gabriola garden

2011-08-30T03:39:00.000-07:00

Coral Sunset Peonies and William Shakespeare Roses

Sara has been doing quite a bit of landscaping and gardening at another property here on the Gulf Islands. She prepared the soil with fertilizer and mulch and built stone walls to contain her flower beds. She planted all her favorite plants and worked very hard conceptualizing, as well as carrying out her plans. Many a wheelbarrow full of new soil, compost, and broken rocks was pushed up the inclines in order to replenish some already existing beds and some new ones.

Her peonies were magnificent and many other blooms graced the sizable property throughout the spring and summer. The different kinds of peonies she favors are Coral Sunset, Bowl of Beauty, and Do Tell, as well as one called Madame Emile Debatene. There is a Gertrude Jekyll rose, and a brilliant red camellia, that looks somewhat like a rose. She also took some William Shakespeare roses from her Gabriola garden to her landscaping project.

Her future projects include the installation of a waterfalls and fully utilizing an irrigation pond to save on water usage. There is a fully automated underground irrigation system and many a flagstone pathway was created by Sara in order to save the wear and tear on the lawn.

Please enjoy the pictures of her "other" garden, and know that many hours of hard work have gone into creating this little paradise away from the urban rush. As is the case with our home garden, Sara used Advanced Nutrients Iguana Juice Grow and Bloom, as well as Bud Factor X and Rhino Skin to ensure vigorous, healthy plants, resistant to pests and diseases.

2011-08-01T03:22:00.000-07:00

Thriving Zucchini, Beautiful Roses, Economical Hydroponics

Those of you who've read this blog before know that Sara does the flower gardening and I attempt to grow vegetables in the back of the house. It's not often that I have a success story to boast about, but this year my two zucchini plants have taken off like a comet shooting across the sky.

My cherry tomatoes are coming along, but I don't seem to have enough buds on the heirloom and beefsteak varieties. I think a treatment with Nirvana is in order. Nirvana is an all-organic foliar spray and that encourages your plants to produce more and more buds.

Some of you know that we grow our flowers and vegetables organically, usually fed by 100% organic Iguana Juice, made by Advanced Nutrients. There is Grow for the vegetative phase of all the plants, and Bloom for the flowering phase. I have to be careful not to allow the Bloom to fertilize the lettuce next to the tomato plants, otherwise the former will go to seed and taste bitter.

Sara, in the meantime, has helped produce a bouquet of incredible roses of different varieties, a bunch of glorious daisies, exquisite phlox of different colors, as well as black-eyed-susans, clematus, and some other flowers whose names I have forgotten.

The other day I received a confirmation of our decision to grow everything organically. I went into a Chinese grocery store and saw that while the regular bananas were all green and unappealing, the organic kind were perfectly formed and yellow and very attractive indeed. I opted for the organic kind, and even though I had to pay a bit more, when I tasted one the difference was heaven and earth. Non-organic bananas will never touch my lips again!

Even if you grow your vegetables or fruits hydroponically, you can still grow them organically if you use quality fertilizers like Iguana Juice and quality additives, such as Nirvana.

Speaking of hydroponics, such a setup doesn't have to cost a fortune. The current issue of Rosebud Magazine (the one with Justin Timberlake on the cover) has an excellent article written by hydroponic guru Erik Biksa, entitled Eco Growing Systems, Simplicity That Can Feed Our Planet. It describes in detail a new hydroponics system on the market that is affordable and simple to operate. Look for it in quality bookstores and newsstands. Better yet, pick one up at your favorite hydroponics store.

I leave you with a thought from the great Persian poet, Rumi:
"Observe the wonders as they occur around you.
Don't claim them. Feel the artistry
moving through, and be silent."

2011-06-16T06:54:00.000-07:00

Back to the Garden!

Time to stop and smell the roses--literally. Time to slow-down. Hockey is a fast and furious and let's face it, violent game, and violence begat violence. It's a biblical truth and we cannot get away from it. Rather, let's look at how we raise our children. Are we teaching them enough of the difference between right and wrong?

The young people in the photographs of the riot on Facebook have somehow missed those parental lessons. Some of them seemed to relish the violence, posing in front of burning police cars and one guy even urinated at the riot squad. Sure, the rioters were fuelled by a lot of alcohol consumed, but a lack of ethics also played a role in the events.

It was only a hockey game folks. Someone's FB status said it well--if you're going to riot, at least do it for a worthy cause. Syria, Iran, Libya--the people in those places have some justification for being angry. The Stanley Cup is only an ornament.

2011-05-18T07:27:00.000-07:00

Our Spring Garden Gets Some Sun!

After taking a beating from the cold temperatures and torrential rain (not to mention the occasional pea-sized hail), finally Sara's spring garden is getting some well deserved sunshine!

With major floods in Manitoba and wildfires in Alberta destroying entire towns, we have nothing to really complain about here on Canada's West Coast.

Sara's tulips have grown to gigantic size since the last set of pictures, and we always attribute such large plants and flowers to using 100% organic Iguana Juice, both Grow and Bloom.

I noticed a rosebud infested with a parasite, so we'll have to do some spraying with Bud Factor X on the weekend.

The heart-shaped tiny pink flowers that grow in a string (Sara's away, so I can't ask her its name) are truly precious and add a great deal to the ambience of the garden.

When Sara returns at the end of the month, it will be time to plant our vegetable garden! Stay tuned!

2011-05-03T13:37:00.000-07:00

Tulips Love Organic Nutrients

Well, we have four more years of Harper, but at least the Green Party got a seat in Parliament, so the interests of gardeners everywhere will be voiced frequently, we hope. Spring is my favorite time of year, when the life force of Nature surges forth in every bud and bloom.

I also have a fondness for Jack Layton and I am glad that he did really, really well in the election. I am tired of shouldering the costs of social programs while huge corporations are not only given tax reducti0ns but in many cases, subsidies as well.

The crocuses are gone, but some beautiful daffodils are still in bloom and the newcomers, the exquisite tulip varieties are bursting forth everywhere. At one time, these flowers were worth their weight in gold! During the tulip mania in 17th century Europe, a single bulb would fetch as much as a tradesman made in ten years of hard work. The bubble burst, and prices plummeted.

Some blue hyacinths still remain in Sara's garden and some different perennial flowers are beginning to make their appearance. The roses have all sprouted fresh leaves and the poppies are going through their vegetative growth. Everything seems to be a month behind last year, when we had a very warm spring.

We continue to feed our plants 100% organic Iguana Juice, as well as some supplements, such as Humic Acid and Fulvic Acid. These ingredients create a very fertile soil which will guarantee a bountiful supply of flowers, as well as vegetables in the back of the house.

I hope you enjoy my photographs of Sara's magnificent blooms and that you'll come back to this blog again and again to check out the progress of our organic Gabriola Garden.

2011-04-18T02:35:00.000-07:00

Daffodils and Hyacinths Grown Organically

Our Spring garden is late this year! The bright yellow daffodils are here now (last year they were here a month ago), but the tulips have not opened yet. Down south in Washington State they are already having tulip festivals, but up here in British Columbia, Winter's grip is slower to loosen.

Canada is in the middle of a federal election campaign and given the hyperbole of the opposing party leaders, there is enough fertilizer in the air to feed everybody's garden. Then the spin doctors take over and the b.s. reaches unbearable proportions!

Yesterday, on a sunny Sunday afternoon, I used our wheelbarrow to transport several large containers of 100% Organic Iguna Juice mixture to fertilize different parts of Sara's garden. In the next few days I will also administer Humic and Fulvic Acid, as well as Bud Factor X and Rhino Skin, in order to immunize our plants against the onslaught of insects and pathogens, that are sure to arrive, along with the warmer weather.

Many people forget that when the buds start bursting in the Spring plants require feeding, not just water. Just think of how much energy is required to produce a beautiful bloom! Without a good meal, plants will still flower, but the yield will be poor and disappointing.

We use Advanced Nutrients products in our garden to ensure bigger yields and happy plants! :-)

2011-03-28T16:48:00.000-07:00

Crocuses Herald Arrival of Spring!

These magnificent flowers emerge from the soil, even if the temperatures hadn't warmed up as much as the arrival of Spring would indicate. Sara and I were out in the garden on Sunday, administering nourishment to the soil (and the perennials that are just coming to life). The crocuses will be followed shortly by the much taller daffodils and then in April it's time for the tulips to bloom! Spring is my favorite time of year, because even the rose leaves have started budding and some of the blossom trees have exploded with white and pink petals!

How does one replenish the soil at this time of year? We mix the correct amount of Iguana Juice Grow or Iguana Juice Bloom into large containers of water and manually pour the mixture into the different sections of the garden. The plants already in bloom will require Iguana Bloom, and the plants that still have to go through their vegetative cycle will be given Iguana Grow. Iguana Juice is the 100% organic fertilizer from Advanced Nutrients that Sara and I have been using in both our flower garden and our vegetable garden for years!

We also give Humic Acid and Fulvic Acid to our plants. These supplements replenish the soil and provide extra nutrients to the plants in a synergistic fashion. Each product helps the other to perform better. Both of these are derived from Leonardite, a rich dark brown or black organic layer found on top of coal beds. Humic acid takes its name from humus, the rich, black soil that our grandparents grew their food in many years ago. Modern agricultural technology is helping to recreate the fertile soils of yesteryear, before the overuse of chemical fertilizers have depleted the natural nutrition content of good growing soil.

We also use Bud Factor X to immunize our plants against pests and pathogens. The roses really need this treatment, because black spot has attacked them in the past. Hopefully, by using Bud Factor X and Rhino Skin, both from Advanced Nutrients, we'll be able to prevent such infestations from happening.

It's just the beginning of another exciting gardening season and Sara is already down on her knees pulling weeds and fixing up the flagstone paths that protect the lawn areas of our garden. She needed to put flagstone down in order to allow the wheelbarrow to deliver bark mulch and manure, without damaging the lawn.

We get a good workout just taking care of our garden and save a lot of money in fitness club membership fees! :-)

2011-02-07T08:54:00.000-08:00

Great Video on a Greenhouse Ebb and Flow Hydroponic System

Greenhouse that is functioning as an Ebb and Flow Hydroponic Garden. vegetables include Tomatoes, Broccoli, Beans, Squash, Lettuce, Swiss Chard, Basil…

Sara is going to start preparing her garden for spring, probably next month! Stay tuned!

Tim :-)

2010-09-01T11:37:00.000-07:00

Phlox, Pokemon, and Humic Acid

Looking back on the summer of gardening, I am not surprised that I haven't had the chance to blog since June. It's been a sunny, hot summer and all our efforts were spent making sure that the various garden beds were irrigated properly. Sara also did quite a bit of planting and garden design at another property of ours, more on that next spring when the garden will have spread to fill the boundaries.

