These gardening tips first appeared in the Van Bakel Garden Center monthly newsletter - full of climate specific gardening advice for the Newmarket area.   Scan the index to the right for particular topics.

From traditional Impatiens or Begonias to exotic
tender perennial tropicals for bold seasonal interest, no garden is complete without their pizzazz!

Lobularia 'Snow Princess' is one new annual that should be on everyone’s list for multiple uses!    A unique breakthrough in the genus for heat tolerance and extended season blooming. Extremely vigorous, with an incredibly long bloom time - from the cool of spring right through to frost.  Fragrant flowers don't need deadheading since the plant doesn't set seed.    'Princess' is a hungry plant and will need evenly moist soil and a starter fertilizer to get going, but boy - once it gets going....!.  We tried it in hanging baskets last year and found that it's hungry roots just couldn't do well there, but in the garden!@$^%$^ WOW is all I can say - it just kept going and going and going until the late fall heavy frost knocked it down.   In the garden it will show drought stress when first planted, but will bounce back quickly to amaze you all season.  Use in larger containers or in the ground as a fabulous partner to enhance the other plants that come and go.  This is definitely a plant that will become a permanent offering on our annuals shelves.

Hanging Baskets & planters.    (from May, 2010 newsletter). 
Just a few quick reminders about purchasing and caring for hanging baskets and containerized plants.  When selecting a hanging basket it isn’t always wise to select one that’s in full bloom and at full size already.  Far better to choose one that’s just starting to fill out so it has an opportunity to adapt to it’s new home with less adjustment stress, and will last longer into the season.  And be sure that it has been “hardened off” and already adapted to outdoor conditions.  Once you’ve brought your hanging baskets home, it’s essential to fertilize with a quick release water soluble fertilizer at every second watering, all through the season.  And don’t underestimate the amount of water a hanging basket needs!  Water every day during the hot part of summer.  If water runs out the bottom very quickly it’s possible the soil has dried out so much that the root ball has shrunk away from the sides of the pot allowing water to just channel away out the bottom.  Take a moment to lift it from it’s hanger to feel the weight – if it’s light you know it’s dried out.  Sit the basket in a water filled container for an hour or so to rehydrate the soil.  Lastly, at some point the plants may start to wear out and get long and leggy.  Don’t be afraid to cut lots of branches right back.  This will stimulate fresh new grow at the base of the plant that will keep the basket looking great right through to the end of summer.

Euphorbia ‘Diamond Frost’  (from May 1st, 2009 newsletter)  An annual hitting the market in a very big way this year is Euphorbia ‘Diamond Frost’ with all the experts raving about this new cultivar’s performance and possibilities.  Euphorbia is by now a well known hardy perennial, but hybridizers have developed this great new “annual” plant from one of the more tender members of the family.  

With the tiniest of plain white flowers, you may easily wonder what all the excitement is about, but it’s the plant’s spring to frost lasting power, vigorous growth, and great partnering potential that has everyone talking.  Not a standout WOW plant in itself, but as a filler among larger and more colourful flowers in a container, ‘Diamond Frost’ is immediately a star performer.  Early experience has also shown that it can handle a bit of the cool temperatures of late spring so we can group this with the other hardy annuals like Osteospermum and Calibrachoa that can be planted before last frost date, and it will also last well into the fall’s first light frosts.  

Heat and drought tolerant and requiring no dead-heading, I can’t wait to see how perfect it will perform along with red Geraniums for an easy care basket in a hot sunny spot.

 Its small size at spring purchase time may appear to belie the rave reviews, but by mid summer it starts to show what all the excitement is about.  Although it pumps out the blooms starting in spring it’s just hitting its stride by mid summer and continues strong, becoming a dense cloud of tiny white flowers and quickly growing to a MUCH larger plant ready to fill in any of the spaces the fading of other plants open up.  For example, in hanging baskets, Wave petunias often get scanty on top as summer progresses but are quickly filled in and disguised by ‘Diamond Frost’s mass of dainty white flowers that just keep on growing on airy, clear green upright stems to fill in the straggly spaces left at the top of the petunia basket.  One plant can fill an 18- by-18-inch space with no problem and its happy little blossoms will just keep coming - fresh and sprightly right through to fall.   

In the garden it’s great planted in a large solid block or mixed with other annuals, perennials or shrubs. Space the plants about a foot apart and you will get a full thick display within weeks.  Because of its tolerance to cool weather you may even want to try planting it around your mid to late season tulips for a much grander show. 

Overwintering Tender Perennials (from Sept. '09 newsletter)
Canna, Colocasia, Gladiola, Caladium, purple Oxalis, tuberous Begonia, Calla Lilly, Dahlia, Lantana, Geranium, Ensete, Amaryllis.  What do all these tender perennials have in common?  They can be stored over winter indoors without devoting every inch of window space to keeping them safe.  Just a cool dark corner in the basement is all they need as long as you condition them correctly for winter dormancy. 

