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Jill and Rick Van Duyvendyk answer all your gardening questions in Garden Talk on 650 CKOM and 980 CJME every Sunday morning at 9 a.m. Here are some questions and answers from the May 11 show:
These questions and answers have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q: Which is better — June-bearing or ever-bearing strawberries?
A: Both of them produce hearty, sweet strawberries, but the ever-bearing is going to produce more evenly throughout the whole season. They will grow in pots but won’t survive in a pot over winter. Make sure you’re fertilizing them. You can put the pots in a garage and cover them with blankets in winter.
Q: What’s the sweetest ever-bearing strawberry to plant?
A: Honey Eye is a really good one. Also Hecker and Seascape. Seascape doesn’t go mushy as fast. Plant them on about one foot centres.
Q: How many strawberry plants can you put into a 12-inch hanging basket?
A: Three would probably make it really nice and full.
Read more:
- Garden Talk: What is the best way to deal with ant hills in my yard?
- Garden Talk: When can I transplant a rhubarb plant?
- Garden Talk: Can I grow apricots in Saskatchewan?
- Garden Talk: Tips for planning a thriving home vegetable garden
Q: What soil mixture should I use for a raised garden bed?
A: Use one-third garden mix, one third compost topsoil mix and one-third of something to retain moisture, like peat, cocoa coir or perlite. You can buy a premixed product.
You can also use sheep wool pellets from Saskatchewan sheep farms. They were having trouble figuring out what to do with excess wool, especially the dirty belly wool so they
dehydrate it and make it into pellets to add to your garden to retain moisture.
Q: How can I monitor for late-season tent caterpillars so I can use BTK?
A: Watch for them to come out in July. You can apply BTK any time after July 1. The worms are really tiny and they’ll be in or close to a crotch of the tree. BTK works on contact with the bug or spraying the tree the bug is eating. Apply it on the leaves. BTK won’t hurt
ladybugs or bees.
Q: Is it too early to start fertilizing my trees, especially spruce and cedars?
A: Mother’s Day is the time to start.
Q: What perennials do well in heat and have some drought resistance?
A: Roses would do great, any sages, and sedum like autumn joy, which gets about two feet tall and about two feet wide. Irises will do well and there are lots of ground covers like creeping thyme, dianthus, Karl Foerster grasses, fescue grass, and peonies.
Q: The stems of ranunculus started in March from seed fall over when I plant them out. Is it too late in the season for these flowers?
A: No. When they’ve been growing inside the house the stems are quite weak. Put a fan in the area to build up the strength of the stems and don’t put them out when it is windy of too hot. Put them in a sheltered area and watch on cooler days that you don’t overwater
them.
Q: How do I use high calcium hydrated lime safely?
A: With hydrated lime, don’t use a lot of it. If you use too much you will change the pH of your soil. With vegetables sprinkle a teaspoon around each plant, with trees you can use about a cup around the drip line.
Q: Can I keep a Little Moses Burning Bush outdoors over winter?
A: Yes. Make sure it is in a sheltered spot where it will get snow cover. The more sun it has, the more fiery red it will be in the fall. If you put it in the hot sun up against a house the snow tends to melt away from the house and exposes them.
Q: How can I prevent potato scab?
A: Make sure that you don’t put your potatoes in the same area every year. If you break a new area with a lot of grasses and different compost, potatoes don’t like that much because that’s where you get the scab from.
Don’t put a lot of manure in with them because they’ll fix their own nitrogen and don’t use fresh manure. Soil that is too dry can increase scab in your potatoes, too. Scab doesn’t survive as well in alkaline soil.
Q: What grass can I grow in shade?
A: Get a dense shade type of grass seed and overseed in shady areas with a little bit of topsoil before applying seed there. Turf grasses are all for sunny areas. Dense shade grass will outcompete moss.
Q: How do I grow grapes?
A: The ore sun the better. They love the sun, they can take a bit of shade but won’t produce as much fruit. If you want fruit, you should have two different varieties. You could
put even if put three grapes of one type and one of the different type. Give them support like a fence or something to grow on. They grow fast, so don’t be afraid to prune
them every few years, or even every year.
Q: What’s the best variety of watermelon to grow in Saskatchewan?
A: We don’t have a long enough growing season for large watermelons. Try one called Sugar Baby that’s smaller — about the size of a volleyball or 10-pin bowling ball. They’ll put out all the growth in the first week or two in September use a frost blanket starting in the September long weekend, or even in August if its cooler. Take it off during the day or get that lets the sun and leave it on. It’s too late to start from seed right now.
Q: What can I do to prevent worms on raspberries?
A: Pick all the raspberries off and keep picking them before they’re even ripe. And take a
year off where you’re not not actually harvesting, because the worms are in the soil and the fly comes up and lays its eggs on the berries. If you want them to move on, make sure there’s no food for them.
Q: Can I add potting soil to my raised garden beds for tomatoes and cucumbers?
A: Potting soil is great, it drains really evenly and well, but you don’t have to
use potted soil. Adding compost is sufficient as well. For tomatoes, make sure that you pick a good fertilizer and keep watering consistent — making sure you have soil that dries evenly in there is the key to success when you have a tomato crop. Add calcium to the soil for tomatoes and cucumbers.
Q: What can I use to stop shoots coming out of the base of a tree?
A: Cut them below the ground and then use Roundup Advanced or Top Gun to spray. You can’t force a tree to stop producing them but if you spray them as soon as you see a leaf coming out it’ll burn it off.
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