Hope you can join us at the next meeting of the Yorkton and District Horticultural Society, Wednesday, April 19, at 7:00 p.m. at SIGN on North Street. Our special guest speaker will be Warren Crossman talking to us about “Ornamental and Native Grasses For The Local Area”. Grasses add a beautiful, airy element to our gardens, and give wonderful new textures to our plantings. It will be great to learn about grasses that will do well here! Everyone is welcome!
Last time we had tea, we chatted about container gardening. The book I mentioned to you,
“Successful Container Gardening” by Joseph R. Provey, was a real find. Not only did it have wonderful information and stunning visuals, but it also had container “recipes”: photos of amazing planters, and right beside the photo was a list of the plants included. This is great if you are feeling a little timid about getting started, especially with new plants. This one, and many more wonderful gardening books, are available at the library.
At this time of year we all have gardening dreams for the new season, but if you are like me, the gardening dreams far exceed the gardening space! What to do? A realistic look at the space available is the first step, but we don’t have to stop there. As gardening guru Roger Swain told us earlier this year, there is absolutely no reason why we can’t all have a “garden”, even if this is only a container or two by the back step. We just must choose our top picks of what we’d like… and in one creative way or another, we can have it all!
I’ve been reading a lot on the subject. For a small garden space, with true space limitations, a practical approach is to choose a type of garden based on what we like to eat. For example, a salad garden, which would consist of plants like lettuce, tomatoes, and peppers. For those who prefer a garden with items that can be eaten now or preserved for later, we can select peas and beans of various varieties. We may want to focus on root crops like potatoes, carrots and onions. Corn, beans and squashes can be grown well together in the “three sisters” method. Or you may want to focus on herbs, or perhaps have a cut flower garden.
Another approach is to focus on plants that give maximum yield. We can choose varieties that make the most of the space we have. I found this idea very interesting: if we are space-challenged, we shouldn’t plant something like cabbage or broccoli because we will get only one harvest from these plants, and they are taking up a square foot in our gardens for the whole summer. Did you ever think of it in those terms? It’s so practical, isn’t it? So unless those plants are truly what your gardening heart yearns for, we would do better to choose plants that give us high yields in the space, plants like lettuces, carrots, onions, spinach or Swiss chard, peppers, and tomatoes.
Many things to think about, but with some careful consideration we can grow a garden that suits our tastes and yards. I think the most important thing is to get out there and garden: it’s good for our bodies, good for our tables, and good for our souls. It is a great pastime for families, and wonderful to eat food that you have grown yourself. With a garden, you can eat, you can exercise, you can meditate, you can pray, you can rejuvenate, and you can create your own little Eden and enhance our earth. Visit us at www.yorktonhort.ca
