FLOWERS & GARDENS

GARDEN CENTRE:

We’ll see you next year for our garden centre plants.

Looking forward to working with our local grower to supply all of our plants for your own pots, planters, baskets and gardens plus supplying our vegetable plants, hanging baskets and tropical planters — Can’t wait to ‘get my hands in the dirt’ for a great planting season!

We have lots of natural & dyed cedar mulches, triple-mix, potting mixes, manure, compost and play/work sand for your garden & yard top-ups.

THINGS TO DO IN YOUR GARDEN THIS MONTH — Excerpts of newsletter from Mark & Ben Cullen:

As the longest day of the year approaches, these are productive times in the veggie garden. Here are some of the things we recommend:

– Keep sowing carrots, beets, beans, leaf lettuce, bib lettuce, mesclun mix, radishes for a continuous harvest well into the fall.

– Stake & spray your tomatoes with Bordo spray – a safe, copper- based solution to prevent blight. From now until harvest, every two weeks. Staking now will also help increase your harvest as you lose fewer tomatoes to rotting on the ground and improve airflow through the plant. The orchard will also get sprayed with End-All and Garden Sulphur, and again every two weeks until harvest.

– Wait on your asparagus and rhubarb while they stash energy into their roots for next year’s harvest. Do not cut them down! (The leaves of spring flowering bulbs can be cut back now.)

– Harvest your lettuce and kale crops as they become ready and before the lettuce bolts in the summer heat.

– Mulch now that your transplants are more established, this will massively help suppress weeds and minimize watering demands. Ben prefers 20+ cm of straw while Mark uses 12cm of finely ground bark mulch.

– Feed your onions, leeks and garlic with a 5cm topdressing of compost or earthworm castings. These plants are heavy feeders that benefit from the organic matter!

– Start hilling potatoes once they hit 8-12 inches. Ben’s container-grown potatoes are growing to beat the band, as the dark plastic tubs he is using conduct heat and stimulate growth.

Time for second application of Wright’s Feeds ‘N Needs “28-4-8” 60% SCU (sulpur-coated urea/nitrogen)+ Iron lawn fertilizer.   It is our custom-blended landscaper formula that is tried and true for customer’s lawns for many years. Sophisticated, slow release nitrogen like SCU will be released to the grass roots as temperature rise, rain falls and microbial activity in the soil picks up.  It will last for up to 8 weeks and will make a huge difference to the number of weeds you have to pull later in the season.

Re-pot over-grown indoor plants – they know spring is coming, as the days get longer. And they are about to put on their first flush of growth and a new pot and soil will make a huge difference!  First, pull the plant out of its existing pot and examine the roots.  If they are ‘hitting the wall’ of the pot and twirling around in circles that is a sign that the plant is under stress.  After you have removed the root mass from the existing pot, pull the roots apart.  When it discovers new soil in a clean pot it will begin putting down new roots. Increase the pot size by one size when re-potting (e.g. from an eight inch to a 10-inch pot) and use quality, new plant soil like Pro Mix or potting/container mix.  After the plant is in its new home, compact the soil around the roots with a wooden ruler or similar piece of wood.  Push air pockets out, which can trap water and cause root rot.  Water thoroughly and don’t begin to fertilize until new growth appears on the top portion of the plant.

Clean used pots with a mild ammonia solution (10 parts water/1 part ammonia) to prepare them for planting this spring.  Chances are you have a bunch of pots and window boxes in storage that need attention.  We just use a stiff brush to clean the inside wall of each container before we fill them up with new potting/container mix.  Don’t replant into old potting soil as it is ‘finished’.  Place the used soil in your garden where it is useful as an addition to your existing soil.  Replace it with a quality potting or container mix.

Feed the birds — Use a quality seed mix so that it does not get wasted and you attract quality birds.  Birds wintering in the south will be on their way back over the next month or so clean your feeders again and fill with Wright’s Premium Wild Bird Seed — Birds love it!  Also available are sunflower seed, safflower seed, peanuts (both in and out of the shell), nyjer seed, lots of varieties of suet, corn cobs and lots of feeders for all types of backyard birds.

Participate in Project Feeder Watch –FeederWatch is a winter-long (November-April) survey of birds that visit feeders at backyards, nature centers, community areas, and other locales in North America.  Participants periodically count the birds they see at their feeders and send their counts to Project FeederWatch. Your bird counts help you keep track of what is happening in your own backyard and help scientists track long-term trends in bird distribution and abundance.  With FeederWatch, your observations become part of something bigger. Click here to join.

HOW TO PRUNE FRUIT TREES & EVERGREEN HEDGES:

“HOW-TO” VIDEOS FROM MARK & BEN CULLEN:

Summer Lawn Maintenance – This one is very timely! Check it out!

How to Use Nematodes to Control Grubs

How to Buy Plants at the Garden Center – Good thing to consider now that garden centers are starting to discount their seasonal plant material.

How to Plant in Containers

How to Build a Living Fence – Something you can do with the discounted plant material from the garden centre.

How to Build an Insect Hotel – A year-round project to benefit the diversity of life in your yard.

The Benefits of Mulch

CONTAINER PLANTING TIPS:

It’s trending to use an assortment of different and unique new annuals, tropical plants (hibiscus, dipladenia, rubber plants, elephant ears, crotons) tubers (caladium), houseplants (kalanchoe, angelwing begonias), perennials (hostas, coral bells, hydrangeas, ferns, ornamental grasses, sedums, coreopsis), succulents, herbs (globe basil, variegated basil, rosemary) and vegetables (think beet tops, ornamental peppers, red millet) in planters to give a more dynamic look.  

Have a look at what you’ve already got growing in your own home or your gardens that might make a nice focal point/accent to your planters this year.  Take a look around at other nurseries/garden centres for new and different plants that might work for you that we don’t have here at Wright’s Feeds ‘N Needs.  


You might even consider creating your own spray-painted sticks/twigs to add as an accent to your planters to match your outdoor living space to add that extra punch of colour and style or add a candle feature in your planter for summer evening ambiance.

When your planters and baskets start to look tired and/or over-grown in late-summer, another popular idea is to yank out early performers or straggly plants from your planters/pots ~ half-way through the season and replace with a new late-summer bloomers or cool-weather performers in the empty space.  This will extend the life of your planters and give a new look as the seasons change. 

     

Once the annuals have been bitten by frost, you can stick in coniferous greenery, sumac branches, mountain ash berries, mini pumpkins & squash; plant colourful mums or flowering kale & cabbage; add ornamental grass tufts, birch twigs & branches, pine cones, magnolia leaves, grapevine accents; spray-paint (gold or silver) branches or pine cones, add decorative balls and ribbons (the list is endless, really) to carry your planters from a Thanksgiving theme right through until Christmas.

See how much fun this can be 🙂  ‘The possibilities are only limited to the bounds of your imagination’ and anything goes these days.  

We would be happy to share our extensive knowledge on plants, lawns, gardens and pest control to help you optimize your garden care experience.