Thursday, March 21, 2013
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COMMENT / 7
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Dress rehearsal the winter in your basement. For giant flowering pie-plate sized specimens look for ‘cactus flowering’. These are the ones that the pros grow for competitions come September. This native of Mexico, Central American and Columbia was first exported to Europe in the 1500’s. Since that time it has experienced extensive hybridization and ‘improvement’. For daisy shaped dahlias look for ‘single-flowered’ and for masses of round clusters of dahlias look for ‘pompom’ dahlias. Whatever you choose, I predict you will be hooked on them after your first successful season. You will be giving them away to friends and family come fall and taking pictures that you post on facebook or in digital albums. Go ahead, give it a try and prove me wrong.
Springtime is the land awakening. The March winds are the morning yawn. ~Quoted by Lewis Grizzard Generally gardeners have up until mid May to enjoy some ‘time off’ from gardening activity. It is our dress rehearsal for the busy season ahead. The many tasks that thrust themselves upon the gardener when the weather finally warms up the soil minimize the opportunities for day dreaming and planning. Our response to the flowering bulbs pushing their way up through the spring soil and the ensuing weeds that push their way past them is to simply get to work. We rake and fertilize the lawn, spread mulch and remove winter debris from the garden just as soon as the weather calls us out of our reclining chair by the fireplace. It is the beginning of the beginning. Seldom during the gardening season do we sit long enough to let our thoughts wander off the beaten path, at least not the way that we do in the ‘off’ season. The point is that we need to take advantage of the situation now: And it is time for some warm-up activity in the form of tuber forcing. Plant Dahlias Now The aforementioned tubers are the dahlias that you dug up last fall and placed in an insulated craft bag and placed in the basement. These should be removed from their hiding place and potted up into one gallon sized containers using quality potting or container mix. Place your dahlia pots in a bright sunny window. On the floor in front of a sliding door out to the deck works,
as you are not likely to use it much until the heat of mid spring hits home. The sun will intensify through the glass door or window, warming the pots of dormant tubers, encouraging them to put down roots before they push new green growth through the surface of the soil. Before planting your dahlia tubers divide the hefty ones that you stored. Look for ‘finger like’ tubers about five to eight centimetres long, with an ‘eye’ at the stem end. Cut each tuber using a clean, sharp knife. Pass the blade over an open flame before using just to be sure that it is sterile. Be sure to plant the tuber with the stem end up and the tapered end down. If you get them sideways or upside down it is not the end of the world as they are
smart enough to find their own way, generally speaking. They have been programmed genetically to push roots down and green growth up without any help from us.
Mark Cullen Green File Once Started Once the green growth has pushed through the soil a couple of centimetres it is time to fertilize them with half strength 20-20-20 every two weeks. Give the pot a ½ turn every few days to encourage even growth that does not favour the direction of the sun. By the end of May your dahlias will be large and
strong enough to place out of doors in the garden. Choose a sunny, sheltered place where they will not blow over in the wind as they mature. Dahlias started indoors in this way will bloom four to six weeks earlier than those planted directly into the soil in the garden. By midsummer you will likely have to stake your dahlias with a sturdy 2 x 2 inch wooden stake or using one of the new ‘link stakes’ that are much easier to work with and to look at (as you do not see them!). Time to Shop A visit to the garden centre or hardware store this time of year reveals a surprisingly wide assortment of dahlias that can be started indoors, just like the ones that you stored over
Tuberous Begonias While you are in the mood to shop for summer flowering tubers why not check out the many varieties of tuberous begonias that are available at retailers this time of year. While they have a reputation for growing well in the shade, the truth is that they like about four or five hours of indirect sun to perform at their very best through the growing season. I start my tuberous begonias this time of year by pushing them with a ‘half twist’ into pure peat moss which has been spread about 2 or 3 cm thick in a seed starting tray. I then place them on top of the refrigerator where the low, ambient heat encourages root growth even without much natural light. They actually root better without light. Once the tubers have produced roots about 3 or 4
cm long it is time to remove them from the damp peat gently and plant them up into 10 cm (4 inch) pots. Now you put them in a sunny window until the end of May when you will plant them out in the garden or into containers. The large rose-like blooms of tuberous begonias have an affluent look to them that makes people stop in their tracks and admire. The many hanging varieties are perfect for hanging baskets and window boxes. Their No. 1 enemy is wind. No. 2 is overwatering. Locate to avoid the former and resist the temptation of being guilty of the latter. Let your tuberous begonias enjoy some dryness between watering. Mark Cullen appears on Canada AM every Wednesday morning at 8:40 a.m. He is spokesperson for Home Hardware Lawn and Garden. Sign up for his free monthly newsletter at www.markcullen.com.
