Calgary Gardening: View my new mini-videos

This week: Pruning Topiary Style Evergreens



Note about Garden Guru Shorts: These tiny videos are a special feature compliments of the Calgary Herald. This week I show you how to trim fashionable little topiaries. A new video will accompany my articles in the Calgary Herald Gardening Section- the topics will vary as I look at everything we need to do in the home garden.

No Guff Needs Your Help

We are just days away from picking our best guff and giving away books to the guff with the most likes.... Have you got garden guff you have been shy to share? Jump into our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/GardenCoachesChat and have a look around. Planting by the moon? Putting down straw to scare off slugs? Let us know your good and bad tricks and let our fans be the judge if it is the best guff or not....

June 2 is the day to beat.

Kids & Worms in the Calgary Garden

So Every spring I need to sort things out: books are assembled for drop-off to fundraisers; the general cobwebs around the house are dusted; the garden is sorted and of course the worms are wrangled. These little guys need to be sorted and sifted and generally manhandled occasionally to separate the worm castings (ie worm poop) from the worms.

I like to sort worms before I plant my pots because it is great to get the castings and mix them with the potting soil before planting. Last year, my grand-daughter Mali came over to help. She loves finding the worms amongst the poop. Notice I am wearing gloves! It is a case of lost and found really and when we find a worm we put it in a bucket to add back into the worm bin. I know other people are able to produce perfectly dry castings but mine are always a bit wet so it takes a bit of elbow grease to sort it all out.

But what could be more fun on a rainy day in that dry spot beneath the overhead balcony?

Calgary Garden Show: all about Soils

Calgary gardeners loved our No Guff soils talk at the Calgary Horticulture Society Spring Garden Show April 2011.

Get a grip on Climate: Veggie Garden talk at Calgary Garden Show

Check out this video

I was so impressed with this Hellman's video I am passing it along: (enjoy)
http://vimeo.com/5477517

High Fashion in the Calgary garden

High fashion. A discussion about why I will remain unfashionable in the garden this spring.

I have been at twenty different garden centers this spring signing books and talking to growers and this morning I glanced at the superstore flyer to confirm - it is universal. Everyone wants us to plant one of the fashionable new black petunias.

In Alberta black flowers + black soil = black hole.

I can't imagine why the black tulips, black pansies and now black petunias are making such inroads. Give me colour- lots of colour - to brighten my garden after a long winter. Black is just not a flower colour I endorse!

Is it just marketing? You decide with your wallets.

PS Call me on CBC radio today - Calgary and Alberta Gardening questions answered.

Live Chat Today on CBC

Okay this is new for me but join in if you happen to be at your desk today at 11:00 AM-noon. This is a chat-chat - as in typed comments and questions answered live- not the same kind of chat I will do Friday on CBC's Alberta@noon when people can phone me in what I call a "real" chat.

Check it out: http://www.cbc.ca/liverightnow/blog-entry/gardening-101.html

Holes new Enjoy Centre

I am so out of date with posts that I am looking at photos from April and realizing I have not mentioned Holes new Enjoy Centre yet. I was toured around by Jim Hole and the site was massive- if you are thinking of checking out picture perfect plants check out the new Hole's Enjoy Centre in St. Albert. It is just north of Edmonton but so close to the ring road I wondered why the directions took us through town and out again?

Everything is automatic - it is not like any old ma and pa operation that's for sure. Here is a picture of the automatic hanging basket operation - a site to behold.

Going Cruisin- and I don't mean for boys

Yahoo- I am taking a group of Garden Enthusiasts on a cruise - sort of- I am just there - not actually running the ship. Calgary Gardeners and everyone else across Canada enthusiastic about getting on the boat check out this link:

6 Weeks a Best Seller

No Guff Vegetable Gardening is in it's sixth week as a best seller in Calgary! We keep getting compliments and a lot of libraries have ordered it so ask at your local library or order a copy for yourself online at www.GardenCoachesChat.com.

Subsidize Organic Food Like Conventional

I love the newsletters I get from Cookstown Greens - an organic gardener we interviewed for No Guff Vegetable Gardening. In his recent newsletter he says:
“Why is organic food so expensive?” My answer is, “You asked the wrong question. You should have asked: Why is conventional food so cheap?” The answer is: For every dollar we spend for “cheap” food, taxes pay another two dollars. This form of “capitalism” is certainly not sustainable.

A picture of field greens here from Cookstown:

Get Your Hands Dirty

Thanks to CTV Edmonton for sending the link to this clip filmed in their studio last week when I was up in Edmonton:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3arHWnDUNk

EDMONTON FIELD TRIP- JOIN ME

It's hard to know if anyone really follows a blog but suddenly I am off to Edmonton so please- if you are in the vicinity and you follow this blog come out and say hi and introduce yourself!

I will be at Audrey's Books on Jasper 6ish today - April 28 and Holes new location on Friday from 3-5 PM and finally at Greenland in Sherwood Park on Saturday from 11:ish AM - I will also give a talk there about my newest book No Guff Vegetable Gardening - at 1 PM April 30th.

If you get bored with the Royal Wedding look for me on TV and listen for me on CKUA. I will be around and about. Hope to meet my Edmonton fans!

Mushrooms in my Garden

Morels are the spring mushroom - fleeting in nature and found in many locations but imagine my surprise when I found one while weeding my garlic bed in Qualicum Beach this week? Growing right beside an ancient built in board-framed bed. I confirmed it's identity (complete with hollow stem) and cooked it for supper with some dried Morels I had bought!

No Guff Mentioned in the Globe & Mail today

From the Globe & Mail Saturday April 16, 2011

“Garden coaches” Steven Biggs and Donna Balzer have written a vegetable-garden how-to book that is fact-based and fun-basted. If you are a new gardener and want to know when, why or what to plant, this is a terrific book, and it’s also a handy reference book for more experienced gardeners. The “he said” and “she said” is very clever; yes, there is more than one answer to any question. Kudos to illustrator Mariko McCrae for making the book even more user-friendly.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/growing-with-my-garden-by-merilyn-simonds/article1986911/

April Showers Bring May Flowers

Perhaps I spoke too soon about April flowers and radish seeding.... Let's hope this heavy snow brings all the moisture we need to push those posies up and out in May. Please May. I only wish I had seeded my spinach. Oh well- maybe Satruday.

Radish Seeded Yesterday

There was a fleeting moment of sun yesterday and I optimistically seeded some new radish outdoors. I am also giving Topsi radish seeds away in my business cards to gardeners who come to my talks (Fish Creek Library tonight) because I want gardeners to remember me and to try something new. This new organically grown hybrid radish seed is supposed to be ready in 20 days from emerging and can be seeded into cold soil - up to a month before our last frost.

My partner and friend Steven Biggs is working at adding Environment Canada's last frost dates to our www.gardencoacheschat.com webpage. That info will help gardeners figure out when a month before their last frost date is and once their soils warm a bit the early seeds can go in the ground. Okay- if you are doing the math you are right- it is not a month but more like 6 weeks before the last frost date here but -heh- what's a few radish seed.

Wow- First Flowers in Bloom in Calgary

What a relief to stroll outside and see a Hepatica in bloom in the neighborhood. This is only unusual because it has been such a cold spring. Hepatica usually blooms by mid-April but we don't usually get this much extreme cold and have this much snow hanging on with more on the way.

Tonight I speak about No Guff Vegetable Gardening at Owl's Nest Bookstore and on Thursday I am at the Fish Creek Library. All good fun. Join in and meet me in person!

No Guff Vegetable Gardening - sample pages

No Guff Vegetable Gardening

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