There was our vacation in Hawaii, which occupied a lot of our time. Hedgehog is still very much into Pokemon, and there happened to be the World Championships of both the Video and the Trading Card Games, in Kona on the Big Island, so we threw caution to the wind and decided to fly off to Paradise.

It was a truly memorable event and the Resort it was held in was a magnificent location. The guests were ferried back and forth from the main lobby and parking by small boats or a monorail, both free of charge. Sunny lagoons with palm trees swaying in the ocean breezes, crystal clear pools and waterfalls, exotic birds and oriental as well as native Hawaiian art, not to mention the luau with robust native dancers and the traditional roast pig--we could not have picked a better place to spend ten days.

Luckily, a young neighbor volunteered to keep watering our gardens and the soaker hoses that Sara laid down really helped the efficient carrying out of this task. Nothing like a freshly plucked cherry tomato or strawberry from one's own garden! Not to mention cucumber, lettuce, squash, and snowpeas!

We made sure that our plants received an adequate supply of Organic Iguana Juice Bloom, as well as Humic and Fulvic Acids, before we left. Watering is great, but you also have to feed your plants. Can you imagine trying to raise your children just on water?

2010-06-06T17:02:00.000-07:00

Organic Gardening
Results in Bigger Blooms

Our Delphiniums have reached eight-feet in height, and they’re still growing! They’ve never been so tall, or so full where the blooms are concerned. Several years of organic gardening have helped to establish an extremely fertile soil base in Sara’s flower beds, and using Iguana Juice Grow and Bloom every Spring also adds to the nutritious mix.

Our Pink Roses developed a touch of Black Spot on account of the rainy weather we’ve been having, but they still produced the biggest cluster of flowers ever! I must confess, we ran out of Scorpion Juice, thus we didn’t augment the plant’s resistance to pests and pathogens, like we normally do. I just ordered some Bud Factor X, as well as Rhino Skin, from Advanced Nutrients, in order to avoid the chance of infestations in the future.

Another pair of AN products that we’ll try is Humic Acid and Fulvic Acid. These two organic super additives will help ensure that our growing soil will stay fertile and productive for many more years to come. Derived from an organic layer, called Leonardite, mined from the top of coal fields, Humic and Fulvic Acids have magical powers associated with them. Just check out the YouTube videos praising their attributes!

Hedgehog and Jim are both upset about the British Petroleum oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. They’re writing letters to politicians and the media, asking Canadians to rush to the aid of the victims, both human and animal. Hedgehog was especially happy to hear on the news that the Canadian government is sending scientists to the Gulf to help the BP salvage team with the clean up operation.

We hope the Poppy thieves will stay away from Sara’s garden this year (trying to get high on the pods of backyard variety poppies is like smoking hemp for kicks—it just doesn’t work!). The Blue Girl rose offered us a perfect bloom again this year, and my Mother is looking down from the great beyond with a smile of her face, seeing her favourite Yellow Rose producing such lovely blooms with a subtle fragrance. A more powerful fragrance can be had by bringing your nose close to the Peony flower, from a late blooming variety that Sara especially loves.

Sara takes the art of organic gardening to the next level. She composts all her kitchen parings in the Fall and Winter, so by the Spring she can put a layer of rich composted soil on top of her flower beds to rejuvenate their ability to produce bigger yields. She also covered her garden with a layer of fallen leaves at the end of last Summer, and that organic mulch has served her organic garden well. Augmented by the addition of her base nutrients, Iguana Grow and Bloom, she is instrumental in creating the best organic growing environment for her plants, resulting in the outstanding blooms you see in these photographs.

2010-05-07T06:16:00.001-07:00

Tree Peonies
by Cindy Haynes, Department of Horticulture, University of Iowa

Few plants are revered like tree peonies. The Chinese tree peony is the national flower of China and was once grown exclusively by the emperor. For centuries the blossoms of tree peonies have been called luminescent, silky, exotic, exquisite, and magnificent. The accolades continue today.
What is a tree peony?

Tree peonies (Paeonia suffruiticosa) are actually shrubs, not trees. They produce woody stems and do not die back to the ground like herbaceous peonies. They are slow growing but long lived. Some specimens in China are thought to be more than 200 years old. Plants eventually grow to 3 to 5 feet tall, but they may take decades to do so.

Tree peonies have larger flowers than herbaceous peonies and are available in a wider range of colors. Yellow, purple, maroon, and green are a few colors commonly available in tree peonies but rarely seen in herbaceous peonies. Both single and double flower forms are common in both types of peonies. Many varieties of tree peonies have fragrant flowers or flowers with contrasting centers, adding to their appeal. Tree peonies bloom a couple of weeks earlier than herbaceous peonies. In fact, they should be blooming soon if they are not already in bloom.

Caring for Tree Peonies

Because a tree peony can last longer than many of the gardeners who plant them, it is important that they are sited well. Plants prefer rich, moist, well-drained soils in partial or dappled shade. Plants bloom best in sunny sites, but flowers last longer in shady sites. Although tree peonies are hardy to zone 4, they do require some protection from our winter winds. Sites with eastern exposures or close to buildings are ideal.

Tim: Tree peonies are Sara's favorite flowers. You can't imagine the richness of the scent of each bloom, unless you've had your nose near one at one time or another.

Another important aspect of caring for your tree peonies is to feed them the best plant nutrient available, which for us is Iguana Juice Bloom by Advanced Nutrients.

2010-03-07T14:29:00.000-08:00

Post-Olympic BC Celebrates With Flowers

That truly memorable hockey game earned well-deserved gold, and the closing ceremonies spoofed the clichés of our identity (dancing mounties, floating moose, and beavers galore!). Now we're all feeling a collective letdown. Let's face it, we're not going to have a party of this size anytime soon!

Sara and the kids took the ferry and then bussed it as close to downtown Vancouver as transit would allow. They made it to the torch, but drew the line at standing in line for the pavilions. The way Hedgehog put it, "it was bad enough to stand in line for forty-five minutes for hot dogs, but there were no toilets and when we found a friendly restaurant washroom, we had to stand in line for that too!" But when they returned, the family vehicle was festooned with a red maple leaf flag!

Sara's garden decided to bloom early this year, so the crocuses, hyacinths, and daffodils have all sprung forth, with tulips not far behind. Sara used Humic and Fulvic Acid to prime the soil, before applying our 100% organic fertilizer of choice, Iguana Juice. Grow was applied last month, while this month it's Bloom that the garden requires.

The pale pink cherry blossoms are in full bloom, while the darker pink ones are soon to follow. Pink cherry blossoms usually bloom in April, not like this, a month early! The weather report is making noises about snow flurries, but this weekend Sara had the winter tires taken off the family van!

The early spring of 2010 will be remembered not only for the Olympics but for the magnificent flowers that bloomed so early to celebrate Canada's winning the most gold medals at any Winter Olympics in history!

2010-02-18T16:38:00.000-08:00

Crocuses Thrive on Organic Nutrients!

We're having brilliant sunshine to celebrate the Olympics and Sara's robust crocuses are blooming! The sun has the warmth of Spring and I hear that the cherry trees are in blossom in Victoria! Oh, glorious West Coast, why would anyone want to live in Ontario?

Busy watching and wishing for more Canadian Gold, so this blog will be the shortest ever. In the meantime, please watch some great videos at vanhydro's channel on YouTube!

2009-12-12T12:17:00.000-08:00

Putting Our Organic Garden to Bed

Sara just put up our Christmas lights yesterday, after putting the garden to bed. She mulched all the beds with shredded autumn leaves. This will prevent moisture loss, as well as act as a buffer against the extreme cold temperatures that we’re starting to experience. If you put some organic, composted soil on top of the leaves, you can actually precipitate composting of the layer underneath.

In the spring, Sara will have to remember to add an organic nutrient rich in Nitrogen (such as our favourite, Iguana Juice Grow) in order to replenish the Nitrogen that the leaves might leech from the soil in their decomposition process.

In previous years, Sara used to put a layer of composted horse manure over the entire garden, but that was in the days when Hedgehog was taking horseback riding lessons, and Sara was invited by the owner of the stables to take as much composted horse manure as she might need.

As we’re preparing ourselves for Christmas, I couldn’t help but to revisit my pictures of the last hurrah of Sara’s flower garden, the blossoms of late summer, early fall. The lovely fairie roses were in full bloom then, along with the phlox and the black eyed susans. Our gentle male cat, Patches, loved to hang out in the courtyard and the Christmas cactus, now in full bloom was just starting to bud at the time.

We wish everyone who reads this blog the warm glow of Christmas and New Year’s, or whatever holiday they are celebrating. We like to stick close to home and the privacy of our family circle. Enjoy!

2009-08-04T15:14:00.000-07:00

A heatwave can be tough on your garden

The heat wave just broke today, but I see on The Weather Network that it’s due to come back the middle of August. Most of July was like an oven around here, and needless to say, Sara’s garden suffered. Not to mention my vegetables, which needed constant watering or else they drooped and were very unhappy.

The catmint hung in there for a while, but eventually it dried up. Some of the roses fought heroically, but eventually they succumbed to the 30 plus Celsius heat. Sara trailed a hose into the middle of her flower garden and kept the water flowing at half strength, but even that didn’t save all of the plants.

The ones that did survive, however, thrived. The golden lilies grew over seven feet tall (“What do you have here, a lily tree?” quipped one of our neighbours) and one of the red rose bushes outdid itself in delivering not only visually beautiful, but fragrant blooms as well. The margaretas or daisies were prolific for the longest time, and the butterfly bush flowered, dried up, and is now flowering again.

Sara took the kids camping in the middle of the heat wave, in addition to visiting many of the region’s waterparks with them. I stayed cooking in my basement home office with three fans aimed in my direction and dreamt of buying an air conditioner.

I had to spray some plants with Piranha, since the constant watering created a fertile ground for mold and mildew. Spraying them with beneficial fungi helps to counteract the damage from the harmful ones and actually strengthens the plant’s immunity system. I usually spray with Scorpion Juice as a preventative, but this time the infestation was so intense that it called for stronger measures.

We’re feeding our tomatoes and blooms with Iguana Juice Bloom, in order to give them just the right ratio of Potassium and Phosphorus (not too much Phosphorus). Once the plants go into their bloom phase, giving them Iguana Juice Grow would be a mistake, because they would get too much Nitrogen, which would only encourage lush foliage with very few flowers.

