IT’S TIME TO GET GARDENING
Plants need love after brutal winter
We’ve finally lumbered past the May long weekend when conventional wisdom tells us it’s OK to plant and garden.
But after an exceptionally long winter that delayed everything from spring melt to outdoor soccer season, what exactly does this mean for the trees and flowers in our beds and our plans to harvest a bounty of veggies by fall?
“Everyone thinks we’ve got to plant and get caught up. By now I’d normally have peas up, sweet peas in and beans planted. We’re scurrying to get things out there,” says Kath Smyth, the resident horticulturist at Calgary Horticultural Society. “I have tomatoes out but I’m acclimatizing them. Yesterday they fainted; it was too hot for them.”
Smyth thinks Calgary gardens are about two weeks behind because of the long, cold days and loads of snow. But the above normal temperatures of the past week have thrown everything out of whack. Long dormant plants are now blooming like crazy and being toasted because of it. The tulips in front of the horticultural offices are fried.
“We’re still fighting Calgary weather but now it’s a different kind of weather.”
Smyth advises gardeners to start their full season vegetable crops to give them the time they need to mature. Although we’ve lost some spring time, she notes that we now seem to have a longer, warmer autumn.
Another local expert, John Duncan of Greengate Garden Centres, suggests holding off on super tender plants like begonias and coleus in favour of hardier ones like snapdragons. “Everything is pushing really hard. I mean yesterday it was 30. But it’s Calgary, we could still get frost.”
Both encourage a good cleanup of beds and bushes, cutting back of berry patches and perennials and giving some love to the lawn.
And don’t be fooled into thinking all that snow this winter means less watering.
“We had a lot of snow but there’s not a lot of moisture in the soil. There was all this moisture above ground but nothing underneath it,” said Duncan. “It was a long, dry winter for the soil. Nothing went into it until the spring melt.”
More plants than usual have been desiccated by dry roots, with evergreens taking the brunt of the hit.
Smyth says it may be too late for some plants but others can be protected with a good helping of water.
“Put the sprinkler on really slowly and let it sink in. This is probably one of those times we need to be watering even though we wouldn’t normally think so.”
Nothing went into (the ground) until the spring melt. Put the sprinkler on really slowly and let it sink in.