You know what they say, April showers bring May flowers! We hope the saying goes for those with snow showers too! Though it might not seem like the weather is warming up, all we can do is chip away at what we can so that we can soak up as much sun as possible when the time comes—looking to get more out of your May garden? We thought so! We’ve created a helpful list of May garden to-do’s to keep you busy.
Lawn & Pond
Start feeding fish as the temperature rises above 5-8 degrees and only feed them what they can eat in 5 minutes.
May is an ideal month to sow new lawns.
Use seed and sod starters to get your lawn off right.
Start fertilizing waterlilies and lotus.
Clean up & Compost
Lightly shear spring-flowering heather when finished blooming.
Watch for weeding as temperatures increase weeds will spread quickly.
Turn over compost or use it if it’s ready. Start over!
Mulch! Use plenty of mulch to retain moisture all summer long and prevent weeds. Tip: keep grass clippings, bark, pine needles, straw & more for mulching!
Plants
Lightly shear spring-flowering heather when finished blooming.
Begin taking routine pest watch strolls; problems treated early are easier to control.
Deadhead roses and lilies as they fade and fertilize with Uka Blend.
After flowering, deadhead spring flowering bulbs like tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths to preserve their energy for next year. Watch for fall bulbs pre-orders opening soon for 2022!
Cultivate your vegetable garden regularly to keep the soil loose and allow oxygen to penetrate around the roots.
Make sure the weather has warmed up and stays warm before planting celosia, impatients, zinnias, fuchsias & or heliotrope.
A good fertilizing program will go a long way to avoiding black spots and powdery mildew on roses.
Miscellaneous & More!
Hanging baskets are ready! Choose your favourite blooms and be sure to pick up fertilizer to feed them every 10 days for a summer filled with blooms!
Watch for weeding as temperatures increase weeds will spread quickly.
Turn over compost or use it if it’s ready. Start over!
Mulch! Use plenty of mulch to retain moisture all summer long and prevent weeds. Tip: keep grass clippings, bark, pine needles, straw & more for mulching!
Looking for more to do? Check out this episode of Get Up and Grow with our president, Gord Nickel to learn How To Remove and Prevent Moss From Your Lawn below!
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Looking for a unique gift idea that has meaning on Mother’s Day? Birth Month Gardens are the newest trend for 2022! Whether you’re helping Mom in the garden or gifting her seasonal blooms that deliver fond memories, the Mom in your life will be sure to know you care with a gift that shows meaning. Whether your birth month flowers are in season or not, birth month gardens are a gift that keeps giving through out the year!
How To: Birth Month Flower Garden
To gift your Mom with a birth month garden, choose either seeds, starters, bulbs or fresh-cut flowers that match you and your siblings or family and friend’s birth months. Below are the flowers that represent each month for you to present to a Mother this year with meaning. Taking a pen and paper, write down your own unique combination of birth flowers to create your own unique birth month flower garden.
January
Carnation: A symbol of strength, love, devotion and protection. The carnation is one of the world’s most popular flowers. Each colour carnation has its own symbolic representation with the pink carnation being the official flower of Mother’s Day!
Snowdrops: As the first sign of spring, the snowdrop represents new beginnings and consolation. The snowdrop is gifted to those with good intentions and a pure heart.
February
Violet: Everlasting love, faithfulness and spiritual wisdom. Celebrated in many religions, the violet is often a gift with many spiritual meanings.
Iris: A symbol of admiration, faith, trust and valour. With over 280 species of Iris, these classic beauties have been adored in folklore tales for centuries.
March
Daffodil: Representing spring for its rebirth and new beginnings. With over 13,000 different varieties of daffodils, the daffodil is a present gifted to those to refresh their day!
Jonquil: Tied to Greek mythology, the Jonquil flower is often mistaken for a daffodil. When gifted to someone it is a symbol of forgiveness with hopes of returned affection.
April
Daisy: Gifted to those who have become new mothers. The daisy is a symbol of purity with old Celtic tales of rebirth.