We look forward to harvesting some prize-winning zucchini and squash, crisp snow peas, our usual green beans and lettuce, as well as some giant tomatoes with the succulent goodness of home-grown produce, fresh off the vine.

2009-06-03T13:51:00.000-07:00

Organic Nutrients for Bigger Flowers

God save us from uneducated flower thieves! Last summer, we woke up one day to find that someone had cut the seed pods off of all our red poppy plants. Obviously, someone who does not know that the red poppies that are legal to grow in our gardens are only a distant cousin of the opium poppies that grow in countries like Turkey and Afghanistan, and have no hallucinatory properties whatsoever.

Well, our perennial poppy plants somehow survived this onslaught, and once again we have beautiful, huge, red poppies growing in our garden. But on closer inspection, I noticed that three or four of the buds (not the seed pods, but the buds before the flowers had a chanced to open!) were carefully cut and removed. Now this shows even more ignorance. By cutting the buds, all they did was deprive us and the neighborhood of three or four additional flowers. Good luck trying to get high on these buds!

People who don’t know anything about horticulture, should stay out of gardens, especially our garden! Sara worked really hard to create a beautiful space where the heavenly scent of lilacs mingles with the magnificence of flowers in bloom.

The tulips have said goodbye, while the catmint, forget-me-nots, and lilacs are just coming into their own. In fact, the forget-me-nots have taken over a whole section of Sara’s garden, having started with only a few plants some years back.

My vegetables are getting started. The snow peas are coming up along the netting on the fence, and lettuce, sorel, spinach, and broccoli are thriving. In fact, the sorel is as tall as I am and even though it’s in bloom, the leaves are still as tasty as ever. No bitterness there. I recall my mother making sorel puree when I was a youngster. She always added a spoonful of sugar. I prefer them raw, with a sprinkle of honey on them, to complement the sour taste.

Hedgehog is a Wii Fit fanatic and she prefers the coolness of our basement rec room to the heat of the sun midday. She beat the hula hoop record by twisting her pelvis over 800 times in energetic succession. The next day she groaned a bit from sore muscles but now she’s back at it again. Jim prefers the Nintendo DS but he also rides his bike a lot and is thinking of getting a newspaper delivery job in the fall.

Our supply of Iguana Juice is getting low, so I must order some more from Advanced Nutrients. I’ll add some Humic Acid and Fulvic Acid to the order, in order to perpetuate the dark, humus-like soil that Sara manages to create for her flower beds each year, using organic fertilizer and composted horse manure.

2009-04-21T18:15:00.000-07:00

Organic Nutrients Produce Bigger Yields

Forget-me-nots galore! Huge daffodils soaking up the sun! Rich hued tulips speak of things to come!

Sara’s garden is coming into its own, and the world’s best organic nutrient is boosting the size of her blooms! Spring is the most magic of seasons, when the earth rejuvenates itself and covers all our gardens with bright, colorful flowers that gladden our spirits!

She soaked the humus-like soil with Advanced Nutrients Organic Iguana Juice, and her plants burst forth with new energy! They love the pure ingredients in this fish-based fertilizer. Her friends always ask as to how her blooms grow so big!

I am very enthusiastic about it, but I’ll let my pictures speak for me. We look forward to celebrating Earth Day tomorrow with Hedgehog and Jim, as Sara cooks a stir fry of organic vegetables, seasoned with the herbs grown in the Aero-Garden that I bought her for Christmas.

Stay tuned for the pictures of these herbs and the story of how they grew in their hydroponics setting, as if by magic. You’ll have to wait for my next posting for that one.

2009-04-03T16:56:00.000-07:00

Advanced Nutrients Iguana Juice for Bigger Flowers

Sara always prepares her flower beds for spring by putting down a layer of rich, black compost, as well as treating the soil with Iguana Juice Grow, the 100% organic fertilizer from Advanced Nutrients. This product adds so much zing to our garden, that our neighbors are constantly asking how did your flowers grow so big?

Sara and I have been using Iguana Juice, both Grow and Bloom, for a number of years now and are always amazed as to not just the size, but the quality of flowers that it helps nature to deliver. In addition to the base—made from fish caught in the pristine waters of the North Pacific Ocean—Iguana Juice contains:

 Alfalfa Extract

 Earthworm Castings

 Kelp Meal

 Krill Extract

 Volcanic Ash

 Yucca Extrac

This is the kind of diet that both Sara’s flowers and my vegetables love to absorb and turn into lush vegetation and the biggest flowers we’ve seen anywhere. Included in the pictures of this year’s crocuses is one of last year’s red poppies, which were saucer-sized and the envy of the neighborhood.

Even though Advanced Nutrients says that their fertilizers are ideal for hydroponics growing, soil-growers like us also appreciate the quality of all their products and the bigger yields that result in using them!

2009-01-31T09:35:00.000-08:00

Hydroponics Rocks!

Believe it or not, I'm making some headway with hydroponics. I've got some seeds germinated and I decided to set up a DWC (Deep Water Culture) grow, under one set of LED lights! I'll report on how my vegetables are doing, but first watch this awesome video:

If this got you excited about growing using hydroponics, you owe it to yourself to check out the following link!

2009-01-05T15:11:00.000-08:00

Hydroponics needs power--outdoor garden sleeps under snow

Well, so much for my hydroponics experiment! We had a power outage, and since I didn’t have a backup power source, my seedlings perished. We didn’t have any running water, either, since the pipes froze up. We had quite a Christmas—oh, it was white alright, but too white! You can see in the attached pictures that Sara’s garden was covered knee-deep in snow!

No lights, no heat, no water. We had to melt snow over a propane stove in order to get drinking water. Driving to the store was out of the question.

Perhaps it was a good thing. It made us slow down, spend some quality times together reading by flashlight and candlelight. No TV, no computers. And now we have two weeks of constant rain to look forward to, which will melt all the snow and flood everything. Bring out the rubber boots!

I guess I have to add “small generator” to my list of essentials for starting a hydroponics garden. It was so cold indoors, that we could see our breath. No wonder the tender young plants couldn’t survive.

Temperature is another consideration when starting an indoor garden. I bought two Italian style radiator heaters that work with oil heated by electricity. For a small grow space, it would have been enough, if we had a constant supply of power.

Another factor you have to take into account with hydroponics is the pH balance of your nutrient solution. But I discovered on some of the grow forums that Advanced Nutrients has come out with a revolutionary new Grow System called pH—PPM Perfect Technology, which makes it unnecessary to take pH or PPM (parts per million) readings.

The way it works is that their nutrients are covered with a proprietary coating that is attractive to the roots and root hairs. They just gobble up the stuff, regardless of the pH of the nutrient solution. This method compresses the window of absorption from 4.5 on the acidic side and 8.5 on the alkaline side, closer to the 5.6 to 6.3 pH that has been prescribed for AN nutrients in the past.

I am propagating some more vegetables seeds and will give hydroponics another try. And I am seriously looking around for a second-hand generator. To learn more about hydroponics, you will want to check out http://www.advancednutrients.com/freereport/ or some hydroponics blogs with great content that I stumbled across, such as http://avocado99.wordpress.com. You should also look at some videos like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZugTuJNFURM. I might switch over to a DWC system (deep water culture) and go back to organic nutrients. I haven’t decided yet.

2008-12-10T17:03:00.000-08:00

Organics vs. Synthetics--Hydroponics is Different!

After spending some time on the phone with the Advanced Nutrients technical advisor, I realized that my choice of hydroponic system more or less precludes my using organic nutrients. Rockwool is not the choice medium for organic nutes, and drip irrigation sometimes involves a clog problem with organics.

But he convinced me that when plants absorb nutrients, they don’t know the difference between organics and synthetics. They absorb the basic elements from both. Besides, the synthetics made by Advanced Nutrients contain pharmaceutical grade ingredients, which are the finest available. So the tech advisor suggested that I use Sensi Grow for vegetative growth, and if I grow anything requiring flowering and fruiting, then I should switch to Sensi Bloom for the bloom phase.

Also, if I want to grow Lettuce and Swiss Chard and Basil, I should grow them together, since they get harvested before they go to flower and seed. In fact, if they are allowed to go to seed, they usually become too bitter to eat. So for my first cycle, I’ll grow these three vegetables and will only use Sensi Grow, along with the beneficial fungi and bacteria, as well as Humic and Fulvic Acid, to provide some organic content.

Then after I harvest these, I’ll grow Tomatoes, Cucumbers, and Peppers for my next cycle. For these vegetables, I will switch to Sensi Bloom for flowering. In order to grow Lettuce and Tomato simultaneously, I will need two systems with separate reservoirs and nutrient solutions.

I’m learning. But in answer to a comment on my previous posting, I am using LED lights specifically designed for horticulture. I read about a university research project, where LED lights actually performed better than HID lights, given the same criteria and identical pepper plants. If you don’t believe me, Google it!

2008-11-21T15:32:00.000-08:00

Easy Hydroponics--Piranha, Tarantula, Voodoo Juice

As you know, I am in the process of setting up my very own hydroponic indoor garden. I did extensive research and chose a Drip Irrigation System with Rockwool as my medium. Also, to save electricity, I invested some of my development money in buying LED Grow Lights, which use a lot less power than High Intensity Discharge (HID) grow lights. They're also a lot cooler, requiring less ventilation.

One of the very first things I learned was that healthy roots practically guarantee a bountiful harvest. So in addition to my basic fertilizer, I am mixing beneficial fungi and bacteria into my hydroponic reservoir, in order to ensure a large root mass and better nutrient absorption. The following video will explain:

For further information, please click here.

2008-10-26T17:44:00.000-07:00

All Along the Watchtower, Starting Home Hydroponics

Took the ferry to Vancouver just to see an old favorite of mine (and many others, it seems) – the aging legend, Bob Dylan. When I told Hedgehog that I was going to get tickets to his concert, she burst out laughing. It seems that nothing short of Miley Cyrus or Hilary Duff impresses her in the area of music. “Why would you wanna go see him? He sounds like an old man…” Sara and Jim weren’t interested, either.

Dylan does sound like an “old man” these days. Perhaps it’s because he has passed his 67^th birthday. But Friday night at GM Place his voice was just as powerful and commanding as in his younger years, when he played concert halls in London and New York solo, singing and playing an acoustic guitar.

He played the guitar only during the first song this time. Then he took his position at an old keyboard and stayed there for the rest of the concert. A few times he wandered around the stage and he even did a few songs crooner style, with outstretched arms.

Dylan re-works his old tunes and sometimes adds a totally new melody line, along with a new rhythm structure. Some of his stuff Friday night had a rockin’ the cradle feel to it, with a steady, back and forth beat that comforted the nearly sold-out audience. Some even flicked on their cigarette lighters, seventies style.

