What a difference four hours can make. I left my garden yesterday morning and the snowdrops were blooming everywhere. The early Crocus tomasinianus were starting to turn the Hosta bed into a sea of light purple and the large clusters of leaves from last autumn’s glorious Colchicum display were emerging, looking for the sun to regenerate their bulbs. The large Pussy Willow next door is in full bloom and many other green things are pushing through the ground. We are probably about three weeks early. Four hours up the road I met my grandsons for an afternoon of great warm spring skiing. Bare patches everywhere but still ridges of snow in the corners and in shaded back yards. I was able to make a great combination trip to speak to the West Carlton Garden Club and have a great visit with my family who live a few minutes from their meeting hall. 
It’s time to find the Tuberous Begonias that I carefully stored away last fall and get them into some warm moist soil. They need a couple of months head start if they are going to be blooming sized plants when they head outside in mid May. They are quite shallow rooters so I will plant them all together in a shallow flat and then transplant them into individual pots after they have developed a reasonable amount of top growth. This saves space under the lights and makes it easier to deal with the odd one that decided not to join us this year. I give them a couple of hours of soaking in water before I plant them, just to plump them up a bit. The trailing, bright red, Begonia boliviensis Bonfire produced huge tubers last year and I’m wondering if I can just plant the new looking part on top or if I have to plant the whole thing. I’ll try a few each way and see what happens. I would need a deep 20 - 25cm pot for each tuber if I don’t reduce them in size. Hard to believe that they would need that much stored food and energy in order to start growing again this season.
The very warm weather has brought all of the fish up to the top of the ponds where they are actively swimming around and probably wondering where their next meal is coming from. I’m always fascinated at how they seem to grow bigger over a winter of dormancy. The unseasonably warm weather is not a complete blessing. The ponds are producing a huge amount of Algae as the water warms up early. This will necessitate a big clean out and that will be a messy and unpleasant task. At least the Algae makes great nutritious compost. 
I have babbled on, in the last couple of “Dallying In The Dirt”, about the wonderful Orchid blooms that have arrived this year. The new Oncidium has been mentioned several times and as its earliest blooms are starting to fade I can happily report that, that did not happen until well after the last blooms had opened. It was in full glorious bloom for a couple of weeks and now I see new leaf growth pushing at the edges of the pot and I am figuring out how and where I am going to transplant it. One bigger pot or do I attempt to divide it into two smaller plants?
One of the samples that I have received this year is a weed preventer and mild fertilizer made from corn gluten. There are several of these on the market and they do have a reasonable effectiveness. In small print they indicate that they are germination inhibitors. What this means, is that they must be applied before any of the weed seeds have started to germinate and this is long before we actually see these weeds. In temperate parts of the world a good marker is the bright yellow blooms of Forsythia. If the corn gluten is not applied before these blooms fade then it is probably too late to have any effect. It will still act as a fertilizer but not as a weed control.Time to answer a few questions. If you have a gardening question just ‘reply’ to this newsletter and send me your query. I try to answer most of the questions and the ones that I answer here are those that I think will have the widest interest. You can also find the latest garden updates on the front page of gardening-enjoyed.com . |
Down in the basement under the lights the 