Daftar Hotel - Here’s a bold test to help decide when in spring to start a vegetable garden. Sit on the earth on your bare bottom. If it feels warm, it’s time to plant.
Hotel di Semarang That’s a bit of lore from master gardener Elizabeth Stewart. But if modesty prevails, you might want to study a frost chart instead.
It’s a Canadian tradition to wait until the Victoria Day long weekend in May to plant, when the possibility of frost is past. But a rule for central Saskatchewan may not apply to southern Ontario.
In Toronto, the average date for the last frost at Pearson Airport is May 4; at Bloor St. it’s even earlier, April 16. The date has been advancing since the 1990s.
The latest frost — a temperature at or below zero, but not necessarily a killing frost — reported at Bloor St. was on May 2, 1978. The latest frost recorded at Pearson was May 28, 1949.
There’s a he said/she said struggle this time of year in many households across Toronto about when to plant. More so in a surprisingly warm spring, one of the warmest that gardeners remember. Typically, he says, “Wait,” while she says, “The time has come.”
That’s the case with Teresa and Joe Gallippi of Manning St. “Joe says, ‘We plant on Victoria Day,’ ” Teresa says of her husband. She already has a neat row of green onion tops in her otherwise bare vegetable garden. In pots nearby are lemon trees brought from Calabria 25 years ago. She won’t plant beans, tomatoes or any other plants that grow above ground now — she doesn’t want to see her seedlings, raised in pots in a second-floor room, keel over after a chilly night. Mid-May is the earliest.
“He says, ‘Don’t plant (in early May) or you’ll have to do this all over again,’ ” says Teresa. “Last year we had the same argument.”
Pastry chef Melanie Harris, wearing flip-flops and searching for marigolds and globe thistle at Fiesta Gardens on Christie St., has had a similar dispute with her boyfriend. “He says, ‘Wait, it’s too early.’ I’m sensible, but impatient.”
And Diane Wood, a kitchen and bathroom designer, is engaged in a similar debate. “I’ve been having this argument, but with myself. Is it too early?
“It’s easy to get seduced — it’s hard not to do it now.”
Victoria Day, which falls on May 24 this year, is not the true benchmark, says Elizabeth Stewart, one of 110 Toronto master gardeners who are trained in horticulture and volunteer their time giving free advice to local gardeners. (They can be reached through www.torontomastergardeners.ca or by phone at 416-397-1345.)
“You can put cold weather vegetables in the ground now,” says Stewart, who has an exquisite backyard garden on Richmond St. W. Cool weather plants include peas, lettuce, kale, radishes and spinach. Hold off on vegetables associated with Mediterranean climates, including tomatoes, beans, peppers and eggplant, until the weather is warmer.
She points to her silvery lavender, which is beginning to green — six weeks early. “It’s a very good indication of what an unusual year it is.”
Experienced gardeners develop their own rules of thumb.
In Scarborough, Sarah Allen, a native of British Guiana (now Guyana), says she has never paid much attention to the Victoria Day maxim. Her garden is a showplace with a rose garden, topiary, jasmine, oleander in pots and a backyard vegetable patch. “I have everything in by May 24,” she says. “I find it too late.” This weekend she’ll plant mesclun, cilantro, celery and green onions. Peppers and eggplants growing in pots in the kitchen will be in the garden by the end of the month.
Mostly, Allen, who is 66, observes nature’s progress in deciding when to plant. “I watch robins and other birds when they start to collect little things to make their nests. I watch the tips of gingko trees start to get yellow. You really look at nature; if you follow it year after year, it can tell you exactly how to do it.”
Food writer Naomi Duguid won’t put tomatoes in her garden until May 10 or so. “It feels important to be after the first week in May — otherwise it seems presumptuous,” says Duguid, who was raised in Ottawa, where the May 24 rule applied. This spring is warm, she agrees, and magnolias are about two weeks early in blooming. “But I don’t trust there isn’t going to be a snap back.”
Basil, she adds, is always a latecomer. Like an overly protective parents, she says she coddles the tender leaf herb, which she doesn’t plant in the garden until June.
Duguid uses another seasonal chore as her yardstick — taxes. “I just put my taxes in. When they’re done, then we can think about the garden. It’s a sign we can look outward.”
On Manitoulin Island, market gardener Heather Thoma tends her Loon Song Garden on organic and biodynamic principles, which emphasize the interrelatedness of plants, animals, the soil and so on. One element of biodynamic gardening is to plant according to signs of the Zodiac. When the sun is in Aquarius, which is a water sign, it’s a good time to plant leafy vegetables such as spinach and lettuce. Root vegetables are related to Earth signs.
She’s already started planting a few cool weather plants. “Things can go in now and survive,” she says. “But I find if I plant spinach now and more in two weeks, it doesn’t lead to an earlier harvest. It will all be harvested at the same time.”
So it may be best to remember than April can be cruelly unpredictable. Paul Zammit, director of horticulture at the Toronto Botanical Garden, is mindful that of the fact that the temperature just eight days ago was about 2 C. At his home garden in Bloor West Village, he is cleaning his beds, spreading compost and sowing mesclun in a container. He’s moving plants in and out of the garage for protection at night. “I still advise caution,” he says. “The weather can change.”