But during “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” he was back in his old groove. When he got to the line “…even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked,” the crowd erupted in cheers. “Propaganda, all is phony…flesh-coloured Christs that glow in the dark, it’s easy to see, without looking too far—not much is really sacred.”

The Master of the Apropos Line, Bobby Zimmerman of Hibbing, Minnesota has matured into an elderly gentleman of dignity, who can out rock many who are decades his junior. “He not busy being born, is busy dying.” By re-working his old songs constantly, even the lyrics sometimes, he ensures that he is busy being born continuously, and surprising us all in the process. He earned his standing ovation with two encores.

It was a very satisfying concert and a reassurance that a super-talent like Dylan still walks the Earth with us and helps light our metaphoric night of economic despair and panic.

Sara’s flower garden and my vegetable patch are slowly turning yellow and some major trimming is in order to prepare the beds for winter. A few cherry tomatoes are still ripening on the upside-down tomato plants, and once in a while I pop one into my mouth, straight off the vine. The burst of incredible flavour again reminds me why we grow our own vegetables.

I’ve set up a hydroponic experiment in the basement, where we’ll continue to grow some simple vegetables and fruits throughout the winter. I’ll be using Iguana Juice Grow and Bloom to continue producing 100% organic produce, since the family’s health warrants it.

More about home hydroponics in future blogs.

2008-09-29T15:09:00.000-07:00

I started posting some gardening articles on the web

In the spirit of spreading the gospel of expert nourishment for plants, I started posting some articles on other sites on the web. They were kind enough to classify me as an expert and sent me this certification:

Check out what I wrote. I'm also taking some final photos of Sara's garden and harvesting the last of my vegetables, before the frost hits. I know I'm crazy, talking about frost, when the afternoon temperature today will probably hit 20 degrees Celsius!

But being a realist (sometimes) I am painfully aware of what's to come. Hedgehog and Jim are still running around in shorts and T-shirts, but I reach for my fleece vest after the sun goes down. At sunrise, I've been known to go out to greet our celestial furnace and shiver as I marvel at the bright pink sky!

Look for some new pictures in the next week or so! Until then, I'll leave you with one word of advice. Whether you're growing in soil or in hydro, use Iguana!

2008-09-22T03:17:00.000-07:00

Organic Gardening on Gabriola Island

Sara and I spend all our spare time making sure that our plants get fed the best 100% organic fertilizer on the market (Advanced Nutrients Organic Iguana Juice), and are also protected from pests and pathogens through the use of preventative products, such as Scorpion Juice and Barricade.

I sprayed with Scorpion Juice every week throughout the summer. It not only immunizes our flowers and vegetables from attacks from all sort of critters--seen and microspopic--but also ensures that our plants are robust and our flowers and fruits are abundant.

We've harvested the Snow Peas and the Scarlet Runner Beans, and most of our Tomatoes have gone into salads or soups. Our Cucurbits have grown to incredible weights and sizes and they served the noble purpose of making sure that Hedgehog and Jim did really well in the Zucchini Races at the Annual Fall Fair.

The last Rose buds of the season are opening, the Clematis is still going strong, and our Geraniums are enjoying the late Summer, early Fall sunshine, before they get moved indoors for the winter. Our Black Eyed Susans are very prolific this year and our Upside Down Tomatoes have all been harvested.

The big job of pruning all the Roses and deadheading our wilted flowers remains, and pretty soon it will be time for planting our Spring bulbs. Sara managed to get a whole bunch of Hyacynth, Daffodil, and Tulip bulbs from a Vancouver park (she carted them over in her new bought trailer) and she will be transporting compost and manure all Fall and Winter to rejuvenate her flower beds and my vegetable beds, as well.

2008-09-16T15:51:00.000-07:00

Check out this wonderful product at click here!

2008-08-13T13:48:00.000-07:00

Organic Gardening Pays Off in Spectacular Blooms

Sara's flower garden is the talk of the neighborhood. Passers-by are constantly asking, "how did you get your Roses to grow so big?" "How is it that I try to grow Phlox, and they're three feet maximum, while your Phlox are six feet tall?"

Sara has asked me to print out a page from the Advanced Nutrients website on Organic Iguana Juice. After all, this 100% organic plant nutrient is the secret behind the robust plants that she grows, whether using Grow during the vegetative stage, or Bloom, during flowering.

So now when people ask, she just hands them the page and smiles. "It's available at your local hydroponics store," she adds. And we've had many neighbors make a beeline for such a store and purchase this fish based miracle food, because they've seen the results.

We also use other AN products, such as Scorpion Juice to keep pests and pathogens at bay, but most of the glory should go to Iguana Juice, and of course Sara's diligence in creating the best, most fertile soil on Gabriola Island.

"The soil on the island is quite sandy. So we've brought in trailer loads of composted horse manure and kitchen parings, and bought the best, organic soil stocked by our garden shop," explains Sara to Melanie, a single mother from further down the road, who brings her six-year-old daughter each day to see the pretty flowers.

"We have nine different kinds of Phlox, Black Eyed Susans, two different kinds of Cone Flower, ten varieties of Hybrid Roses, three or four Lilies, and the Anemonie is in flower right now, with its graceful canopy of delicate blooms."

My vegetable garden needs some catching up to do, even though last night we enjoyed some fresh Snow Peas with our meal and our Zucchini Squash are growing big in anticipation of the Zucchini races at next month's Fair.

Our upside-down tomatoes are thriving, but I'll leave that 'til the next posting, when I'll have some close up pictures of the fruits of our labor.

2008-08-06T16:43:00.000-07:00

Easy Hydroponics--Organic Nirvana

Discover more about Nirvana by clicking here!

2008-07-08T16:05:00.000-07:00

Upside Down Tomatoes Thriving--Garden Glorious!

Those readers of this blog who are curious about how our upside down tomatoes are doing will be glad to know that they are flourishing! Some of them have tiny tomatoes and most of them are in flower! We've had some glorious days of sunshine and the plants are just soaking it all up!

The rest of Sara's garden is also magnificent! She gets so many compliments from neighbors and people just walking by that she asked me to print out some information about Iguana Juice, which is the miracle fertilizer responsible for the huge increase in yield this year! The Delphiniums, Foxgloves, and Campanula are towering over the Rose bushes and Daisies. "I've never seen Foxglove that's eight feet tall," said a passer-by. "Well now you have," chuckled Hedgehog.

Instead of filling this post with words, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. Our garden is so popular that someone came while we were elsewhere and snipped all the pods off our huge red poppy plants. Sara left the pods on the stems in order to let them dry. Ah well, I guess they thought they could get high--but they'll soon discover that these are not Opium Poppies (those are illegal) they're just a cousin of the opium variety--grown strictly for ornamental purposes.

Hedgehog and Jim made handmade signs and posted them on the edges of the garden. "Please do not steal these flowers or seeds. These plants were grown with love and nourished by our family. Learn to grow your own!"

Gone are the days when people used to leave their doors open all over the island.

2008-07-04T15:18:00.000-07:00

Organic Gardening Pays Off With Gigantic Flowers

Six-feet-tall Campanula! Seven-foot-tall Foxglove! Even taller Delphiniums! Sara’s garden hasn’t seen flowers this high ever! Last summer her blooms were spectacular, but she’s been building up the soil of her flower beds consistently ever since. She uses composted horse manure, composted kitchen parings, Mother Earth Super Tea Grow and Bloom, and grass clippings as a form of mulch. All this, in addition to our super-growth-inducing primary 100% organic fertilizer—Iguana Juice Grow and Bloom**.

Complementing the Campanula, Foxglove, and Delphiniums, Sara grows about a dozen different kinds of Roses. The Hybrid Tea Roses Brandy, Blue Girl, Sunflare, and Intrigue are especially beautiful this time of year, and the Cecile Brunner Rose is particularly prolific, with it’s delicate blooms popping up all over the place and the plant reaching heights of five or six feet.

Sara’s Catmint plants are especially beautiful this year with their purple flower-covered branches bursting forth from the centre into all directions. Her Lilacs have bloomed in late spring with their lovely scent and she is growing three kinds of Peonies, all of which are still very much active.

Hedgehog’s barrel has reddish Lilies this year, along with an assortment of colourful annuals and Sara’s Honeysuckle is attracting hummingbirds to its prolific array of flowers. The sweet nectar of this plant is like a magnet to these tiny birds with their wings flapping a mile a minute.

The upside down tomatoes are flourishing. Out of the ten buckets, only one pepper plant died, soon to be replaced by a fledgling tomato plant. It’s a challenge watering the buckets, but if we aim the hose just right, the arc of the water enters from the top. Some of the buckets are open at the top with annual flowers gracing the opening, some still have lids on them with only a two inch hole for the water to enter.

Sara and I get a great deal of pleasure working in our respective organic gardens. My vegetables this year include Sweet and Hot Peppers, Cherry and Beefsteak Tomatoes, Kale (which Sara prepares with olive oil, garlic, and slivered almonds), Spinach, Cucumbers, Zucchini, Squash, and four kinds of Lettuce, from Butter Lettuce to Crinkly Leaved Red and Green Varieties.

With the contamination of the commercial tomato crop, it’s nice to have a safe source of tomatoes within a few yards of our home. Sara and I have been talking about setting up a hydroponic grow space in our basement, so we could grow vegetables year round. A great way to reduce our carbon footprint! Not to mention cutting down on our car trips to the store and reducing the amount of money we spend on the outrageously high priced gasoline.

**Iguana Juice Grow and Bloom are beginning to be known in our neighbourhood as “that magic plant food that Sara uses.” A number of our local gardeners have written the name down and have gone to the Advanced Nutrients website to check out this product, as well as Humic Acid, Fulvic Acid, and that other Grandma Enggy organic wonder product, Seaweed Extract. The most avid gardener (next to Sara) has actually purchased Iguana Juice (both varieties) at a hydroponics store in Victoria.

2008-06-04T06:52:00.000-07:00

Six-Foot High, Saucer-Sized Poppies

Sara’s poppies have outdone themselves this year, due no doubt to the huge containers of compost and composted horse manure that she trucked in during the winter months, prior to spring planting season. These poppies are the cousins of the opium poppies of the Middle East, but the seeds are not narcotic. This year she has blood red, bright orange, and pinkish cream colored flowers and being that they are so high and huge, many of our neighbors have come to admire them.

Due credit should be paid to the 100% organic Iguana Juice Grow and Bloom that we use to feed all of our flowers and vegetables. It is truly the magic ingredient in our super sized blooms and veggies. Advanced Nutrients mixes the finest organic ingredients (fish based, alfalfa, krill, yucca extract, kelp meal, and earthworm castings) that not only cause lush, vegetative growth, but also promote prolific flower and fruit development.