OFA FROM PAGE 6 As we move forward with pre-budgetary consultations in the coming weeks, the OFA will ask Ontario’s government to assist with the expansion of natural gas lines in rural Ontario by using infrastructure dollars already designated for rural communities. Funding to expand the natural gas pipeline network into rural Ontario will make low-cost energy available to a greater number of Ontario citizens, including farms, and give them a better competitive advantage. Debra Pretty-Straathof is vice-president of the OFA.
Spring migration is well underway UST for the record, this column does not support the recent decision to dismantle the commercial fishing operation at the Prince Edward Point Harbour. It is sad to see a part of our commercial fishing heritage disappear. On past guided hikes at Prince Edward Point, I have enjoyed relating the history of this village and how its presence seemed to reflect a bucolic atmosphere that we are rapidly losing in today’s society. As one e-mailer succinctly put it, far too many bureaucrats need to get out of their climate controlled offices and into the real world. A fishing boat in late November on Lake Ontario would be good place to start. It seems that the entire South Shore, and now, right down to the Point, has suffered more than its share of abuse this past year. Meanwhile, migratory birds are not paying much attention to all of this as the South Shore prepares to open its doors for another spring migration. It got under way with the arrival of redwinged blackbirds on the 9th, followed by grackles the next day. As a farmer from way back, I was programmed to dislike blackbirds
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because of the crop damage that resulted from their voracious feeding. However, there is something about that first arrival that promises more spring like conditions in the offing, and that the warbler migration is but a month or so away. One observer reported thousands of blackbirds arriving that morning; yet, one day earlier, they had been totally absent from the scene, suggesting a major influx had arrived from across the lake in the night. By early next day, scattered numbers had arrived to the Bay of Quinte shoreline. Harbingers? Not likely, as March weather can be fickle. But, as we know, they are survivors, and birds generally time their arrivals by the presence of available food. There is also reverse migration, when birds in their enthusiasm to get a head start on the breeding season, arrive a bit too early, with scores of some species turning tail and retreating a bit farther south, and reassessing the situation before giving it another attempt. Life can be hard for some of these early arrivals, but somehow they manage. A few casualties, we suppose, of the inexperienced who
Terry Sprague
Outdoor Rambles are not creative enough to alter their food habits until better conditions come along. We wonder about species like woodcocks that arrived on the 12th who depend on soft earth to probe for earthworms, and what happens to them when frigid overnight temperatures freeze the soil, rendering it impenetrable. Well, you make the best of it. One observer many years ago during one such hard freeze, came across a long line-up of woodcocks probing in a roadside ditch, the only spot that had not frozen overnight. Sometimes the weather turns
so severely that some species simply cannot endure. Tree swallows can arrive as early as mid-March, if conditions are suitable enough to produce flying insects to sustain them. If it happens to turn cold and snow a bit, no problem, because tree swallows have evolved to exist on a diet of berries in an emergency. Likely not as tasty and digestible as insects, but they probably reason that indigestion is a far better option than interment. But, what happens when thousands are here, and the weather turns really nasty? That’s what happened on April 4, 2003 when a two-day sleet and snow storm dumped several inches of snow, and even after it cleared, well below freezing temperatures persisted for six days. The few berries that somehow got missed by the winter residents didn’t help. In Trenton, the last of the tree swallows were seen swooping over the open waters of the Trent Canal, in a desperate bid for any remaining insects. In the days that followed, thousands of dead tree swallows were gathered up. A Belleville area resident found 37 carcasses on his lawn and 18 dead swallows
in one of his nesting boxes. During the height of the storm, a Trenton resident reported dead swallows falling from trees in which they had sought shelter. As a newcomer to the area, she understandably wondered what toxic world she had moved to as she continued to watch. She later found 38 dead swallows packed in a nest box, likely the victims of suffocation, rather than starvation. Without doubt, the storm resulted in 100 per cent mortality. As spring returned the following week, thousands who wisely migrated later, arrived again to the Quinte area, but residents who experienced the earlier mortality will not soon forget that week of April, 2003. March weather can be unkind. Life is not kind or fair as we have seen with the commercial fishing decision at Prince Edward Point, and so it is often, too, with birds. For more information on today’s topic, please e-mail tsprague@kos.net or phone 613476-5072. For more information on nature in the Quinte area, be sure to check out www.naturestuff.net.