Sweet Peas: Well wishes, blissful pleasure, friendship and goodbyes are the symbol of Sweet Peas. They are known for their beautifully sweet fragrance, similar to grapes.
May
Hawthorne: For centuries brides have used Hawthorne to place in their hair for ceremonies like weddings. They represent hope, faith and happy endings.
Lily of the Valley With many symbolic meanings, the Lily of The Valley symbolizes Happiness above all. It is said to bring joy to those gifted in bunches on May 1st.
June
Rose: Each rose with its own meaning, the red rose symbolizes romance and beauty. Received by those who wish to celebrate love and passion.
Honeysuckle: As a symbol of pure happiness, the Honeysuckle also signifies the loss of tenderness in love. Though its name has been given to represent the nectar extracted from it’s fragrant blooms.
July
Water Lily: Representing wellness and peace, the white Water Lily specifically symbolizes spirituality. Mentioned across many religions for centuries.
Larkspur: Celebrates positivity and open-hearted attachment to someone. Larkspur comes in shades of pink, white, yellow and red, each with its very own meaning when gifted.
August
Poppy: All colours of poppies display their own meaning. A unique orange Poppy symbolizes health and regeneration. The red Poppy is symbolized remembrance and death.
Gladiolus: The symbol of infatuation. Gladiolus are found in many colours and shapes with over 200 variations. When gifted they are a present of strong character and faithfulness.
September
Morning Glory: With every colour of Morning Glory, bring new meaning. For purple morning glory, the symbol of trust and respect is given to its recipient.
Aster: Placed on the altars in Greek Mythology. The Aster was named by the Greeks after the stars. A long-standing symbol for wisdom, faith and love.
October
Marigold: Also known as the Herb of The Sun. Marigold symbolize the power of the sun with strength and the light which is present within someone.
Cosmos: With their organized petals, the cosmos represent all that is orderly and living in harmony. Assigned “Cosmos” by the ancient Greeks.
November
Chrysanthemum: With thousands of varieties, the white Chrysanthemum is a symbol of longevity in love. Chrysanthemums have also been traditionally used in teas as medicine.
Peony: Given as a gift of well wishes and goodwill. The peony is a true symbol of beauty and romance. With its large unfolding petals in a variety of shapes and colours, the Peony is said to bring a wealthy amount of happiness.
December
Narcissus: A symbol of hope and joy since medieval times. The Narcissus got its name from a Greek mythology tale of an attractive man. The Narcissus has 13 subcategories, each with it’s own unique symbolism.
Holly: With deep religious ties, Holly represents fertility and eternal life. Given as a gift of family happiness. Great for the holiday season!
The great thing about planting a birth month garden is the variety of blooms and seasonal reminders of the ones you love. To make gifting your birth month garden extra special for mom, try writing or printing out the symbolism and history of each flower above to give with your flower gift. Not sure what months your Mom would like to grow? Give the gift of choice by sending Mom one of our E-Gift Cards. The perfect last-minute gift for any gardener!
Need more inspiration? Maybe you can impress Mom with a year with a few gardening tips and tricks by learning a thing or two from Get Up and Grow with our president, Gord Nickel. Learn How To Prune and Plant Clematis below in just minutes.
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With a new hanging basket season approaching, it’s time to plan bigger and better baskets than ever before! With unlimited combinations of flowers, vegetables, and herbs, we thought introducing a few new and exciting ideas to your hanging baskets this year would be great. Fruit baskets! Not the kind you gift, the kind you grow! You could say they’re as easy as low-hanging fruit. Below we’ve created a unique list of fruits that love hanging baskets for you to try this season!
1. Cucumbers
Sliced in salads or fresh off the vine, cucumbers are fresh for summer picking and love to grow in hanging baskets. They’re filled with vitamin K, B, C, Copper, Potassium, Magnesium and much more! With gravities help, cucumbers can grow long and straight from the basket, creating the most ideal cucumber shape. When grown in the garden, cucumbers are susceptible to Amphids, Cucumber Beetles, Flea Beetles and more. Growing your cucumbers in a hanging basket provides them with better protection from these common garden pests! Oh, and don’t forget how much easier it will be to harvest pickles from the porch!