Our first rose of the season has opened! In spite of the rainy weather, we do get occasional glimpses of the sun, which is as much appreciated by the flowers as by us. Walking our Golden Retriever Max through the neighbourhood every morning, I am amazed at the variety and resurgence of the flora all around us. This is truly an amazing season and no matter what the weather, it should inspire us to value Nature and all of its bounty.

2008-06-01T07:46:00.000-07:00

Upside Down Tomatoes, Anyone? My wife, Sara, read in the Lee Valley catalog about upside down tomato planters. She was intrigued, but they were all sold out. So I Googled the subject and found plenty of online places to buy these, but they were all sold out too. It seems the manufacturer had underestimated the demand, so many gardeners were left without. However, I did find a build-your-own video on YouTube and decided--why not? I bought ten utility buckets at Home Depot, drilled two inch holes in the bottoms of the buckets, used a coffee filter to keep the potting soil from falling out, fertilized the mixture with Advanced Nutrients Iguana Juice Grow, planted six small tomato plants and four pepper plants, and hung the ten buckets upside down on the rafters of our courtyard. Sara even decorated the tops with some annuals! Some lids were left on, but they all had open watering holes. Oh, and our daughter, Hedgehog, helped drill air holes on the sides of the buckets to get some oxygen to the roots.

Tim, Sara, and the kids

2008-05-07T20:17:00.000-07:00

Tulips Thrive on Organic Nutrients

Sara's flower garden is looking more lush and luscious every day. Although the daffodils have had their day, there are still some around, but it's the tulips that are spectacular. This month I am having trouble capturing them in all their magnificence. Also, I am not able to write much, since the demands of my job are such that blogging has become a luxury.

I hope to report in depth on Sara's flower garden and my vegetable patch in future postings. Just be conscious of the fact that Advanced Nutrients 100% Organic Iguana Juice is the main reason that both of our gardens tend to prosper and at times they become the talk of the neighborhood.

Sara and Hedgehog are visiting friends on nearby Salt Spring Island, while Jim and I are guarding the home front and eating a lot of hamburgers. It's a long story. The ladies being vegetarians, we do them the courtesy of not chomping on meat in front of them. We usually go off together to enjoy our carnivore desires.

2008-03-26T15:27:00.000-07:00

Daffodils galore, Perennials popping up!

Our crocuses are already in decline, while our daffodils are numerous and swaying in the (still chilly) winds. Some blossom trees have ignored the generally low temperatures, and have burst forth their buds. Spring has arrived on Gabriola, although we all wish that warmer temperatures were here, as well.

Sara and the kids went to Vancouver by ferry over the Easter weekend and took in the latest Hannah Montana 3-D concert movie. The best of both worlds is the promo line used to advertise this show, which is about a country bumpkin brunette who puts on a blonde wig and becomes a superstar. In the movie, she performs both as Hannah, and as herself, Miley Cyrus.

Hedgehog loves the TV show and she was thrilled by the movie. They also went on a big Easter egg hunt at a community centre. I was left at home to complete my week’s freelance assignments and take care of our coterie of pets.

Sara has carted in many barrels worth of horse manure and compost over the first two months of the year, so now we have a very thick layer of fertile, organic humus for our flowers and vegetables. We also treated the soil with Advanced Nutrients Iguana Juice Grow initially, and now that our bulbs are in flower, we fed them with Iguana Juice Bloom.

This 100% organic fertilizer can be used effectively in both soil and hydroponics grows, indoors or out. If you’re contemplating using it for your indoor garden, rest assured that it doesn’t clog up your system, like some organic ferts do. Friends who have indoor grows on the island are raving about how smoothly this refined plant food works in their hydroponics systems.

I’m also spraying our roses with Scorpion Juice and watering them with a Barricade mixture to impart acquired systemic resistance (SAR) and thicken their cell walls, so they can repel pathogens and pests much more easily. Prevention is the key behind these excellent Advanced Nutrients products.

It’s a bit too early to plant peas and beans, but Sara has been to our local garden centre and has returned with some annual flowers for our flower boxes, as well as seeds for more flowers and vegetables. On top of that, she’s got a whole number of plants growing in big, green barrels for transplanting at a later date. She really enjoys digging in the dirt and sometimes I have to take her supper out to her, because she wants to stay out and stay dirty until there is even a hint of daylight left.

Sorry about not blogging regularly anymore, but the demands of my job have become such that I don’t have as much free time as I used to have. I’ll try to keep a photo journal of our garden, though—hope you enjoy looking at the pictures.

2007-12-29T03:58:00.000-08:00

Snow Covers Our Garden Once Again

We did manage to get a white Christmas after all. The radio kept insisting that while the rest of Canada will have lots of snow, the British Columbia coast will be stuck with its characteristic rain. As so often happens, the prognosticators were proven wrong!

Hedgehog found an inflatable sled under the Christmas tree, while Jim was overjoyed by a K’nex speedway—a construction toy for racing marbles. Sara received a new, stainless steel trowel, while I got my favorite pumpkin soup, from one of our home grown pumpkins that have survived intact on the courtyard table.

Sara uses turmeric, curry powder, garlic, onion, and chopped cilantro to make the soup spicy in a subtle kind of way, and the mostly mushy pumpkin flesh still had enough crunchy bits to make it interesting, even after its stint in the blender.

It was a great reminder that a garden keeps on giving, even in winter. In olden days, when every garden had a few fruit trees as well, pioneers on the west coast would make preserves enough to last all winter.

Sara did make some raspberry and strawberry jam last summer, but we went through these quite fast so now we’re back to the store bought kind. Some of our beans are still in packets in the large freezer, as are our snow peas. Periodically, we use them to enhance a stir-fry or a soup.

Garden and food are interconnected and we still have a few large zucchini squash left to eat in January. All the kale, cucumbers, and hot chilli peppers are long gone, as is the broccoli, which Hedgehog started to like in the fall, after years of avoiding it.

I mentioned that our tomato harvest this year was miniscule, compared to the previous summer, when the huge beefsteak tomatoes graced our salads for quite a few months.

The large pumpkins, squash, and cucumbers are a direct result of the 100% organic diet we feed them. Advanced Nutrients Iguana Juice Grow and Bloom provide them with a fish-based cocktail of alfalfa, krill, and yucca extract, as well as kelp meal, volcanic ash, and earthworm castings.

Advanced Nutrients supplies the ever-growing hydroponics market with the world’s best-ever plant foods, but Sara and I can attest to the fact that most of their products work equally well growing flowers and vegetables in soil.

Happy New Year to all readers of this blog!

2007-11-30T13:58:00.000-08:00

Sara’s flower garden and my vegetable patch are mostly history. An incredibly cold Arctic air mass has descended on British Columbia, so our poor plants look frail and frozen. The ones that we haven’t yet cut or pulled out, that is.

Last Sunday I spent a good two hours cutting teeth onto some bottomless plastic pots which Sara immediately turned upside down and placed atop some of her precious perennials (delphiniums, especially) that she doesn’t want the slugs to eat in the spring. I must have done 15-20 pots.

I started off cutting them with broad strokes making them look like crowns, but I was instructed to do many more, sharper teeth in order to skewer the slugs if they ever dare climb these plastic cylinders.

Last week our All Ablaze Rose burst forth with a bunch of buds and one open Rose, but we had to cut them and take them indoors in order to salvage the salvageable. Of our kittens, Dusty has grown to be a big cat, distrustful of anyone, except me. He loves to get his belly rubbed!

The Halloween pumpkins projected a final grin each before melting into a rotten pile on top of the compost heap. Hedgehog ended up dressing as Bloom, a character from a TV show, a female superhero of sorts.

Sara made about half a dozen trips to a nearby schoolyard where they were giving away compost. We picked or cut all of our vegetables and she filled up my vegetable patch with rich, black, organic compost!

Given such a fertile growing medium, coupled with the Advanced Nutrients 100% organic plant food that we always give our plants, we’ll be sure to grow incredibly large, sweet, and robust vegetables come next season!

Speaking of seasons, tomorrow is December 1st. Do I hear sleigh bells? The festive season is upon us. We’ll try to blog once more before the bearded guy comes down the chimney, but we can’t promise.

Happy December, everybody!

2007-10-26T16:28:00.000-07:00

Clones Come to Sara's Garden, Hedgehog Keeps a Secret

The last of the beans, squash, and zucchini were harvested yesterday, and Sara’s flower garden has seen better days. Much of the foliage has turned yellow because of the season and this morning we woke up to frost all over every plant.

Despite the inclement nature of most of our weather these days, Sara is still acquiring plants for her garden, and we have to dig up more and more of our lawn area in order to accommodate her plantings.

She’s also picking up large containers of manure from ranches and farms around the island and composting it for spring application. Some plants she’s planting in barrels or large plastic containers that she buys from Toys-R-Us in Vancouver.

These plants are perennials, so even if their foliage dies off during the cold winter months, we’ll have some lovely flowers in the spring or summer.

She was given some Day Lilies, Irises, Margaretas, Rudebeckai, three Styrax Japonica saplings, and about seven barrel fulls of Lilac bushes that are over six feet tall. The Lilacs are actually budding in our West Coast climate. We pray that the buds survive the worst of the winter cold.

Since most of the plants she received are in fact cuttings or clones, we anticipated their arrival by purchasing some Clone It, the best cloning gel in the world. We dipped the new comers into this Advanced Nutrients product, and planted them in the fertile mix of composted manure and rich soil.

Sara broke some Styrofoam boards into bits and pieces and placed them on the bottom of the containers, after drilling drain holes on the sides and bottoms of the barrels. Good drainage is absolutely essential for container gardening. Nothing kills plants like being waterlogged.

We also used some No Shock in order to alleviate the stress of transplantation. Then in three weeks time, after the plants had a chance to sprout new roots, we’ll fertilize the barrels with Iguana Juice Grow, our time-proven base fertilizer.

The plant food will nourish the plants through the winter, even if the above ground part perishes in the cold. Usually, here on the mildest coast of Canada, we have new shoots sprouting well into November or December.

Our coldest months are January and February, but nothing is etched in stone. Perhaps we’ll have lots of snow, perhaps not. World weather has become highly unpredictable, with certain States suffering droughts in the southern U.S., while others are experiencing severe rains and flooding.

The California wildfires are very frightening to us, living on an island as we are. We pray that the conditions that set off the fires in ‘California (the Santa Ana dry winds from the desert knocking over power poles) never come to Gabriola.

