Gardening in Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada
Spring officially begins on March 20 this year, making today the last Thursday of the winter. In a way, it’s hard to believe how quickly the weeks have gone by, but I don’t know anyone who’s sad to see the snow finally melting away, not to mention experiencing the end of bitterly cold wind against […]
Winter’s grip has broken, it seems. We’ve had days (and even a few nights) with temperatures above freezing this past week; the snowpack is melting, sugar maples are being tapped to make syrup, precipitation is a mix of rain and snow…normal March activities. But while last year snowdrops started to bloom in February, I likely […]
Less than a month of ‘official’ winter left this year, but at least two months until my garden starts to really wake up. Today’s pictures were taken last April 19; the photo above is a close up of Muscari latifolium – broad-leaved grape Hyacinth – which have naturalized really nicely in what I call the […]
I know…you’ve seen my purple coneflowers before. More than once. I can’t help myself though…Echinacea is the backbone of my summer garden, loved by me, bees and butterflies. Mostly I have E. purpurea in various shades of purple but also the white flowering variety and Pale Purple Coneflower – Echinacea pallida, which self seeds as […]
After making many comments in December and at the beginning of January about the lack of snow again this winter, I’m forced to eat my words. The past few weeks have, so far, been very Canadian wintery-like, with cold nights and a snowfall every few days. There are rabbit tracks galore in the garden and […]
Alliums, or flowering onions, seem to spread either by offset (bulbs multiply and send up new leaves and flower stalks while attached to the parent bulb) or by seed, occasionally both ways. I’ve not noticed A. karataviense multiply via offset, but it does set a copious quantity of seeds. New plants start to bloom in […]
I’m going back a year and a half this week. Not exactly keeping with my winter theme, I know, but I don’t think I’ve shown my garden like this before. I was on the roof on August 5, 2023, exploring some noises I had heard (just birds in the gutters, it seemed) and of course […]
I’m not sure why Cercis canadensis, Canada Redbud, is called Red since the flower and bud are decidedly pink.mauve/purplish to my eye. I know one of the common names for small trees in the genus Cercis is Judas Tree, named because in biblical times Judas hanged himself on a Cercis which, until then, had white […]
We’re heading into a cold spell, perhaps the coldest days and nights we’ve had in several years, the weather experts are saying. A perfect time to look back at this quartet (plus one) of tulips that were in bloom last May 3, and to anticipate them blooming again in just four months. Each Saturday Thursday […]
Seven or eight years ago, a neighbour down the road let me dig up a clump of the yellow Primula that dotted his property in the spring. Saved him pulling it out himself, he said, because it had self-seeded throughout his large but not completely well-cultivated vegetable garden. I planted the small clump near the […]