Cucumber Mini White are deliciously sweet and mild, Cucumber Mini White is the best choice for hanging baskets as the small 3-5″ fruits cascade beautifully, creating an easy to pick & esthetically pleasing harvest. In just 58-75 days, you’ll be jarring porch-pickles in no time!
2. Strawberries
The queen of summer fruit is as versatile as the desserts she creates! With endless strawberry jams, pies, tarts, bars, smoothies, and cakes, strawberries generate a blast of flavour for many summer dishes! Don’t have a yard to plant strawberries? That is no problem at all. When grown in hanging baskets, strawberries perform amazingly! It is a great way to keep your strawberries out of reach from birds, but it’s also a quick and convenient way to reach for one of two as needed!
Natural White Strawberry tastes like pineapple! These unique white strawberries are the perfect patio conversation starter. Plant your Natural White Strawberries in full sun from April to May and you can expect pineapple tasting strawberries in just 4-6 weeks.
3. Cucamelon
Is it a cucumber, or is it a melon? Also known as Mexican Sour Cucumber, Mouse Melon or Melothria Scabra, the Cucamelon is a miniature relative to cucumbers! With a taste similar to a cucumber, the Cucamelon is sweeter with a hint of citrus lime. Often enjoyed fresh or pickled, Cucamelon is also great for your skin, with loads of vitamin K, C, E and fibre. When grown in a hanging basket, the Cucamelon enjoys climbing up walls and gazebos! An excellent plant for creating privacy and fuller green space on patios. Though they perform at their best when placed in full sun, Cucamelon can also tolerate partial sun.
Cucamelon grow in as little as 67 days, and will be ready to harvest once they are just over an inch long and firm to the touch. Place your hanging Cucamelon in full sun in a 5-7 gallon size basket, providing one inch of water weekly.
4. Tomatillo
The tomatillo is a small green or purple fruit with a paper-like peel. If eaten raw, the tomatillo offers a tart and citrusy flavour, which softens to a sweeter taste when cooked. They’re high in vitamin C, A, K, fibre, potassium, niacin and much more. As a popular ingredient in salsa verde, Tomatillos are also enjoyed on their own, either raw, sauteed, roasted or boiled. They make a powerfully healthy fruit to have quick access to when grown in a basket as long as they can get at least 6 hours of sun a day.
Tomatillo Purple are sweeter than green Tomatillos! Place your Tomatillo Purple in full sun with regular watering and good draining. Harvest your Tomatillo Purple in 75-100 days once the fruit turns purple and is firm to the touch.
5. Cape Gooseberries
Tangy, tart, sweet and tropical tasting, the Cape Gooseberry is also known as a Peruvian Groundcherry originating from South America. Full of fibre and low in calories, the Gooseberry is high in vitamin C, making them great for your skin. After harvesting them in June and July, they’re perfect for making plenty of unique jams, purees, crumbles, tarts, drinks, salads and sauces! As an easy grower, the Gooseberry makes a beautiful display when grown in a hanging basket.
Organic Gooseberry Gold Berry perform at their best when placed in full sun with good draining. Maintain moist soil for a heavy yield in June until July. To test when your Gooseberries are ready, give them a gentle sqeeze! Once they are soft, they’ll be ready for the picking!
Need more inspiration for unique fruit? Check out this episode of Get Up and Grow “Planting an Albino Strawberry Hanging Basket” below for tips and tricks from our president Gord Nickel.
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Most gardeners would agree that one of the best methods of growing happy and healthy plants is the prevention of unwanted pests and diseases. A fantastic way to prevent disease and unwanted pests is to grow plants that complement each other. Planting compatible plants together prevents problems, but it can also introduce many excellent benefits to help your plants thrive. If you’re new to companion planting, you’ll want to grab a pen and paper to take down a few of these great suggestions for pairing up your plants.
What is Companion Planting?
