Lasagna Gardening
Lanark County Master Gardeners No, I am not going to teach you how to grow lasagna. I am going to talk about a “no-dig” method to use to grow the vegetables you love and use to make lasagna. Lasagna gardening refers to the method of building the garden up by… READ MORE
Sean Maloney
Lanark County Master Gardeners Fresh cut flowers, whether picked from our gardens or purchased from a store or Farmers Market, add beauty and bring the outdoors into our rooms. We often wonder if there is anything we can do to extend the life of these beauties. To keep your arrangement… READ MORE
Pollinator Gardens
For plants to reproduce, they need pollinators. These include insect species such as bees, butterflies, beetles, flies and thousands of other insects, as well as hummingbirds. Unwittingly, while searching for nectar, pollinators move pollen from the male anther of one flower to the female stigma of another. Plant scientists in… READ MORE
Dead Heading Flowers
I realize this is rather a morbid title for an article about gardening. However if you would like your perennials and annuals to keep flowering for as long as possible, cutting off the flowers and seed heads often means that they will keep blooming for a longer time, or re-bloom… READ MORE
Christmas dinner from my garden
by Dale Odorizzi, Lanark County Master Gardeners It is the time of year to start thinking about Christmas Dinner. When family gathers, we always like to enjoy our garden’s harvest. For our family, the star of the show is a golden roasted turkey. While we have had a lot of… READ MORE
Caring for festive favorites after Christmas
by Dale Odorizzi, Lanark County Master Gardeners The Azalea is a small woody shrub that is covered in beautiful double blooms of red, pink, white or bicolour. If you keep the soil moist and the pot in a room with indirect light and an average temperature of 20C, the blooms… READ MORE
Aloe Vera, the Healing Plant
By Ankaret Dean, Lanark County Master Gardeners ln my opinion every household should have an Aloe Vera plant in the kitchen window, it is probably the easiest house plant to grow, and provides you immediately with an instant soothing remedy for a burn. It is a semi-tropical plant, and is… READ MORE
Growing from seed
by Helen Halpenny, Lanark County Master Gardeners It’s never too early to make plans for your 2015 garden. Already the seed companies have sent catalogues with beautiful pictures and glowing reviews to entice you to buy their regular and newly introduced varieties. Before you order new seeds, get out your… READ MORE
Ferns: Outdoors and In
by Dale Odorizzi, Lanark County Master Gardeners Nothing says a woodland garden better than a stand of beautiful, delicate and graceful ferns. Ferns are plants that produce evergreen or deciduous leaf-like structures called fronds. In our part of the world there are close to 20 species of ferns growing wild… READ MORE
Herb Gardens on your window sill
by Helen Halpenny, Lanark County Master Gardeners The snow may be piled high outside, but starting your garden indoors can happen right now. Come February, the light level begins to increase and a sunny windowsill can be the perfect place to get a head start on the gardening season. There… READ MORE
Assassin from below: Cutworms
by Dale Odorizzi, Master Gardener of Lanark County Have you ever gone out in the morning to admire the Beefsteak or Roma tomato plants that you planted the day before only to find one, two or more plants cut off at the soil line and lying flat on the ground?… READ MORE
Growing raspberries
by Helen Halpenny, Lanark Master Gardeners Fruit and vegetables grown in the home garden and picked at the peak of perfection taste the absolute best. Among the easiest fruits to grow are raspberries. Yes, you need space and good soil but the rewards are great. Prepare the soil well because… READ MORE
Square Foot Gardening
By Dale Odorizzi Do you want to have fresh picked tasty vegetables but have a small lot with no room for a vegetable garden? If so, Square Foot Gardening may be for you. Square foot gardening is easy to do, easy to manage, very adaptable, and it produces high yields… READ MORE
How to grow sweet potatoes locally
by Judy Wall Unlike the potato, which is grown from tubers, sweet potatoes are started from “slips.” To create slips, a sweet potato tuber is planted indoors in March. One tuber can produce several slips. To do so you will need to obtain a sweet potato which has been stored… READ MORE
Bringing your plants indoors
by Dale Odorizzi, Lanark County Master Gardeners It is that time of year again. The days are getting shorter, the nights are long and cold. Many of us put our house plants outside for the summer or have purchased annuals to brighten up our containers. If you want to save… READ MORE
The Fall Flower Garden
by Dale Odorizzi, Lanark County Master Gardeners All summer long, your flower garden has bloomed beautifully. As the days get shorter and cooler, many of our gardens are looking a little shaggy. What is a poor gardener to do? If you want colour in your garden in the fall, you… READ MORE