Spring planting

At the end of April, I'm usually much further ahead with the plants that I have started in-house but not this year. Just the same, we have geraniums (many varieties) started from cuttings, Plectranthus or Swedish Ivy, again from cuttings and some Echeveria from plugs. And then there are flats of Jade plants and African Violets that we started in our Horticultural Therapy program at a local Retirement Home.

We started some tomato plants several weeks ago but we keep the temperature in our basement fairly cool and so the plants are taking their sweet time to germinate. I've been thinking about starting another flat of tomatoes and putting it on top of the refrigerator to speed up the propagation.

Typically for our Therapy program, we start tomatoes that the residents may not have seen or tasted before. We've started Black Krim, Cherokee Purple and Yellow Tear Drop varieties in the past. One of the black varieties that we tried in the past was declared by a former farmer to have been the best he had ever tasted. We've also grown purple potatoes and I've offered to make purple mashed potatoes but have had no takers.

Back to plants started in house, I have some Dahlias and Cannas started late but they are beginning to show growth and should be ready to bring out around the May long weekend when all fear of frost is past.

I did overwinter some Agapanthus in containers in the garage and these have been outside on the deck for a few weeks and they are coming along very nicely. They provided a spectacular show last year and I am quite looking forward to them again this year.

If you would like to start plants indoors it is quite easy to do and in future posts I will provide some suggestions as to how to proceed.

Stinging Nettle

A number of years ago, the City decided to naturalize an area behind our house and ever since we have been introduced to weeds (flowers in the wrong space) that we had previously not seen.

I normally work in the garden without gloves and as I was pulling some weeds recently, I pulled a young piece of stinging nettle. I've done this on one occasion previously but it didn't hurt as bad, but this time it was 'Oh Boy' (or some variation of this). I thought if I washed my hands that it would do the trick - no sirree. It still hurt something fierce. So I tried some Tea Tree Oil salve that we have and within a few minutes the stinging started to dissipate. Within a half hour the stinging was gone altogether.



If it had been later in the year, I would have used Jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) as the naturalized area has several stands of it but it is too early for me to be able to locate it. Jewelweed can also be used as a treatment for poison ivy and Mother Nature has done us a favour by having Jewelweed naturalize close to stands of Poison Ivy.

I suppose the moral of the story though is that there are times when you should wear gloves while working in the garden.