I managed to get photos of some of Sara’s flowers still in bloom, such as Snapdragons, Foxglove, Daisies, Black Eyed Susans, and Achillea Yarrow. Also, her Cosmos plants are thriving with golden green, lacy foliage growing like crazy, as well as some blooms that are still open.

I won’t be blogging every week from now on, since other commitments have taken precedence. While Jim is in school, Sara and Hedgehog took advantage of the sunny day to go to the pumpkin patch to pick some big ones out for Halloween.

Hedgehog is making her own costume with Sara’s help, but she won’t tell me what it is. I guess I’ll find out on the 31st! Happy Halloween!

2007-09-28T08:09:00.000-07:00

Where have all the Orcas gone? Garden winding down.

Haven’t had time to blog in the last little while, since the September rush has taken hold of my family. Jim is in school this year, so there was the whole hullabaloo connected with buying a new wardrobe, a new knapsack, a lunch container, and a water bottle for him.

In fact, we bought water bottles for the entire family. I told Sara that I was sick and tired of buying bottled water and having the empty plastic bottles to deal with afterwards.

Then this past week the family went on our annual Whale Watch to Telegraph Cove. We were especially concerned this year, because there was the incident of a barge capsizing in the area where the whales hang out. A whole bunch of diesel oil spilled into the ocean and no one knows what the repercussions are for the whales.

Sure enough, we didn’t see any Orcas this year (as opposed to up to 40 of them in previous years). We did see a Humpback Whale with its calf, and the calf breached a couple of times, so Hedgehog was able to get a few good shots with her digital camera. We also saw a whole bunch of Dolphins and Porpoises, though, as well as a Bald Eagle.

The garden is winding down, with a number of bushes turning fall colors. Sara’s roses are blooming in a last hurrah effort, and the vegetables have either already been harvested or are almost ready to be picked.

We managed to grow a few huge Zucchinis and Hedgehog--true to tradition--came back from the local fair with a first place ribbon in the Zucchni Races! Jim was too busy popping balloons on the midway to bother about entering the race.

We’ve stopped fertilizing for the last few weeks, giving the garden nothing but pure water. Since we’re using Iguana Juice Grow and Bloom, which is a 100% organic fish-based fertilizer, we’re not using Final Phase to flush our vegetables, but we could if we wanted to.

Many of our friends that we’ve told about Advanced Nutrients go on the company’s website and report back that most of their products are classified as “hydroponic plant food.” We’re eager to inform them that most AN products are equally effective when used in soil.

AN might have to change their product descriptions and labels if they want to appeal to more soil gardeners, such as ourselves. Sara and I can testify that they make by far the best plant nutrients available anywhere, and it would be a shame if some soil gardeners were to miss out on account of incomplete information on the product labels.

I won’t blog regularly for the next few weeks, since we’re caught up in the fall energy surge. This time of year our chores seem to have multiplied exponentially and the sudden drop in temperatures has caused more than our share of sore throats and coughs.

Hedgehog has developed a sudden interest in Martial Arts and Jim is hoping to join the school's Soccer team, so Sara will be driving them around to extra-curricular activities and I have a backlog of free-lance work to complete.

See you in a few weeks!

2007-09-06T05:34:00.000-07:00

Gigantic Beans, Ripening Tomatoes, Surging Squash

Jim started school on Tuesday, and Hedgehog slept in, since she’s being home schooled. Sara and the kids returned Sunday from their few days in Vancouver, filled with gifts, stories, and lots and lots of pictures.

Sara thanked me for looking after her garden, but Hedgehog was mad because one of her giant Sunflowers has drooped its head and started turning yellow. “You didn’t water it properly,” she aimed her accusation at me.

“No, dear daughter, I did give it adequate water. It’s just that the Sunflower is past its prime and ready for its seeds to be harvested.” So I took her out to the flowerbed and cut the huge head off the plant with shears. “There, now we can munch on sunflower seeds,” said I.

That pacified the situation, and I could turn my attention to my vegetable garden, which contains Kale, Zucchini (one giant one ready for the zucchini races at the local fair), Squash, Pumpkin, Sweet and Hot Hungarian Peppers, and Beefsteak Tomatoes, most of which are still green but they’re growing big!

I didn’t mention the Lettuce, even though we’ve been harvesting it regularly. Sara loves Cheese and Lettuce sandwiches, while I cooked a fine meal last night consisting of New Potatoes, Sorrel, and the two kind of beans we’re growing on our Bean House—Scarlet Runners, and Pole Beans.

Some of the Scarlet Runners have grown so huge from regular feedings of Iguana Juice Bloom and the Advanced Nutrients Plus Program, that I had to take a picture before I cut them into the stir-fry type dish.

I used a little canola oil to slicken the pan, then chopped some home grown Garlic and a medium sized Onion. After the Onion started to brown I added the Beans. I seasoned with salt, black pepper, ginger powder, and Hungarian Paprika. Last of all I added the finely chopped Sorrel.

I panicked, since just when the Beans looked ready to eat, bright green and still crunchy, I tasted the dish and found it a bit harsh and sour from the Sorrel. I reached for the sour cream to make a mollifying sauce, but it had gone off in the fridge and I had to make do with some milk instead.

The meal was fine, the Family loved it, except Sara thought I had put in a touch too much black pepper. I told her the story of the captive Hungarians during the Turkish occupation, who were ordered to cook a lamb stew by their Turkish captors.

They cooked the stew for three hours over an open fire, adding a lot of chopped vegetables and plenty of hot Hungarian peppers. When it came for the Turks to taste the dish, they found it too hot and spit it out in disgust. The prisoners were left with a meal fit for a king!

To soothe her burning mouth, Sara went out and communed with her flowers. She spends an awful lot of time in her garden, not necessarily digging, or watering, or pruning anymore, nor is she carting manure as she did in the Spring.

This is the time of year to enjoy the garden, to take out a chair on a sunny afternoon and sit in the shade, watching the bumblebees and the butterflies and the blooms swaying in the breeze. Ah, the end of summer!

In addition to her fragrant, multi-colored Phlox, Sara is out there enjoying the purple Cosmos flowers with their yellow centres, the Blue Lobelia, the “Pink Bouquet” Obedient Plant, the perfume scented Beebalm, the “Ruby Star” Echinacea Coneflower, the purple Marshall’s Delight, which attracts lots of butterflies, and the “Double Decker” Purple Cone Flower, which stands out among the green foliage.

Other plants growing in my vegetable garden are Broccoli Waltham 29, which is a late blooming variety suitable for Canadian growing, that takes 65 days from transplanting to maturity. Also Wild Mesclun Salad Mix and Spicy Green Salad Mix, which are mostly Mustard Greens.

I’ve planted Celery and Radishes, and our second planting of Snow Peas is coming up. These benefit greatly from our nutrient mix, which includes in addition to the two types of Iguana Juice, Humic Acid and Fulvic Acid—great ingredients if you want to recreate the rich, black, fertile soil of yesteryear that grew food for our ancestors.

The three root colonizers are a great help, supplying the underground parts of our plants with beneficial fungi, bacteria, and microbes. These not only fight off the harmful microorganisms that are their counterparts, but the Harzianum in Piranha impart an induced systemic resistance against parasites of any kind.

I spray regularly with Scorpion Juice, which coincidentally also imparts induced systemic resistance. Basically, the immune systems of the plants are triggered, become stronger, and are able to fight off pathogens and pests like never before.

I wonder if Sara is aware of the underground drama that is taking place right under her nose as she is lost in reverie, thinking about the beauty of her flowers and inhaling their lovely scent.

2007-08-29T19:30:00.000-07:00

Sara takes the kids to the fair, I become chief gardener

Sara and the kids are staying with some friends in Vancouver for a few days, largely to visit the Pacific National Exhibition (PNE) that takes place for two weeks prior to the unofficial end of summer, Labor Day Weekend.

Hedgehog loves the Hellevator, and Jim is a Roller Coaster fanatic. The former lifts you up in an open seat and then drops you at breakneck speed, while the latter used to be my favorite ride when I was younger.

The kids also love the animal exhibits and usually return with digital photos of chicks hatching and huge pigs snoring. The dog show is a family favorite, with the super smart canines astounding the audience with their shenanigans.

Them being away, means that yours truly is in charge of not only the vegetable garden, but Sara’s flower garden, as well. I rise early each morning and spend a meditative half an hour communing with the canopy of Anemones and the still flourishing Clematis.

We’ve had several days of hot sunny ones in a row, so I can’t skip the watering regimen as I’m tempted to do on overcast and sprinkly days. The super tall Sunflowers are the first to feel the lack of water, and there is nothing worse looking in a garden than droopy Sunflowers.

The pastel shades of Phlox continue to thrive, while the occasional Gladiolus has made an unexpected reappearance. The Hybrid Tea Rose Black Magic has opened a magnificent bloom, after a long hiatus.

As if not to be outdone, the climbing Rose All Ablaze has offered a prolific series of blooms in clusters. The Stainless Steel Rose has also come out of its rain-induced hibernation, and is gracing us with its metallic, exquisitely formed petals.

The Black Eyed Susans and the occasional Yellow Daisy provide color contrast to the Pinks and Purples and Blues of the Phlox and Cone Flowers, some of which are Double Decker ones.

Sara is pleased with her Flower Garden, and I am doing my utmost to make sure that it is still thriving when they return. The Vegetable Garden looks different, what with the first harvest of Snow Peas and the removal of the plants, while we await the second growth, provided September proves to be warm enough for the new crop.

The numerous rainy days have postponed the Tomato harvest, although several clusters of large, Beefsteak Tomatoes are beginning to assume a distinctly pinkish hue.

We also planted some Cherry Tomatoes, some of which we already picked and had with our breakfast eggs. As we did with our Hungarian Banana Peppers, some of which are mild, while others are very hot.

I sprayed with Scorpion Juice last Sunday, in order to make sure that the induced systemic resistance is keeping those pests and pathogens at bay.

Aside from the occasional Black Spot on the generic Pink Rose plant, some of the Phlox vegetation has developed brown spots. Nothing to get concerned about, Phlox stems and leaves don’t like to be sprayed with water, and I’m just as guilty doing that, as is Sara.

This weekend I’m spraying with Colossal Bud Blast in order to maximize the size of our flowers, and fertilizing most of both gardens with Iguana Juice Bloom. I say most, because I have to make sure that some of our leafy vegetables get only Iguana Juice Grow, to keep them from bolting.

In addition to the Iguana Juice, I pre-mix a nutrient solution the night before, adding Barricade, Humic and Fulvic Acids, Organic B, Carbo Load Powder, Sensi Zym, and Granndma Enggy’s Seaweed Extract.

