By MARY FRAN McQUADE I can’t pretend any longer. Fall has moved in, with its mists and all. Our gardens are sweetly saying goodbye to us, with brilliant leaf colours, a few final brave roses, defiant geraniums and hydrangea blooms turning a dusky pink. It’s time now to turn our attention to leaves and seeds. […]
By MARY FRAN McQUADE You’re not a real gardener if you hang up your trowel in September. The blazing hot sun isn’t beating down on you anymore. The days are sunny and cool. The pesky bugs have moved on or died off. It’s a great time to be out in the garden. Wage war on […]
By MARY FRAN McQUADE Sometimes gardeners seem to speak a foreign language. “Deadhead the salvia. Be sure to cut it back to a leaf node,” someone tells you. Wait – what? Usually nobody’s trying to use fancy words, but like other special activities, gardening has terms that pack a lot of meaning into one or […]
By MARY FRAN McQUADE You’ve carefully tended those tiny seedlings for weeks, and now it’s time for them to go out into the wide world of your garden. If you’re a new veggie parent, you may be wondering what happens next, now that they’re out there on their own. Fear not – I talked to […]
By MARY FRAN McQUADE Picture a bee, and I’ll bet dollars to Timbits that a yellow-and-black striped winged creature comes to mind. But – surprise! – some of Toronto’s most common bees are solid black, dull green or bright metallic green. Others in the thousands of species around the world can be partly blue, red, […]
By Mary FRAN McQUADE Usually, right around now, gardeners would be thinking about what we want to grow this year. But nothing’s usual about this March and April of 2020. Garden centres and nurseries are closed for in-person visits. They aren’t included on the list of essential businesses the province released on March 24. But […]
By MARY FRAN McQUADE Ka-boom! In less than a month, Canada Blooms opens. The annual spring flower and garden show in Toronto celebrates all things gardening. and this year, there’s a twist – it’s packed with things to do for kids on March Break. A romp for the kids Every day, in the morning and […]
By MARY FRAN McQUADE I’ve always been glad of the start of a new year: new calendars, new plans, clean slate (more or less). For gardeners, we also have a rebirth of our gardens to look forward to. Dates have already been set for several key gardening events, and here are some dates to mark: […]
By MARY FRAN McQUADE To a gardener, it’s odd that poppies are so prominent in November. Cold-loving chrysanthemums make more sense at this time of year. Lately, even Christmas greens and trees are already appearing in garden shops. The bright red poppy rightfully belongs to the month of August, the hot harvest-time. But, as most […]
By MARY FRAN McQUADE Did you think of your garden during your Thanksgiving celebrations? I’m pretty sure my vegetable gardening friends did. They’ve been posting photos of their luscious tomatoes, crisp green beans, and brilliant orange carrots for weeks now. And my turkey stuffing wouldn’t taste right without its sage and parsley cut fresh from […]
