2026 - Starting the planning

 With the start of spring we are looking at what to plant for this year.  Last year seemed to be hotter and drier and part of our flowers either died or didn't grow and flower very much.

We are definitely looking at plants that can tolerate (or thrive) in hot and dry conditions.  I kept part of the hanging planters from last year as the plastic hasn't deteriorated too badly and bought two new hanging planters.  However, instead of regular potting soil we are looking at mixing in peat moss and  materials that will help retain water.  Last year I watered morning and night and the pots on the sunny side still dried out.  I have to dig through some of the bins as I believe I have watering spikes and bottles and they do help keep things moist all day.

What we are looking at for this year:

• Yarrow
• Lantana
• Marigolds
• Portulaca
• Snapdragon
• Verbena
• Zinnia

We will be planting marigolds, impatiens and geraniums like we do every year. The marigolds and geraniums seem to handle the heat and slightly drier conditions without too many problems.

2024 planning

My wife and myself have been having discussions on what we will be doing this year for the planters and baskets.

For the front, which is south facing we will be going with ornamental grasses, geraniums and drought tolerant plants.  It gets the sun most of the day and the house wall means it gets very hot and dries out quickly even with me watering twice a day.

In the backyard we are doing the impatiens again.  They seem to like the location and if they grow like the last three years they will be well over 50 cm in height giving us a massive corner of green and colour.  The fence between us and our neighbour will have the hanging boxes, but only ivy this time.  Geraniums in the boxes didn't do very well.  For the various hanging planters we will be a light-weight mix with lots of peat moss.  Flowers will be mostly geraniums as they last all season.  The only exception will be a small container with a few herbs.  I use a lot of herbs cooking and fresh herbs are nice.

We will probably cut back on the number of planter boxes though.  They took up a lot of room in a small yard and the wife would like a bit more room for our folding table and chairs so she can sit outside and enjoy the yard unlike last year where it was quite crowded.

One other item is that we are not planting tomatoes and sweet peppers.  Even with the mesh protection, various animals seemed to get in and enjoyed the products before we could harvest them.

What to plant for spring 2018

That is the question my wife is asking me.  We are planning to buy a house this year and we are wanting to limit the number of planters we put in.  It needs to be in light weight containers and can take abuse when we do move them.  That means a soil mix that is mostly peat moss and then plants that like that type of soil.  It is also a good time to go through our old plastic pots and then recycle those that are starting to wear out and then buy new ones when we get a new place.  We also will be planting varieties that can grow in full light, partial light and low light as we won't know which way the yard will face.

Herbs and spices should be OK as I normally put them into smaller and portable pots.  I think geraniums will do well in most conditions and in prior years the planters on the fence line were almost 50% peat moss.  I am hoping the sedums will take the move OK as those planters are quite big and heavy.

It is early (very early), but, I started my initial grass seeding on the west side of the house.  This location is protected on three sides and open to the south.  It gets quite warm there and the grass is already green and growing so it may be safe to start seeding there.  I have been doing this for the last several years and slowly we are getting grass to grow there.  Initially it was a very sandy and rocky soil that had only weeds growing and when my potting soils were exhausted I spread it out there and raked it in.

Summer of 2016 - so far so good

This year is going well for the backyard plantings.  So far the tomato plant is doing well and I don't see any problems with the tomatoes that are on the plant.  It has been a dry year, but, the mix I use has a good bit of peat moss in it to help hold the water.  I have done two cuttings and drying of herbs so this year I will have many bottles to last me for the winter.

My wife is looking forward to the sweet peppers as she didn't get to enjoy the garden much last year due to being in the hospital.

The strawberries were a surprise again.  This is the third year being in the planter and I never expected it to survive the first winter let alone a second one.  I picked about 15 strawberries from the one plant that flowered.

Sweet peppers are liking the weather and if everything matures I should be getting a dozen peppers per plant.  The peat moss mixed in the soil seems to be what is helping as the soil has stayed moderately moist without being overly wet.

Start of the 2013 gardening season

It has been too long since I had anything to write here.  The new season has started and I am going with nine geraniums on the fence life for my wife on mother's day.  I don't buy her anything for valentines day and for mother's day I like to buy a lot of plants that will give her a whole year of enjoyment when she is sitting in our back yard.

I am starting only with geraniums as they are fairly hardy and environment Canada is forecasting a low of around 0c this week.  Next week we will be going out to the garden centres and picking up enough plants to fill around two dozen planters.  The theme colour this year will probably be bright red with white.