Companion planting is the process of planning and implementing a garden that will create a beneficial natural ecosystem to help our plants grow. We can introduce beneficial pollinators while deterring unwanted pests like Aphids, Flea Beetles, Hornworm, Whitefly and more. Companion planting can is a great way to add more nutrients to the soil. It can ensure your plants rooting systems aren’t fighting for nutrients. It can also provide shade for smaller plants that need it and more. Companion planting can even create new and enhanced flavours for vegetables and herbs!
Pests & Pollinators
When planning your garden, it’s a good idea to consider the kinds of pests attracted to the plants you’ve chosen. By carefully reading the package or googling the plant, you might discover that certain plants are susceptible to certain pests and diseases. To avoid introducing these pests and diseases to your other plants, it’s best to plant them further away or pair them with a plant that can help disguise, distract or introduce prey to these insects. Planting garlic chives near your carrots can disguise their smell from susceptible pests like Rootfly and beetles. Or, depending on the plant, introducing fennel in a planter to your garden can attract Hornflies that eat Aphids. The combinations are endless, so be sure to do your research before pairing your plants together.
Soil & Nutrients
Every plant has its own rooting system, which allows them to absorb nutrients. When planting your garden, it is essential to know what your plants’ root system looks like to ensure that your plants aren’t fighting for nutrients. For example, although carrots and radishes are both root vegetables, carrots develop their roots much later than radishes. Planting these two together will provide one another with enough space and similar growing conditions that they both need. Alternatively, planting similar root structures like carrots and potatoes together will create problematic growing conditions leaving both plants unsatisfied.
Growth
Generally speaking, when spacing your plants, it’s essential to know how much room each plant requires to prevent overcrowding. Alternatively, pairing certain plants together is a great way to benefit your plant’s growth habits. When paired together, corn provides a natural trellis for beans. While beans provide fixed nitrogen levels in the soil for corn. You can use your plants to create a natural trellis, but you can also use them for protection against harsh UV rays for plants like lettuce. There are endless combinations to consider when planting for growth, so do your research before planting!
Flavour
Looking to create some unique flavours in the garden this year? An excellent way to build flavour is by following a few tried and true companion combinations for added flavours! A common practice is to pair herbs with their compatible vegetable friends. When planted with basil, peppers absorb some of the basils’ strong flavour through the soil, creating a unique pepper/basil taste! Or, plant chives with tomatoes and carrots for a boost of flavour while repelling Aphids and Beetles.
Plant companions
Companion planting has been around since the beginning of time. It can take many years to perfect your perfect combinations with unlimited possibilities. Lucky for us, many successful suggestions have been shared over time to help us make the right choice from the start. Below are some of the best tried and true companion combinations to help you create your best garden yet.
Benefits depend on the combination of plant pairings. Added taste and soil fertility is among the top best pairings. Be careful on placement as root plants can compete for nutrients.
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Whether you’re new to gardening or you’re a seasoned professional. Gardening is a world of its own, where we as gardeners get to learn and grow constantly. From being in the industry for over 40 years, we’ve learned a thing or two regarding gardening. We’ve come to understand that fertilizers are super important but not the easiest to understand. Don’t worry; we’re here to help make feeding your plants as easy as 1-2-3.
What is Fertilizer?
What happens when you give your plants the perfect amount of sunlight and water, but they’re still not happy? You feed them nutrients! Plant fertilizer is the best way to provide plants with the nutrients they need to grow healthy and robust, especially after being removed from the ground and placed in a container. Even if they haven’t been removed from the ground, the nutrients your soil provides to your plants are never guaranteed. Using Fertilizer is the best way to ensure your plants are getting a balanced diet to perform at their best.
Why use Fertilizer?
Improving your plants healthy with fertilizer leads to many benefits. Some of those benefits include:
Increase pest tolerance
Improved yielding
Faster root development and growth
Improved colour for leaves and blooms
Stronger, more tolerant straws and stocks
Improved water intake
Added nutrients for limp container plants
When choosing your Fertilizer, it’s essential to know what you’re looking for. Each Fertilizer has its unique combination of nutrients that can be effective or dangerous to your plants. The Fertilizer you choose should be specific to the plants you’re growing, as every plant has its own needs. When browsing through the fertilizer section, you’ll notice there is a fertilizer for everything and more. Be sure to consider the following before making your decision.
