Submitted Photo
The swallowtail always comes to visit the Maltese Cross in our garden.
I talk to many stressed gardeners at the Windmill Garden Centre during the growing season. Baggies of diseased leaves, photos of trees with die-back, and cedars turning brown are discussed regularly. I am not an expert but common sense tells me these plants will survive better with healthier soil and more water, especially during the hot Medicine Hat summer.
Insects and disease attack plants that are stressed. Poor undernourished soil and inadequate watering stresses your plants, trees and shrubs. Adding compost, peat moss and well-rotted manure keeps the soil rich – healthy humus soil. It helps open heavy clay soil and retain moisture in sandy soil. Bone meal in the soil helps root development.
Deep watering is of utmost importance. Don’t rely on your sprinkler system to water your trees and shrubs, they need more. The sprinkler system doesn’t water deep enough when it is set for 10 minutes every other day. A deep watering once or twice a week, depending on the weather, will encourage long deep root growth in your grass, and a hose or soaker hose system will water two feet under the soil surface to reach tree roots.
Don’t use broad-spectrum insecticide sprays. Flowering plants depend on the many insects that feed on their nectar for pollination, and pollinated plants produce more abundant flowers, fruit and seeds. Insecticides also deplete the insect population on which birds rely. If essential, heavy pest attacks can be controlled using insecticidal soap, BTK, or horticultural oil. But these products can still kill bees, wasps, lady bugs and lacewings, which are beneficial to your garden.
To lose the song of birds, the pollination of bees, and the beauty of butterflies is unimaginable, but it is happening due to human mismanagement of the environment.
Deadheading spent flowers as soon as they wilt keeps them from going to seed and encourages new flowers to bud and bloom. Keep your roses pruned also. If you don’t know how, google it, or come in to the Windmill for a lesson.
Nature is a trying thing to deal with, from the wicked hail storm that stripped many of the trees in our tree lot and smashed all the flowers and their stalks, to the parent crow tearing apart a young robin to feed to its offspring while the robins cluck frantically in the neighbours tall spruce. The damn beautiful intelligent crows.
Dennis just came in to tell me the brutal crow just went back to the nest and grabbed a second screaming baby robin. I am so sad. But that is nature.
Cutting the fins from shark or hacking the tusks from elephants is human’s nature – some humans. We need to take much better care of our environment before we have poisoned all of it with chemicals. So again I say try to do things a more natural way. Feed your soil healthy compost and manure. Visit your garden with a hose so you can smell the roses and inspect the flowers to see what type of insects come to visit!
A reminder that the Medicine Hat Horticulture Society’s Garden Tour is July 14. Come to the Windmill to buy your tickets.
Bev Crawford is the Perennial House Manager at The Windmill Garden Centre and John’s Butterfly House.