Sara dragged me to a Health Food Shop one day and made me drink some green concoction which is supposed to give you energy and at the same time, cleanse your system. Whenever I add Seaweed Extract to my organic nutrient solution, I always think of that green drink.

It didn’t taste bad, and it did pep me up for a few days. I imagine our plants getting this stuff as part of their regular diet and receiving the natural hormones, vitamins, and organic antibiotics that it contains.

I see on the Advanced Nutrients website that the company is introducing a new 100% organic product, called Nirvana. We could all use a bit of Nirvana, just about now!

All joking aside, I am going to order some and see if I can increase the proliferation of flowers through Sara’s garden, as well as the size of the individual blooms.

Nirvana can be administered either as a foliar spray, or straight into the root zone. It has eliminated the offensive smell of some of its competition, and it contains carbohydrates, vitamins, amino acids, minerals, humic acid, growth enhancers, guano and seaweed.

Some more of that healthy green stuff that I should be drinking every day. Don’t tell Sara I said that…

2007-08-22T20:36:00.000-07:00

Pastel Colors and Fragrance of Phlox, First Bean Harvest

I made some fried eggs with homegrown garlic for Sara this morning, and she reciprocated with three green banana peppers and two red tomatoes, the first of many from my vegetable garden.

Why is Sara harvesting my vegetables, you ask? Well, I had to go to the eye doctor this week and he put some darn drops into both of my eyes and it thoroughly blurred my vision.

So it’s up to Sara this week to spot the odd ripe vegetable. She also harvested a stainless steel bowl full of two kinds of beans from our famous bean house.

We grow Scarlet Runner Beans, as we did last year, as well as Pole Beans, which are smoother and more suitable for stir-fries. Pole beans boast long pods, distinct flavor, high yield, and a multiple harvest.

Pole beans are usually harvested 5 times in a season, so Sara’s pickings constituted our first harvest. From seedling to harvest, pole beans require 60 to 70 days.

Adequate watering is required throughout its veg and bloom stages. Long spells of hot dry weather result in misshapen pods and a poor yield. The timing of the harvest is important. Left on the vine too long, the bean pods get tough and woody.

Bean beetles, root rot, rust, fruit worms, and red spiders are the pests that can destroy your Pole Bean crop. Peanut Stunt Virus is sometimes a serious problem. It is vectored by aphids and very hard to control.

The variety I planted, Kentucky Blue, grows six to seven inch, straight, round pods, and is resistant to rust. I planted the seeds two to four inches apart and one inch deep. The bamboo structure that we build every year for the Scarlet Runners became its trellis.

We fertilize our beans, as we do all our other plants, with Advanced Nutrients Iguana Juice Grow for veg, and Iguana Juice Bloom for flowering. We also use Organic B, a B-complex vitamin supplement, to reduce plant stress.

The beans responded immediately to the three beneficials (Piranha, Tarantula, and Voodoo Juice) by starting speedy root formation during the first few weeks of veg.

One of our cats dug up a bean plant during the third week and Sara and I were pleasantly surprised at the massive size of the root ball. We gently replanted it and treated it with No Shock, in order to minimize the trauma.

As opposed to last year, the bumblebees were out in full force this time around, doing their little dance and spreading the pollen. The Scarlet Runner beans had their distinctive red flowers all over the bamboo structure, while the Pole Beans offered smaller, white flowers to the eager bees.

Nearby, a huge Sunflower looked on and a Purple Passion Rose once again proved that the Rose is the most graceful flower of them all. Every time I passed the Blue Girl bush, I took a whiff of the sweet perfume contained in the lavender-pink blooms.

Even the Stainless Steel Rose opened a few blooms this past week, ending its rain-enforced period of dormancy. The Double Purple Cone Flower looked majestically on, nodding slightly in the summer breeze.

Sara bought several pastel shades of Phlox, light purple pink, a darker blue, and some violet ones, as well. A few Oriental Lilies opened next to the Phlox, providing interesting contrast.

The Russian Sage became so prolific that Sara was thinking of dividing it, and the Catmint also filled a whole corner of one of the flowerbeds, hiding a Rose and a few smaller flowers in its abundance.

Sunday morning I’ll spray once again with Scorpion Juice and I continue to mix in Barricade the night before into the nutrient solution to make sure it dissolves. These two Advanced Nutrients products make sure that all our plants are able to ward of pests and diseases much better than without being treated with them.

Sara is talking about trimming the overhanging branches of the Japanese Styrax tree, since they shade one of her flowerbeds too much. She loves that tree, so this is a hard decision. One usually prunes trees in the Fall, after they’ve lost their leaves and have entered dormancy.

I don’t want to talk about the arrival of fall yet, even though Hedgehog is selecting books to read for her home schooling projects, while Jim is looking forward to being enrolled in grade 4. He decided that he would like to try real school for a while.

2007-08-15T08:31:00.000-07:00

Harvesting the Snow Peas, Oriental Lilly's Splash of Color

Sara’s Oriental Lily, “Stargazer,” put on quite the show this past week when the 16 to 20-inch spread of this super colorful bloom popped up in the middle of the main flowerbed.

It can bloom any time from June to September, amd does alright in full sun, as well as partial shade. It’s about three feet tall and fits in well with the Phlox, Black Eyed Susans, Daisies, and Anemone that inhabit its part of the patch.

It’s not only the look of this exotic flower, but also the fragrance that will capture your senses. Take a whiff of this beauty and you’ll be hopelessly in love with the Stargazer.

One word of warning, hovever. If you’re entertaining the idea of using Lilies as cut flowers (let’s say as a centre piece for a family dinner), make sure you clip the sepals before putting them on your best table cloth.

Lilies drop pollen on whatever they touch, and one of our lovely, green, Hungarian embroidered table cloths became a victim of their black, sticky dust, which leaves a stain that is impossible to remove.

Sara has been planting more Phlox in her flower garden. She chose delicate, pastel colored blooms (salmon pink, light purple, bluish purple), that serve as clever contrast to the bold, bright colored Lilies.

The bright yellow Pumpkin flowers have appeared en masse and we harvested our first batch of Snow Peas this week. We’ve already dropped them into salads—they’re tender and crunchy when young, and we’ve sautéed some with garlic for a special treat.

The Snow Peas took about 90 days to go from seed to harvest. I just poured the seeds into a pre-dug trench and they germinated in soil, around the second week of May. I recently planted some more Peas, hoping to harvest them before the cold spell hits in October-November.

As you know, we use Iguana Juice Grow for the veg stage of our plants, and Iguana Juice Bloom for the flowering stage. One thing we had to be careful of was planting Lettuce seeds too close to the Tomatoes and the Peas.

Tomatoes and Peas have to go into flower to produce fruit, while a wise gardener prevents Lettuce from flowering (or bolting). Lettuce on its way to producing seed tastes bitter.

So we had to continue fertilizing the Lettuce with Iguana Juice Grow, while a foot away we fed out Tomatoes and Snow Peas iguana Juice Bloom, to encourage flower formation. Some trick. Next year we’ll plant them further apart.

As if to belie my early obituary, our Rose bushes have come back in full force. The Purple Passion Rose featured a full bouquet of blooms this week, as did the Blue Girl Rose.

Given the history of Black Spot on some of our Roses (notably the generic Pink Rose) I spray them every week with Scorpion Juice, and the treatment seems to work very well. We also water with a nutrient mix featuring Barricade, and up until week 2 of bloom I sprayed with Protector, to keep Powdery Mildew away.

The Cecile Brunner Rose is producing a prolific quantity of small, delicate, cream-colored Rose buds, and even the Stainless Steel Hybrid Tea Rose has made a comeback after being slightly damaged by all the rain we had back in July.

Our bamboo bean house is fully covered with Scarlet Runner Beans and another variety. I keep meaning to ask Sara what the other bean is called that she planted, but I keep forgetting. I know that it’s smoother than the scarlet runner and is especially good in stir fries.

Some of the Gladiolas are flowering again, and the Anemone is blooming happily on top of the canopy. The soil is looking especially fertile, what with all the Humic Acid and Fulvic Acid we mix in to our watering solution.

We also use Organic B to relieve plant stress, as well as Seaweed Extract, which not only contains many kinds of vitamins, but also natural hormones and antibiotics. Kelp is also a good source of Iron, which helps keep our plants from getting anemic.

By finding the Nutrient Calculator on the upper, right hand corner of the AN website, fellow gardeners can set their own feeding regimen, after they choose between organic or synthetic.

The Calculator is flexible. Depending on the individual plants you grow, you can set the number of weeks you want it to veg, followed by the number of weeks in bloom. Just click on the Add Week or Remove Week buttons to do this.

There is another feature of the AN website which I find useful. You can locate the Advancedpedia on the home page, with technical details and product descriptions on the entire line of organic and synthetic ferts, additives, supplements, root colonizers, and bloom boosters made by Advanced Nutrients.

Sara’s flowers and my vegetables are proof that AN makes the best darn plant food in the universe, bar none.

2007-08-07T22:10:00.000-07:00

Rewards of Growing Roses, Tomatoes in Flower

Our Japanese Snowbell tree (Styrax japonica), that grows next to Sara’s favorite flowerbed, has grown much larger this year. It bloomed in late Spring and the garden was covered with its delicate, white blossoms. It truly spoke of the wonders of creation and the magnificence of the Creator, as do all blossom trees in Spring.

This tree is casting quite a shadow on part of the flowerbed from noon to five, just when a blooming garden needs sunshine the most. So Sara noticed that her Hybrid Tea Rose “Intrigue” wasn’t doing too well. Roses need at least five hours of continuous sunhsine each day, and the Snowbell tree stopped the sunlight from reaching the Rose.

So she thought about moving this Rose plant, but first she sent me to the Internet to see if this was a good idea. Here’s what I found. The best time to transplant a Rose is when it’s dormant. This is usually early Spring or late Fall. Never dig up a Rose in winter. If it escapes the cold, the shock will kill it for sure.

“If you must transplant a Rose in summer,” and here is where Sara started to pay close attention, “you must take off all its leaves and send it into temporary dormancy. Then you can move it, but be very careful.”

The reason that transplanting Roses in full growth is not recommended is that the fragile feeder roots are usually damaged by careless handling and the plant dies. Also, transplanting any plant can send it into shock.

Sara took all the leaves off “Intrigue” and allowed it to go to sleep. That’s exactly what dormancy means, the plant goes to sleep. Then she dug it up ever so carefully and dipped the roots in a solution of No Shock, which is a great Advanced Nutrients product designed just for such a purpose.

