Decorating & Design
March 24, 2023
10 Things That Will Change The Way You Garden
Looking to get a head start on your spring gardening? Here are our best garden tips and tricks to try this season. Scroll down!
1. Go For A Walk
Want to know which plants have a great chance for survival? See what’s doing well in your neighbors’ yard, particularly trees, shrubs and perennials. Because you share similar soil and precipitation, what is growing well for them may work for your garden too.
2. Bring Indoor Plants Outside
You don’t need to head to the garden centre to buy flats of annuals to plant in containers every spring. Just bring your indoor plants out for some fresh air in the summer, like this TV exec does in her Toronto garden. Acclimate them slowly, place them outside a few hours per day and work up to 24 hours so they can adjust to the nighttime temperature dips and sunshine.
3. Do Your Research
Do you often come across plants in ‘the wild’ but can’t recognize them at garden centres? The PlantSnap app uses artificial intelligence to identify plants: just take a photo with your phone and the leaf or flower will be named in seconds. PlantSnap can recognize 90 per cent of all known plants and trees so you can also create collections of your favorite plants before your next shopping trip to the nursery.
4. Try Native Plants
Buy varieties of plants and grasses that are native to your region: they’ll thrive with very little care and are likely to be the best-looking plants in your garden. And think about planting pollinators (like coneflowers, shown), New England Asters and columbine, which produce eye-catching blooms and feed the pollinators we depend on for one out of every three bites of food we eat.
5. Grow Under Cover
Halifax garden pro Niki Jabbour grows food year-round under cover, often trekking through snow to pluck fresh produce from her garden structures. “I love growing crops such as cabbage, broccoli and kale in my autumn garden,” she writes in her book, Growing Under Cover (Storey Publishing, 2020). “With protection, we often harvest them into January. Toss one directly on top of the plants in a garden bed or over a container on a deck or balcony, and remove the next morning.”
6. Rethink Containers
When you can’t get anything to grow beneath trees or along fences, set up a multitiered container garden. In her book Crops in Small Spots (Quadrille Publishing, 2022), garden expert Jane Moore says you can turn the patio into a mini farm and grow tomatoes, lettuce and peas in containers — they appreciate the lack of weed competition and greater water retention that growing in a pot can offer. Some perennials can survive the winter in insulated planters so you won’t lose standard trees and shrubs during the frost/freeze cycles.
7. Try New Accessories
Say goodbye to lugging around a container when gathering fruits and vegetables or collecting yard waste. The Roo Gardening apron makes harvesting easy: when the bag is full, release the cotton rope holders at the bottom of the apron and let vegetables tumble out into the sink, or dump weeds into the compost pile.
8. Buy Quality Tools
Good tools can make gardening easier and enhance care for plants. A sharp pair of shears or a hori hori knife (seen above) makes jobs like dividing plants and weeding easier and more precise. The extra fine rose of the classic Haws watering can means young seedlings aren’t pummelled by watering.
9. Consider Raised Beds
The soil is less compacted and has better drainage in raised beds, which warm earlier than the ground in the spring so you get a head start on planting. The height of these beds also make them easier to weed and harvest. Take the guesswork out with this handy guide on how to build a raised garden bed or pick up a DIY kit at your local hardware or garden store.
10. Invest In A Greenhouse
This is an investment, but if you have the budget and space, greenhouses are garden game changers. In this B.C. garden, Lisa Moody uses a greenhouse to extend the season, starting seedlings earlier in spring so they produce more veggies in summer, and it protects plants like tomatoes from the harsh sun. Another bonus? In the winter this greenhouse doubles as spot for parties.