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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 Oct. 19 show:
Read more:
- Garden Talk: Last-minute garden activities to take care of this fall
- Garden Talk: Snap traps the best solution for voles
- Garden Talk: Autumn leaves changing colour is a good sign to prune
These questions and answers have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q: What rose bushes grow well in Saskatchewan?
A: If you want a light pink, then I would go with Morden Blush, which are a nice double rose, whereas a lot of really hardy roses that you’re going to find, like the older ones, are a single rose.
If you want a nice red one, then Emily Carr is a really good one or Hope for Humanity, which is an old one. If you want one that’s more multicolored, there’s one called Campfire that blooms like crazy and has many different colours in it.
If you want white, try Morden Snowbeauty or Blanc Double de Coubert, a big ruffle white one that’s as old as the hills and is tough as nails. If you want a yellow one, then Bill Reed is probably the one of the best.
If you want a climber, to put on a trellis, try rose-pink John Davis and Felix Leclerc, which is pink with a yellow base.
Q: What’s the best time to plant a rose?
A: Anywhere from May or when you see them blooming in the garden centre. They usually bloom in the first week of June in the garden centres. If you can get one you can plant a rose now but mulch them for the first winter.
Q: What’s the best time to transplant spruce trees two to four feet high?
A: You can move them now as long as you can water them in. Make sure you take a good ball of earth with them. Water them right now when you transplant them, and then water them one more time when you see the ground starting to freeze, when we start hitting -10 C.
Also make sure they get good snow cover by putting up a snow fence or something around them or close to them so they get covered right up with snow and don’t have their tips sticking out. If you don’t have time this fall, then move them sometime in April.
Q: I have a 10-year-old Copper Spoons succulent that is about 26 inches high but has most of the leaves in the top six inches. Can I prune it?
A: What you can do is you can take any of the leaves that fall off it, or peel them off, and put them on some soil and you will start getting some baby plants out of those leaves.
You can also cut the top off the plant and set it on some soil, and it will root. Succulents prefer rooting on soil and not in water. Even if the stem that’s left, even if it only has a few leaves, you’re going to get some new branching from it, too.
Q: How should I care for amaryllis from now until the holiday season?
A: First you have to make it go dormant for a little bit. This could be even just putting it into a dark place for a couple weeks, like in a spare bedroom, away from a window. It can be a cool place, too.
When you bring it out, and then it will probably take about two to four weeks to bloom again. Ideally you should slow down on water in September, and allow the leaves to die back a little bit, put it into a cold storage for six weeks and then bring it back out.
At the end of October, you can still do that dormant cycle, it just might bloom a little bit later. You can also pull it out of the pot and replant it back in the same pot — the stress from moving the leaves may cause it to put its spikes up. That’s also a good practice too, because then you can feel the root ball, and make sure that it’s nice and firm.
Amaryllis should be planted in quite a small pot. So you should have no bigger than an inch on either side of the bulb. Well-drained soil is really important and you can add some bone meal to it when you bring it back out again. Don’t fertilize it in the dormant stage.
Q: Is it too late to move lily bulbs?
A: You can move lily bulbs any time after the leaves have died back. If the leaves haven’t died down yet, you can move a nice big root ball with the bulbs. You can also put stakes to mark them and move them in the spring, too. Tulips, daffodils and garlic bulbs can also go in the ground now as well.
Q: Why were my raised bed potatoes small this year? How do I correct that for next year?
A: Sometimes in a raised bed, the soil is a little bit too soft and has too much compost or organic matter. You’ve got to watch how much potato fertilizer you use, too. Go by the instructions, but in raised bed because there is all that organic matter you can skip the fertilizer.
As far as amending the soil for next year, see how much of organic matter is in there. You want to have a little bit of organic matter, but potatoes do better with just some topsoil and some not great soil.
Q: I just had to haul in topsoil to fill a sinkhole I discovered in my front yard. Is it too late to spread grass seed on it, or should I wait until spring?
A: Wait until spring, or you could wait another week or two becasue we’ve got too much warm weather right now and you don’t want the seed to sprout. Rake it in and just let that it sit there and it will germinate first thing in the spring.
If you seed in April, you don’t have to worry about it blowing or washing away as the snow melts, depending on the slope.
Q: My poinsettia developed brown fungus spots and the leaves over the summer. Is it salvageable?
A: Trim off all the disease leaves and even do a little bit more trimming on the top leaves just to make it a bushier plant. If you see the fungus coming back, get a garden suphur or fungicide spray like copper sulfate. Remember with fungus you’re helping it not spread, you’re not fixing the look of the leaves.
Q: My back lawn has hundreds of little tiny mounds under the grass, making it difficult to walk or cut the grass. How do I fix it?
A: Well, you probably have either a webworm or night crawlers, big earthworms. Next year in the spring, get a bird bath and attract robins to your backyard. When robins see the water there, they’ll nest somewhere close by and they go after those kind of worms. There’s no chemical that it’ll get them so you have to use a natural predator
Q: Where can I buy onion sets in Saskatoon?
A: Garden centres don’t get them until the spring.
Q: Why has the bark fallen off my elderberry tree?
A: Cats love using those trees as a scratch board, even neighborhood cats that might not be yours, they love this type of bark.
To fix it it’s going to take about three to four years but you could cut that right down to the ground and start it all over again or down to four feetand it’ll come back like crazy with two or three spikes coming up that will grow about five feet tall next year. Once they get about three feet tall, get trim the tips and get them to bush out again. You can do that any time in October or during the winter, they’re tough.
Q: Can you keep a canna lily growing over the winter?
A: To get the bloom again, you’re going to have to let it rejuvenate itself and let it go dormant for a period of time. Let the frost get it a little bit and cut it back.
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