November, 2009
In This Issue:
Mark's Choice Product of the Month
The Royal Agricultural Winter Fair
Holiday Gift Guide for Gardeners
2010 Toronto Tree Portraits Calendar
Harrowsmith's Truly Canadian Almanac 2010
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Lots to do in November….. So let’s cut the chit chat!
According to Dave Barrie, the Miami newspaper columnist, there is a very fine line between ‘hobby’ and ‘mental illness’.
The guy makes me laugh, so I know that this is just a joke.
He also says that you should not confuse a career with a life.
My wife Mary says that retirement is impossible WITHOUT a hobby. In fact, pre-retirement is impossible without one, in her opinion. And in her opinion the hobby of choice is knitting. On that, we disagree.
This is a ‘gardening’ newsletter.
I will stick to my ‘knitting’ then and talk about gardening, as I do each month here.
It is November and the leaves have fallen across most of Canada and with them your #1 opportunity to do a huge favour for everything that you grow and do it for FREE.
What is that? Put the leaves on your garden.
Rake them off of your lawn and around your perennials, shrubs, and your veggie garden and around mature trees. If they are dry when you rake them onto your garden, then hose them down so that they will not blow away onto your neighbour’s yard. Why should they get all of the benefits? That is like watching $5 bills blow across your property and onto your neighbour’s… say! It is o.k. to ‘love thy neighbour’ but you don’t have to pay them!!
There is a great deal of value in those fallen leaves, carbon rich as they are. They will sit on the surface of the soil for a brief time before they start to rot…. And then the magic begins. As they make contact with damp soil your leaves will provide a protective covering that will insulate perennials from the freeze/thaw cycles that wreak havoc, heaving the roots and all right of the soil in some cases. Unless you mulch with leaves.
Most importantly, earth worms –those foot soldiers of the garden –will come up to the surface of the soil and pull the raw material that leaves are made of right down into the existing soil, consuming them and converting them into… get this….. nitrogen-rich earth worm castings.
For your garden plants, this is the stuff that plant-dreams are made of. And believe you me, plants dream! Birds, bees and other pollinators, earth born mycorrhiza, beneficial insects and warm rain. You bet they dream! How do I know? That is for another time. We have much to discuss here for such details.
Compost.
This is the best time of the year to build a compost or make a pile in a corner of your yard for all of the grass clippings, abundance of leaves, spent annuals and tomato plants etc. Be sure to add Green Earth Compost Starter every layer (30 to 50 cm thick) to get your compost started.
Fertilize your lawn.
I know that I said this last month, but a lot of you didn’t get around to it. I didn’t get around to it.
No matter, the later you leave this job the better the Golfgreen Fall fertilizer will work come spring. You see, you are not feeding your lawn now so that it will look like a million bucks this fall: no, you are building up the sugar stores at the root zone of your grass plants so that it will bounce back from the long cold Canadian winter NEXT SPRING.
Fertilize now and yours will be the first lawn to green up, the greenest, and the one with the least snow mould (oh, that dreaded snow mould!) on your block.
Quote me any time: this is the most important application of lawn food all year long. Yet the majority of us will not do it. Go figure.
Wrap Evergreens.
Two layers of burlap are in order for all upright junipers, cedars and dwarf spruce – especially where they are susceptible to west wind and ‘salt drift’ off the road.
One layer is to ‘break the wind’ as my brother Tom likes to say (young brothers are such a bad influence) and another layer to protect from the drying effects of the sun, especially as it reflects off of the snow.
Look at Home Hardware for the new Mark’s Choice ‘dummy wrap’, which is so easy to use we named it after me, redundant as that may sound.
Protect young fruit trees.
A spiral rodent wrap will do a lot to protect young apples, pears and other flowering and fruiting trees until they grow to about 5 cm in diameter. Rabbits, mice and rats love to chow down on the bark of young trees. Well, they don’t exactly LOVE it, they actually do it out of desperation near the end of winter, when there is nothing much else to eat.
In any case, the job is important if you wish your young trees to survive.
Wiltpruf.
I apply one coat of invisible Wiltpruf (spelt correctly, I am afraid) on boxwood, taxus (yews), rhododendrons, and any other plant that is susceptible to winter desiccation. That is the drying out of the needles/leaves. Keep this in mind: during our Canadian winter humidity can get as low as 9%. In the Sahara desert it gets to 22% on a bad day. No wonder we Canadians use so much lip balm.
Home Hardware carries Wiltpruf. Look for it there.
Should I cut down my perennials this fall?
No. Leave them standing ‘til spring. The seeds will be enjoyed by birds later on and the height that the stems provide add winter interest.
Should I cut down my roses?
No. Unless they are so high that you risk having them break at the bud union down at the root.
Cut back in spring.
Should I cut my lawn short before the snow flies?
No. Just the same as ever – 2 ½ to 3 inches. The fertilizing is most important as you read above.
Should I rest, relax and begin to dream about my garden for 2010?
Right on, you should.
Speaking of dreaming, in the late 1980’s when I was just a kid, I recorded my first TV show at my Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Toms. They had over 2 acres of gorgeous fruit trees, veggies, roses, a great water feature, huge lawn, vines and all that you could imaging … it was a gardeners 2 lb box of chocolates!! A dream. It was SO good that we shot over 150 episodes of Anything Grows for CBC between 1986 and 1990.
Well, dear old Aunt Charlotte passed away on October 24 th. Just thought you would like to know. She was one of my favourite people and many of us are going to miss her.
My heart felt condolences to daughters Sharyn and Emila and of course to my buddy Uncle Tom. We are dealing with our grief by planning a trip down to the Royal Winter Fair this month. Can’t wait.
All the best my gardening friend. Thank you for opening this e-newsletter. And reading it!
I look forward to talking to you again next month as we prepare our garden for Christmas.
Keep in touch through my blog on Yahoo!
Keep your knees dirty,
Mark
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