All perennials, whatever climate they are adapted to, have a dormant period.  Hardy perennials and tender perennials alike need to experience dormancy triggers to prepare correctly for this down-time.  The only difference is that tender perennials need their roots to be rescued before freezing temperatures enter the soil in November or early December.   

To overwinter tender perennials, all that’s necessary is for you to allow them to feel the touch of frost and shortening days of autumn, as they naturally would, for them to know that their down time is coming before digging them up.  Withholding water for container grown plants slows down growth for an additional dormancy trigger. These early frosts will damage the leaves, but that’s what you want – for plants to shut down their top growth activity, send sugars to their roots, and adjust their root cell structure to hold in moisture – in other words, to make ready for dormancy.

  The mistake many gardeners make is digging up tender perennials before the plants have a chance to experience all the necessary dormancy triggers

The plants then continue to try to grow since they didn’t receive all the dormancy triggers and therefore don’t know that the season is over.  These too-early dug plants will die over winter in their attempt to grow without sunlight or soil.  

Most of the above mentioned savable plants have bulbs, tubers or rhizomes as their root structure and are very simple to overwinter.  Others are fibrous rooted plants adapted to a hot dry climate, like Geranium (Pelargonium) and Lantana, where dormancy is triggered by the dry season.  Fibrous rooted plants are best stored with some soil protecting their finer roots, but kept almost bone dry and therefore dormant.  Some full fledged tropicals need to stay in a pot in a cool sunny place – cool to keep them from actively growing, and sun to keep them photosynthesizing and feeding - but many can endure that dark cool basement corner in full dormancy. 

Here’s the rules of thumb.   

AFTER they have been through a hard frost that browned and wilted their leaves, (late October usually), dig tubers (e.g. Dahlia, Colocasia), bulbs (e.g. Calla, Amaryllis), corms (e.g. Oxalis, Gladiola) or rhizomes (e.g. Canna), out of the ground.  Cut the stems down to approx. 3".  Remove any large clumps of dirt and put the bare roots in a dry breezy shady place for about a week - indoors if there's any chance temperatures will go below zero.  All surfaces must be well dried, including the cut stem end.  Mold and fungus is the main enemy in dormant storage and it’s best to err on the too-dry side than the not-dry-enough side. Think potato.  Think of what happens to a potato that’s stored with even just a bit of moisture on the surface – mold and rot.  You’re aiming at a completely dry exterior and a moist fleshy interior – just like a potato.

A wide shallow cardboard box is perfect for storage.  The cardboard breathes, the small corner openings ensure a bit of air flow, the closable lid keeps them in darkness.  No tight lidded plastic!.  Lay the tubers, corms, bulbs, whatever, out in a single layer in a bed of loose dry material to keep them from touching eachother. Newspaper works fine.  Put the box in a cool dark spot where the temperature NEVER goes below freezing.  That’s it!  In late January check on them to see that no mold has developed or that they haven’t dried out too much.  If they appear too dry (wrinkled and shrunk), mist them gently, close the box, and check on them again in a few days. Otherwise, you basically can forget about them until it’s time to stir them out of dormancy by gradually reintroducing them to sunlight and water in early spring. 

When to bring them out of storage depends on whether you have a sunny enough spot to get them started without risking stringy weak growth.  If you don’t have such a place, it’s better to leave them in storage long enough so that they can go straight outdoors when spring brings warm temperatures.  Pot them up to get them started and water lightly.  A warm spot will speed things along.  Once new growth appears, start watering with fertilizer added and get them into as much sunlight as possible until all risk of frost has passed when they can go into their permanent outdoor spot.  

A few extra plant-by-plant tips –

 -  For fat fleshy stemmed plants like Canna, dry them upside down to make sure all moisture drains out of any pockets between the leaves.

- Store tubers and rhizomes whole - leave dividing into smaller individual sections for spring when there’s far less danger of the exposed cut surfaces to develop mold.  When dividing make sure each piece has and “eye” or growth point.

-  Ensete, the lusciously bold leaved Banana plant, is a great candidate for overwintering since they are a bit pricey to buy new each year.  They are a true tropical and prefer the cool sunny window treatment described above.  After only just a very light frost has damaged the leaf edges, dig up the plant and put it into a pot.  It’s OK to shave the roots to a minimum sized root ball.  Cut away all but just two or three of the newest top leaves. Let the soil dry quite a bit and overwinter it in a cool sunny place keeping the soil just a notch or two above bone dry. If you don’t have a sunny cool place you may have success trying the full dark dormancy routine. Cut away all but just one top leaf, store the almost dry root ball in a garbage bag with the stem sticking out.  Fill the bag with gently moistened mulch or peat moss and put the whole thing into a cool dark place.  You’ll need to check it now and then for either mold or desiccation.