How to care for and protect your garden
Now is a great time to give your garden a fresh start. We should be done everyone’s replant by next Friday the 5th. Take this chance to give your garden the care it needs. At this time of year all that means is keeping up on watering and weeding and keep an eye out for slugs and a few other nasty little buggers that we have noticed during our replants these past 2 weeks.
Stink bugs… if you have noticed black spots or lesions on your tomatoes you may have a new friend in your garden you want to be rid of immediately check out this website for a more detailed attack plan but i will break it down for you. Rubber gloves and a bucket of soapy water, the gloves are for the smell, stink bugs can spray you with a nasty lingering odour as a defense. They are slow, so pick them and toss them in the bucket, keep the garden well weeded and keep an eye out for the eggs and the nymphs. The clusters of oval small green eggs are often on the underside of leaves and need to be washed away, and the nymphs are some of the most beautiful insects I’ve ever seen but don’t be fooled they are still nasty.
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The adult stink bug looks like a little brown shield
I’ve noticed some in a few gardens but no epidemics, lets keep it that way.
Slugs are out again too. Cut the lid off a beer can and bury it almost all the way in the garden. This is the most successful slug trap I’ve seen yet. Also keep weeds and grass away from the side of the garden as they like to hide right by the wood in the tall weeds. We also now have some Diatomaceous Earth in the garden centre that you can buy as a physical barrier
I Would like to congratulate many of you for your work in the gardens we’ve seen some truly beautiful gardens during this last round of replants and we are proud to have helped you in your success.
On the flip side some gardens are not doing as well, it usually seems like a watering problem so if that is your problem we do offer irrigation for the gardens or just pick up a timer and use a sprinkler or a drip hose and water every day! Some of the gardens we have noticed are root bound by surrounding tree roots so if you are very underwhelmed by the progress in your garden but you have been working really hard at it, it may be due to too many tree roots in the garden.
We have learned from last year and now all our gardens are installed with a layer of geotextile at the bottom of the bed but many gardens installed in 2012 or 2013 wont have it so if your garden is filled with brown roots and soil always seems dry and plants are small, let us know and we will be sure to dig out the garden and line it with the geotextile before next year’s planting. Tree roots will travel long distances to get into our gardens as they are filled with super rich soil and are also watered far more than anything else in the yard.
For those gardens that were not doing well we will have removed any under performing plants and added extra leafy greens so hopefully you will be able to make up for your summer garden with a lush fall garden and you will enjoy spending some time in the garden again with the fresh start.
Thanks for reading,
Shawn