It pains me to see customers spending hundreds of dollars on new plants and simultaneously refusing to spend a few more on a bag or two of compost and a box of starter fertilizer. These two items are not unnecessary “add-ons” that the retailer is just trying to add to the sale, they are critical components of a successful transplanting process - or as I like to refer to them as “plant insurance”. Unless you have phenomenal soil, you should always add compost and starter fertilizers when you are planting new plants. Here is why…
I thought it might be fun to kick off 2025 in style with some talk about climate, gardens, and the adjustments we continue to make to both our gardening choices and practices. Gardeners have certainly always been flexible, or rolled with the punches as they say. As Mother Nature surprises us with this or that, she always…
It’s funny how the meaning of some words can change over time. In a garden setting, having a “diverse” collection of plants is generally a good thing. One could say that the gardener embraces “diversity”. Likewise, if that same gardener “includes” many different genera in the landscape, you could state that the gardener embraces “inclusivity”. Now, before you get your hackles up, I have no intention of…
As a garden center owner for over three decades, I have seen all types of gardeners come in to shop for plants, and without exception, regardless of their level of skill, there is one common habit they all exhibit. Show them a pretty flower and they will immediately plunge their schnozzola right into the heart of it to see if it has fragrance - we have all done it, myself included…
I know a few of you might find it incredibly hard to believe, but I actually spend a considerable amount of time researching my columns rather than just making s#%t up. In truth, it is probably a combination of both. We live in the information age where knowledge is all around us, literally at our finger tips. The challenge of course is…
It was exactly 18 years ago, on April 1, 2004, when I was sitting at my computer straining my brain to come up with a timely subject upon which to pontificate. It occurred to me that my column was going to appear exactly on the first of April - a day that traditionally has been set aside for enjoying a practical joke or two…
I have this theory (I know, some of you are thinking, “OMG, what is he going to say next”), that gardeners possess a special “horticultural hormone” that I have dubbed “hortitostrogen”. This is a non-gender specific hormone that kicks in about this time of the year and causes my fingers to start twitching with an intense desire to go dig in the dirt. I wonder if any of you can relate…
In this day and age of social distancing, I am inclined to think that the vast majority of us, either consciously or unconsciously, are suffering from a lack of physical contact with our fellow human beings. There is something healing that happens when two individuals connect with each other through a hug and it turns out that a similar feeling can also be obtained when we hug a tree….
The Golfing Gardener
Trevor Cameron
As we march on through the month of January, it is time to recall the annual gardening tradition of dormant spraying. The ideal products may have changed a bit over the years, and certainly their effectiveness has improved as well, but the spray techniques and principles remain the same. A plan for success always begins with…