Hint to all of those guys who are reading this;  rather than buying cut flowers for your significant other why don't you pick up a potted plant and put it into a container for the whole growing season.  My wife loves this and she gets to show off our garden to neighbours  friends and family for the whole year.

The next thing we have to figure out is what other plants we are putting in.  It looks like the dill from last season self-seeded so we will probably keep that.  I am leaning towards cherry tomatoes (red colour again) as they go well in salads along with green onions.  In a few more weeks our rosemary will be moved to the outside after I give it a severe pruning.  The winter savoury did survive the winter, but the oregano and thyme for some reason didn't.  I like those three spices as I cut them fresh and crush them up into a pan with mushrooms, onions and butter on the BBQ when we are grilling.

Garden 2009

It has been a while, but, I finally now have a few minutes to talk about this years garden. During this month (May) we had to protect our plants twice because of frost. Don't spend a lot of money doing this as I found that the plastic drop sheets from the dollar store works quite well. We move all of the plants to beside the living room window, stick in a few bamboo stakes on the corners and drap the drop sheet over the plants. It worked quite well and in the morning nothing was damaged.

We are going with the same thing on the south side fence as last year. On the top we are planting red and white geraniums and along the bottom we are planting red and white impatiens. The two go together quite well. We are still working on all of the plantings for this year, but, so far we have put in Rosemary, Sage, Savoury, Basil and Oregano. Emily has planted a bit of carrots and wild flowers (from seed).

The sedum from last year came back and next spring we will need to divide the plant as it has almost out-grown the current pot. My next project is to edit the current photos of the garden and update the layout to show what is planted and where.

Winterizing and snow storms

I finished off winterizing my containers just in time. On the weekend they forcasted a fairly major storm for Ottawa. I did a few things differently this year. Last year I piled the leaves on to the containers. That is great, except in the spring it is a royal mess to clean up. This year I put them in two large bags and then placed the bags on top of the containers. This still allows me to use them as an insulation layer, but, should be much easier to clean up in the spring. I then covered everthing with burlap and then used stakes at each corner of the area to sucure the burlap.

On Monday the storm dumped and with drifting I had over 50cm of snow covering the plants. The only plant showing was the sedum tops. I used the shovel and then covered all of the planters with an additional metre of snow so that everything is completely buried. Like prior years the planters are on the north east side of the yard so in the spring it will get the advantage of the sun and thaw out more quickly.

Over the winter we will be doing our planning for next year. The impatiens and geraniums will be coming back. They were a nice complement set along the fence in that the colours were almost an exact match and they bloomed for the whole season. They also were very low maintenance plants in that I only needed to water daily and feed bi-weekly.

This spring I will need to either split the sedum pot into two or thin them out again as the growth completely filled the container this fall. I will not plant tomatoes again. For some reason my tomatoes grow in excess of 2 metres in height and width and take over an area that I would like for a number of other plants. If you grow carrots use a sandy mix with a lot of peat moss. We did that this year and the carrots were large and tender. Two containers gave us over 4 kilograms of carrots.

July Garden

The garden is now completely in and producing some really great herbs and flowers. The herbs have been cut back twice now and I had to use large mason jars to start to hold the dried herbs. The tomatoes are now almost waist high and I had to prune back the roma tomatoes once already.

The first picture shows the yard from the door to the house looking east. At the bottom of the photo is the sage followed by the sedum and the other plants. At the top of the picture in the hanging planters are carrots (right) and peppers (left). The peppers don't like being up there as we have lost three out of the four pepper plants. Carrots definately don't mind the planter.

The sage is definately liking the pot and I had to remove the rosemary and put them into their own pots. I put in only three plants and at this time they are 60 cm across and about 30cm in height.

The tomatoes have started to produce and yesterday I had two cherry tomatoes. The roma (left) self-seeded from last year and as I noted earlier our neighbors and in-laws got part of them. The plants were quite tolerant of being transplanted even at the start of July.

The basil (right) really likes the location and pot that we used this year. The soil is a mix of peat moss and light planting mix and they get watered every day. We used a 30cm pot and put it up on a rack about 1.25 metres off the ground beside the carrots (left). During the next week we will be thinning out the carrots by about 1/3 to allow the remaining plants to mature. Emily is looking forward to fresh carrots for dinner.










The geraniums and impatiens are also doing very well and by accident we picked plants that had very similar colours. They are along the south fence. The geraniums are on the top of the fence and the impatiens are underneath running along the fence where they get shade for most of the day.