Fast release vs. Slow release
When choosing the best Fertilizer for your plants, two important things to consider are to know whether you’re looking for slow-release Fertilizer or fast-release Fertilizer.
Fast Release Fertilizer – A liquid fertilizer that provides nutrients to your plants quickly. Providing them with a couple of weeks of nutrients to help them thrive. Fast-release fertilizers are fantastic for annuals because they deliver the proper nutrients immediately, allowing your annuals to look their very best for the season. Fast release fertilizers are quickly absorbed and thus require re-feeding more often to keep your plants happy.
Slow-Release Fertilizer – A granular fertilizer that releases a slow and steady amount of food to your plants to help them grow healthy and robust plants throughout all growing stages. Feeding your plants with a slow-release fertilizer will allow you to grow healthy roots over a more extended period, resulting in vigorous, healthy plants year after year!
What do the numbers mean?
When shopping for plant fertilizer, you’ll notice a sequence of numbers. These numbers indicate the total value of nutrients that the plant fertilizer delivers. The first number indicates the percentage of Nitrogen. The second number indicates the percentage of Phosphorus. The third number is the percentage of Potassium. Here is why each of these nutrients is vital for optimal plant growth.
Nitrogen: Nitrogen is essential for plants to absorb sunlight, producing sugar from water and carbon dioxide. This number indicates the nutrients needed for healthy leaves and colour.
Phosphorus: Phosphorus is used by plants to store and transfer energy efficiently. This number indicates the nutrients needed to produce flowers, fruit and roots.
Potassium: Potassium is used by plants to move nutrients and water throughout the plants body. Delivering all the protein and nutrients where they’re needed.
An example: of how these formulas are displayed would be ” Bone Meal 2-13-0″.
The elemental makeup translates into strong roots, and its gradual breakdown gives your plants plenty of time to tap into its potent (yet cool) nutrient reserves.
Fruit & Berry Fertilizer contains the macro and micronutrients needed by your fruit trees, small fruits, and vining fruits to produce solid and sustained growth, a high bloom count, and strong, well-developed fruit.
Mix Power Bloom in your watering can every 10-14 days and stand back! Your hanging baskets, planters, and even indoor flowering plants will look as though they have more flowers than foliage!
This formula includes trace elements essential to root growth and allows for better flower colour and contrast. Use this formula on any acid-loving plants including Hydrangeas, Skimmia, Pieris, Viburnums, etc!
Complete, fast-acting nutrition for vigorous growth on all types of plants. Use on potted plants (indoor and out), hanging baskets, and ornamental trees and shrubs.
Transplanter Food
5-15-5
Not only is Transplanter effective at reducing transplant shock from seedling veggies and flowers to large shrubs and trees, but it’s also a great defence when you observe signs of stress on your existing plants.
Perfect for hanging baskets, indoor plants, and container gardening.
Common Mistakes
As you can tell there are many options when it comes to choosing fertilizers. To help narrow down your choices, it’s not only important to know what you’re looking for but it’s also important to know what to be careful of. When fertilizing, be sure to consider these common mistakes.
If you are planning on consuming your plants (fruits, vegetables, herbs) be sure to go with an organic-based fertilizer for healthy, chemical-free digestion.
When choosing your fertilizer, try to stick to one. Combining fertilizer can result in killing your plants by creating blockages from mixing chemicals.
Over-fertilizing can seem great but it isn’t. When over-fertilizing your plants, you could possibly create a healthier glow but unfortunately, this can create excessive sap for insects to ingest. This will also lead to fertilizer burn which leads to wilting and death.
Using the wrong fertilizer can be done by applying fertilizer at the wrong time or to the wrong plant. This could result in scenarios where you may get lush green leaves, but no yields.
Not enough water! It is important to read the instructions on the plant fertilizer you choose. Not providing enough water is a common mistake that can lead to fertilizer burn.
For more tips and tricks on selecting the best plant fertilizer for the season, check out the latest episode of Get Up and Grow, with our President Gord Nickel.
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