Garden Talk: Everything you need to know to set up a backyard greenhouse

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 Feb. 8 show:

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These questions and answers have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Q: Where can I find information about setting up a greenhouse?

A: Try gardening.usask.ca. Also shiftingroots.com has a lot of content about greenhouses from just outside Saskatoon. And then there’s zone3vegetablegardening.com that focuses more on homesteading and doing
vegetable gardening on an acreage but lots of great helpful tips, and Zone 3 is us.

There’s another one called fromsoiltosoul.ca, and you can join a Facebook group. There’s one called Saskatchewan Gardeners and if you have a question, you can throw it out to the whole group, and then people will start giving you their resources that way. There’s another called Gardening in Saskatchewan and the Saskatchewan Horticultural Association also has a Facebook group.

Q: What seeds can I start now?

A: Seed onions, leeks, celery, hot peppers, peppers, tomatoes — anything that takes over 100 days to mature.

Petunias, pansies, and other flowering annuals you may want to bloom a little bit earlier than usual and also perennials you want to bloom in this first year.

Be mindful about how many seeds you plant — 72 plants that fit into one tray will need to be transplanted into 72 four-inch pots that take up a lot of space.

Q: My pothos plant has been declining since I brought it inside for fall. What could cause that?

A: When you take a plant from inside and then move it outside and then move it back inside again, what you’re doing is you’re changing its growth environment quite a bit and it’s goes through shock every time.

Outside it gets lots of light, probably has shorter nodes and is lush and full, as well as growing lots. Once you bring it inside it doesn’t have natural light and unless you’re putting grow lights on it for 12 to 14 hours. a day it will start losing leaves.

When you bring it inide you also have to deal pests lik mealy bug or spider mite and spraying once is not going to get rid of them, especially a pothos is such a lush plant it has got lots of little crevices and nodes they can hide in. You could also have pests in the soil, too. End-all is safe to apply.

Trim it back a bit and take cuttings, pothos roots really easily. Just stick the nodes into a vase of water and get the roots going on it. Once they get roots, take some paper clips and stick the cuttings back into the original pot with the paper clips holding them lightly into the soil so they’re not too deep and they’ll start
growing.

You can also cut off any long branches off and root them before sticking them back into your pot to fill it out. It’s a plant that is easy to refresh.

Q: What new varieties of plants are available this year?

A: There’s a new sweet potato vine that’s a deep purple-black colour with lime green stripes and jagged leaves. It’s more compact plant, so it’s not going to get big and lanky and it will slightly trail over the side
of a container.

There’s also a new South African phlox (Jamesbrittenia) called Lava Flow. It’s red with a yellow centre. It’s really hard to find a nice trailing red plant.

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