ask because they were so gigantic and lush. Many ask if they were a special hybrid. They were not a special hybrid, just the results of a good quality, slow-release granular fertilizer and a regular watering regime. If you are a regular reader of my columns, you know that I stress proper watering techniques and my gardens in the middle of a dry summer are all you need to see to convince you that regular supplemental watering is the key to success. My neighbours will also attest as they see me watering daily and always comment on how my containers are more vigorous than theirs.
Another container success to boast about was using a hybrid rose as a feature plant in the middle of a container (in place of a Dracaena spike in the middle). The hybrid roses I used were purchased on sale with the intention of using them as an “annual” plant as they were not the kind of roses hardy for our growing zone. These are the roses that often come into the big box stores either in a plastic bag or a small pot and are less than ten dollars. This idea is perfect for use in a container, making a nice long-term flowering feature plant that can be complemented with most annuals. If you are looking for roses hardy to our zone do not buy these roses, but go to your favourite nursery where they have many roses hardy to our area. Roses for garden use are an investment and need to be carefully selected for your needs and conditions.
If you need some ideas for plants that can tolerate all day full sun and very hot conditions in containers, I encourage you to give the following a try:
•Licorice root - I have had tremendous success with this plant. Even in the hottest and driest summers, they have developed cascading branches over four feet (120 centimetres) in length. This past summer, I also found dwarf licorice root that had the same success.
•Gerbera daisies – I use red, yellow and hot pink for a colourful impact, especially in contrast to their dark green foliage. One word of caution though, Gerberas do not like to dry out, so you must water daily to ensure continuous blooms all summer long. Aside from daily watering, they are low maintenance and only need the spent blooms trimmed off when dead, in order to encourage continuous blooming.
•Hanging carnation varieties – you usually see these already planted in a hanging baskets in our area nurseries but some nurseries have them for sale in small pots for you to plant. I planted a burgundy variety with licorice root this past year and it was a great contrast against the silvery foliage of the licorice root. These come in many colours, so experiment. A little deadheading and regular watering go a long way in ensuring prolific and continuous blooms all summer.
I have to admit, that as the Gardening Guru, I also have some gardening disappointments and failures too. One of the biggest disappointments of 2012, was the Pink Lemonade petunias I planted in my containers, to complement the cosmos and drape over the sides of my giant planters. I and the other gardeners I asked, found this new hybrid variety of petunia to be very intolerant of the hot and dry conditions of 2012, even with supplemental watering. I found that after a few days of full sun the plants would die back to almost nothing, although new growth would eventually appear, the next heat wave would kill it too. I ended up inter-planting with Pink Wave petunias a couple of weeks before the July garden tour to make up for the poor performance of the Pink Lemonade petunias. In the future, I will stick with my past success and use only the hot pink and dark purple Wave petunias in the containers along my driveway as they receive full sun all day long that also reflects off of the asphalt. I may try the Pink Lemonade variety again in a container that receives less intense sun.
Stay tuned next week for Part 2 of this column filled with additional gardening successes.