Gardening

November notes

Good day, gardeners!

The slight dip in temperatures and the decreasing daylight hours are a trigger for some fruit trees to put on a final growth flush of foliage, if they are thriving.

Healthy citrus and mango can give a push of leaves in mid-November, typically followed by the setting up of the flowering stage. It is almost getting a bit late to prune either of these, but I continue to do so until the end of November, although I am only pinching new buds if a pest gets to the point of causing leaf damage.

Mature trees have mostly finished their last flush but many trees around the island are particularly full of foliage this year due to the lack of any serious winds, thankfully. This may create a need to thin trees out to create more light for plants underneath, or to increase airflow through the tree.

I have been doing one last pruning for plant or tree branching structure this week, setting the pattern for desirable outward or upward growth instead of inward or downward growth, unless, of course, that is desired (espalier, reducing height of fruit to pick). Generally, inward or downward growth is detrimental to overall plant or tree strength and structure. Cutting to the correct node is important then pruning fruit trees, and also for tomato plants. Nodes are the point of branching on a stem, where the leaf is attached to the stem and new buds emerge from. The direction that the leaf stem points, is generally the direction that the bud will also grow in. If a leaf is pointing outwards, new growth will grow outwards. If the leaf is pointing inwards, new growth will grow inwards. I top pinch my indeterminate tomato plants to control the height, to increase strength of the main stem, and to promote fruiting lower down towards the center of gravity (less need for supports).

When walking past tomatoes, I pinch off the growing part of the plant above the highest flower cluster or leaf node at around waist or shoulder height (depending on growing conditions, ground, container, trellised, tied up, etcetera). This allows for a sturdier plant and yields more than enough tomatoes for my purpose, per plant. Seed packets or vendors can tell you whether your tomato is determinate or indeterminate. Determinate is a bush type tomato that can be far more manageable for folks with minimal time to tend the plants. Indeterminate tomato plants will require support to remain upright, many of the favorites are indeterminate and will take a little more attention than determinate types. Fruit trees require less water now than a few months ago, but the winds that we get through the winter months will hasten drying rates on fruit trees, veggies, and landscape plants. Supplemental watering may be required, although at less of a rate than in the hot months.

Mulch is beneficial to trees and tomatoes alike, as it helps prevent the ground or containers from drying out as fast and it places organic matter back into the soil. I am hustling to get nutrients onto plants that are flushing with a last push of new growth or that have used up the available nutrients applied a few months ago to make the best of this growth flush, but at a reduced rate, before things slow down through the winter months when less nutrients are being used. Growing your own vegetables, herbs and edibles is much easier at this time of year. Root vegetables are happy being planted now, carrots, beets and onions, for example. Sweet potato and cassava can be planted anytime. Remember to keep a regular schedule for watering tomato plants. Irregular watering or overwatering leads to calcium being locked up in the soil and unavailable for use by the roots for transport to the fruit, which in turn leads to blossom end rot. No, Epsom salts do not cure this. There cure is found in adjusting watering schedules to maintain a not dry but a not saturated planting media, or by changing or amending the media to a more suitable mix whether in the ground or in containers. Annuals ought to be thriving by now, I am running behind on annuals due to supply issues of media and pots. When planting annuals, think towards March or May when the sun is higher in the sky, most annuals prefer a bit of shade, and it helps to extend their life cycle. What is in the shade now, may not be shaded once the vernal equinox passes in the third week in March. Tender leafy greens and vegetables thrive from mid-November until around May. Leaves will stay a bit more tender when grown in a little shade as compared to the full sun. As always, I wish you happy gardening.

ROOT vegetables like onions can now be planted

• Adam Boorman is the nursery manager at the Fox Hill Nursery. You can contact him with any questions you may have, or topics you would like to see discussed, at gardening242@gmail.com. at gardening242@gmail.com.

The woman who wrote the ‘most controversial novel’ in Canadian history

“Remember that it is not enough to have everything around you beautiful, remember that there must also be change and flux, because it is through change that we pretend that we can make decisions, and keep our pride, and go on pretending that both change and choice exist.”

- Marian Engel

Marian Engel was born Marian Ruth Passmore on May 24, 1933, in Toronto, Canada, and lived the first years of her life in foster care before being adopted by Frederick Searle and Mary (Fletcher) Passmore. Her father taught auto mechanics, being given teaching positions at schools stretching across southwestern Ontario. Her family moved constantly and Engel spent her childhood in Port Arthur, Brantford, Galt, Hamilton and Sarnia.

Influenced by her father, she graduated from the Sarnia Collegiate Institute and Technical School, but in 1955 obtained a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Language Studies at McMaster University, and completed a Master of Arts in Canadian Literature at McGill University in 1957. Her Master of Arts supervisor at McGill University was the Canadian author Hugh MacLennan, with whom she corresponded until her death. Sir Christopher Ondaatje writes about the Canadian novelist who was a founding member of the Writers’ Union of Canada, but broke conservative tradition and wrote a controversial tale of erotic love between a librarian and a bear.

- Marian Engel

In 1960, Engel was awarded a Rotary Foundation Scholarship and spent a year studying French Literature at the Université d’Aix-Marseille in Aix-en-Provence, France. The following year she worked in England as a translator, and began work on her unpublished manuscript Women Travelling Alone.

While in England, she met and married Howard Engel, a mystery novel writer and a radio producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. They married in England, but returned to Toronto in 1964 where they began to raise a family – twin children: William Lucas Passmore and Charlotte Helen Arabella.

It was in Toronto that Engel decided to pursue a writing career. She separated from her husband in 1975 and divorced in 1977.

“I have tried and failed to lead a conventional life. When I try to be like other people, I fall out of bed.”

- Marian Engel

Before returning to Toronto, Engel taught briefly (1957-1958) at The Study in Montreal, as well as at McGill University. She was writer-inresidence at the University of Alberta from 1977 to 1978, and secured a similar position at the University of Toronto from 1980 to 1982. instigate the Public Lending Right Commission as a Trustee on the Toronto Public Library Board from 1975 to 1978. She served on the City of Toronto Book Award from 1975 to 1977 and was on the Committee and the Canadian Book and Periodical Development Council.

Pensions for writers and royalties from library loans were two of the issues Engel championed. She argued that authors are expected to live off that vaporous substance “prestige” and suggested that the uncompensated use of Canadian writers work was a violation of copyright.

Marian Engel’s first published novel No Clouds of Glory was published in 1968; and later issued in the United States as Sarah Bastard’s Notebook (1974). The work challenged traditional notions of female identity by using a fragmented approach to the subjective narrative that mirrored entries in a notebook.

Inside the Easter Egg (1975) and The Tattooed Woman were collections of short stories. Some of these had originally been written for Robert Weaver’s Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio programme Anthology. The novel JOANNE: The Last Days of a Modern Marriage was originally commissioned as a radio novel for CBC for the programme This Country in the Morning. In addition to her novels Engel wrote two children’s books: Adventures of Moon Bay Towers (1974) and My Name is not Odessa Yarker (1977).

She was an avid journal keeper and she used them primarily as a repository for memories and details from which she drew her fiction. In later years this material was edited and published as Marian Engel’s notebook: ‘Ah, mon cahier, écoute ...’