Category: Deer

It’s February and our gardens are alive !

It’s February and our gardens are alive !

 

Our garden plants are still dormant, waiting for spring. But there is life in and around our gardens right now.

 

 

Are Your Pruners as Sharp as mine ?
Do you ask yourself:

When do I prune my plants ?  How do I do it ?  What result am I hoping to achieve ?

A general rule of thumb is to prune out dying, diseased, damaged or dead as you see it. The other times, pruning is usually done for training, restricting, balancing or creating a pattern of growth, controlling flower and fruit quality & maintaining plant health and are season and plant dependant. The times chosen are late winter when things are dormant, spring as buds emerge & pruning following spring bloom. There are many books & on line sites/blogs that describe methods for pruning trees and shrubs. Also, closer to home, many garden clubs have members who have horticultural backgrounds or life long experience who are willing to give a little coaching.

 

 

Grasses, Perrienels and shrubs with seeds that have been left for the birds can be cut back just before new growth .

 

 

In the meantime, while waiting, enjoy the warmth in the February sunshine and have a look at the critters who are reminding us that we can learn a lot from the plants and critters in our gardens. Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have wierd names and all are different in color, shape and size, but they all live in and contribute to the beauty in the same community.

 

Listen. You will hear the song sparrow soon.

Summer Reflections

Summer Reflections

We all struggled with a very dry summer, many of us saving and recycling water, mulching to conserve moisture in our gardens & setting up water dishes for the birds and other wildlife that were also feeling the stress. We wondered if our wells & rivers would be replenished, and if our gardens would survive.

click on any picture for slide show

In spite of the drought, our gardens, both flower and vegetable produced. Yes, some failures were experienced, some blooms seemed late and some seemed to flower and produce fruit/seed very quickly.

For the last few weeks we have had weather that has been more like late summer. Our gardens have continued to produce. Some plants became confused producing late bloom. Pollinators still roamed the garden, snakes still found warm spots to sun bathe, insects & birds were in their  nitches  and salamanders continued to be visible when areas common to them were uncovered.

Now we must admit it really is fall. We have had beautiful rainbows following welcome rains,  the trees have their fall color, we have had a killing frost and a few snow flakes have been seen. Many gardener’s have been preparing for winter. Some gardener’s fastidiously tidy and mulch in the fall, easing springtime preparation. Others are selective doing fall cleanup, leaving some plant material as cover for wintering critters & seed heads that are a welcome food source for fall and winter birds.

Soon we will be all armchair gardening, planning optimistically for another season. I wonder what challenges await us in the upcoming year ?

A Look at an Autumn Garden

A Look at an Autumn Garden

Goldenrod As Chester gardeners greet the second week of September, they are keeping a weather eye out for a possible hurricane but, to date, the community has experienced only a warm south wind and heavy showers. Many of our favourite perennials, having outlived their terms, have vanished from local gardens but a number of hardy wildflowers, like goldenrod in its many varieties, are adding splashes of colour to the landscape.

A cloud of native asters (volunteers) brighten the edge of a more formal bed, where the sword-like leaves of gladioli stand stiffly as if defending the plot from additional invaders.

Asters
One perennial that is welcome at this time of year is the Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’, with its gradual colouration that develops from pale pink to deep rose over the next few weeks.  


Not so welcome is the change seen on some perennials and shrubs after a nocturnal visit by the ever-roaming white-tail deer.  In one garden this year, they have pruned several rose bushes, three yews, a stand of hollyhocks and a young Weigela bush, a section of which is seen in the photo below. After suffering from deer brouse in the spring, this shrub has again been assaulted this summer when another ten healthy growing shoots were recently nipped off. Sometimes we doubt it will ever grow tall.


And, despite best efforts to provide a barrier composed of a fishing line and netting, we were unable to prevent deer from reaching into a rose bed where they sampled the tender shoots of a rose named for our favourite composer – Mozart. The stark ends of several stalks show the sad result of losing yet more buds and blossoms.

Still, in every garden there are always compensations, like a rambunctious clump of bright pink superbells, spilling over a rockery wall…


…Or the surprise of finding a newly opened day lily (Sweet Child), still damp from a recent rainfall, long after we’d thought all the blooms were finished for this year.

Now that the peaches have been harvested, sampled and turned into jams and chutneys, we can turn out attention to the apple crop. The apples on this tree are a variety called “July Red” ( which is curious since they ripen in September).  An earlier variety, the NovaMac, with its crisp tart taste, is a favourite in this area. It was  especially developed as a Nova Scotian hybrid of the standard Mackintosh. 

"July Red" apples
To close this post we add another photo of a Monarch butterfly, supping from the tiny blossoms of a Buddleia bush. This is by way of a reminder that the next meeting of the Chester Garden Club – September 17 – will feature a presentation on these marvellous and somewhat mysterious creatures.

Monarch butterfly on Buddleia