She planted the Hybrid Tea in a new, much sunnier location, and now we can wait and pray that it will renew itself and start producing new leaves and blooms.

The Blue Girl Rose has outdone itself this week. I counted five blooms and four buds on this bush, which I thought has had it on account of all the rain. Even the generic Pink Rose bush still offers the odd richly fragrant bloom, just to belie my statements in the blog last week that our Roses were not producing.

Remember Sara’s Butterfly Bush that we butchered through ignorance? Sara asked me how much she should prune it last year (since it was dominating its corner of the garden) and I told her to be brutal, to cut it back drastically.

All this Spring, the plant struggled to come back to life. I asked Sara to give it extra special portions of our base nutrient, Iguana Juice Grow. Two tiny leaves appeared, but were destroyed by the first cold spell of the season. Nothing after that through May.

Then in late June, a small shoot started to come up between its woody, seemingly dead branches. Only one shoot, and Sara was sad that a once beautiful plant will be a shadow of its former self.

We applied Piranha, Tarantula, and Voodoo Juice to strengthen it’s roots and ward off any possible fungal, bacterial, or microbial attacks. We watered it with our full nutrient mix, containing Humic Acid and Fulvic Acid. The soil in the container looked rich, black, and fertile. But still only one shoot.

Then in July, that one shoot took off like gangbusters. Sara switched to Iguana Juice Bloom as soon as the first buds appeared. Now it’s full of fragrant, purple clusters of tiny flowers that viewed together resemble a lilac bloom. “The Butterfly Bush is back, the Butterfly Bush is back” sang Hedgehog and Sara as they did an impromptu jig around its container.

My son, Jim and I, just looked on in amazement, but we were also glad that a staple of Sara’s flower garden has made a dramatic comeback.

Speaking of comebacks, a whole bunch of yellow flowers appeared this past week on the Tomato plants in the back. Sara carefully pruned the leaves and the branches without buds, in order to let air and sunshine to the already forming fruit. If you neglect to remove extraneous vegetation, your Tomatoes will never ripen.

“Give them an extra helping of Carbo Load Powder,” suggested Sara, indicating the sugar-rich supplement called for by the Nutrient Calculator as a regular addition to our basic fert, along with Organic B to relieve plant stress, and Sensi Zym to get rid of plant debris in our root zone.

This serves a double purpose. Getting rid of plant debris help minimize the chance of parasites of various kinds attacking our root system (pests and diseases often lodge themselves in plant debris) and also by turning this debris into easily absorbable nutrients, the rate of growth of our plants is increased.

I also reminded Sara that it was time to spray the whole garden with Colossal Bud Blast, the organic plant nutrient and bloom booster that is absorbed by the leaves. I make sure that I spray early in the morning, before the heat of the summer sun makes it dangerous to spray.

It seems that the sun dries the ingredients in the spray before the stomata of the leaves have a chance to absorb them, and they turn into toxic salts on the surface of the leaves. Wouldn’t want to poison our plants now, woould I?

2007-08-01T12:24:00.000-07:00

Sunshine is the Norm, Roses Make a Comeback

Finally, the weather seems to have stabilized and the sun has decided to stick around, more often than not. In my vegetable garden, the Snow Peas are thriving and flowering as they climb the plastic mesh against the back fence, while we can’t seem to eat the heads of Lettuce fast enough before they bolt.

The Roses are slowly making a comeback. Even the generic Pink Rose plant, which had been troubled by Black Spot, is blooming forth again with the most fragrant, tender flowers. The Gentle Giant Hybrid Tea Rose is gracing us once again with large, crimson blooms with a very subtle yellow tinge.

The climbing Rose All Ablaze is once more opening its deep red buds and greeting the sun with its petals. The Sun Flare Rose is sporting a cluster of yellow flowers that appear almost white in the blazing sun. The Sweetheart Rose, Cecile Brunner, is gently opening its delicate buds, betraying its Chinese roots with its graceful demeanor.

Stainless Steel has yet to recover from all the rain, but Blue Girl has eight buds on it that I’ve just noticed, so we’re looking forward to its lavender beauty pretty soon. Purple Passion and Black Magic are taking a hiatus, but Sara is sure they’ll flower again before the season is over.

Here it is, August, and Sara is already making preparations for Heegehog’s birthday in early September. We’re going to surprise her with an inflatable water scooter, on the condition that she only use it on lakes and in friend’s pools. Our nerves couldn’t take her scooting in the ocean.

Of course, we’ll probably have to buy one for Jim, as well, even though his birthday is much later. It gets to be expensive, this gift giving, what with life jackets, extra battery packs, and new swimsuits, naturally.

We planted our lettuce too close to the Snow Peas and Tomatoes, so when we use Iguana Juice Bloom on the latter vegetables, we have to be careful to keep it as far away from the Lettuce as possible. Many heads have already bolted in the heat of the sun, we don’t need a bloom fertilizer to force them to go to seed, as well.

I’m spraying the Roses each week with Scorpion Juice, in order to boost their resistance to Black Spot and Rust, and alternately with a mixture of horticultural oil and baking soda, to keep insects at bay. Thank goodness the Leafminer infestation has been resolved, but with all the rain, we’re very much worried about Mold and Mildew.

Up to the second week of bloom, we sprayed each week with Protector, but now we just mix in the suggested amount of Barricade each week into our nutrient solution. This potassium silicate product thickens the walls of plant cells, enabling them to resist invasions by microorganisms, as well as insects.

Another weapon against Molds and Mildew is using Piranha as a foliar spray. The beneficial fungi in this product fight off harmful fungal infestations of leaves and flowers, such as those caused by Gray Mold (Botrytis cinerea), Pythium, Fusarium, Sclerotinia homoeccarpa, Rhizoctania solani, and Sclerotium rolfsii.

I read up on Piranha on the Advancedpedia, which is located on the Advanced Nutrients website. The mycorrhizal fungi in this great product excrete powerful natural chemicals that not only enhance root growth and help food absorption, but also act as a bio-fungicide when used as a foliar spray.

Tarantula and Voodoo Juice both have Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR) in them, the difference being that Tarantula has many varieties as spores and is a powder, while Voodoo Juice has five select PGPR which are super effective in combating harmful bacteria and aiding nutrient absorption by the roots.

I mentioned last week that my Tomato plants don’t seem to have enough flowers on them, so I sprayed them with Colossal Bud Blast, which contains both amino acids and carbohydrates in order to nourish flower production. Its nutrients are absorbed through the leaves of my plants.

I’m also pruning some of the vegetation off the Tomatoes, which have grown to my height, and I’m nearly six feet tall. I’ve discovered some green fruit close to the main stem of the plants, so by taking off the surrounding leaves, I am allowing air and sun to get to the already forming Tomatoes.

I suspect my Tomato plants are indeterminate, which means that they grow taller and take a longer time to mature than determinate plants. The varieties that I planted this year are Supersteak and Beefmaster, which are both beefsteak Tomatoes, and take around 80 days to mature.

But judging from the succulent, giant fruit that these plants produced last year, Sara and I and the kids have something to look forward to, when our Tomatoes finally ripen on the vine and are ready to be sliced into a cucumber salad, for instance.

2007-07-26T13:37:00.000-07:00

Too Much Rain, Scorching Sun, Fewer Blooms

While the British Isles are drowning, the rest of Europe is being baked and scorched. We’ve had our own share of torrential rains, followed by short bursts of hot sun. Climate change is having a direct effect on both Sara’s flower garden and my vegetable patch.

In one short word, the main effect is foilage. As opposed to the full array of colors at this time of year, Sara’s flowerbeds are covered in lush, green foilage. Ditto for my vegetables, which are showing a dearth of flowers.

The solution, as voiced by a garden guru on CBC radio, is to apply a low or no Nitrogen fertilizer, that is high in Phosphorus and Potassium. In our case, it’s an extra application of Iguana Juice Bloom, which has an NPK of 4-3-6, boosted by spraying our foliage with Colossal Bud Blast, which has an NPK of 0-3-6.

The combined NPK of these two products is 4-6-12, which is exactly what the doctor ordered. Although primarily a foliar spray, Colossal Bud Blast can also be applied to the root zone with comparable results, all through the vegetative and bloom stages of our plants.

Actually, it’s mostly my Tomatoes that lack an adequate number of flowers. Our Scarlet Runner Beans are filling in the bamboo structure rather nicely and the large-leaved foliage is covered with their distinctively delicate red blooms.

Some of Sara’s Clematis is still flowering, and a few of our different varieties of Phlox have burst into bloom. Hedgehog is enthused by the Double Purple Cone Flower that has given us a few distinctive large blooms.

I wish I could say the same for our Roses. All the rain, followed by extremely hot sunshine, has had a negative effect on our Rose production this year. Some of the yellow blooms (Sun Flare) are still around, but most of the red and pink ones have had it, as did Blue Girl, which sports a still healthy and vigorous bush, but no buds.

We are behind schedule in our fertigation, because Sara was afraid that all the rain was going to wash away the fertilizer. But now that it is sunny again, we’re applying our nutrient mix with renewed enthusiasm. Let’s hope for the desired results.

I bought two 50-Liter tanks, one for the bloom garden, the other for my vegetables. Figuring that this is the fourth week of bloom for most of the plants, I have to mix in 198.35 mL of Iguana Juice Bloom, 120 mL each of Humic Acid and Fulvic Acid and 17 grams of Carbo Load Powder.

Consisting of Arabinose, Dextrose, Glucose, Meltose, and Xylose, Carbo Load comes in both Powder and Liquid form, but I use the former since it’s more economical. These simple and complex carbohydrates are designed to boost the flower forming building blocks of our plants.

In addition to building bud sites, Carbo Load plays a dual role in that it also feeds the beneficial microorganisms contained in Piranha, Tarantula, and Voodoo Juice. We don’t have to apply these root colonizers during week 4, since we included them in the nutrient mixes for weeks 1 and 2.

The helpful fungi, bacteria, and microbes in these three products are bioactive and multiply in the root zone of our plants, enhancing root formation and aiding nutrient absorption. During week 6 of bloom we’ll again have to apply 21 grams each of Piranha and Tarantula, and 260 mL of Voodoo Juice.

While both Tarantula and Voodoo Juice contain Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR), Voodoo Juice is a liquid suspension of five selected strains, while Tarantula is a powder containing the spores of numerous different beneficial bacteria strains.

As we all know, not all bacteria are beneficial. Many are harmful, while some are symbiotic, meaning that they establish mutually beneficial relationships with their host (in this case, the root and stem cells of our flowers and vegetables). The microorganisms in these two Advanced Nutrients products are “super symbiotic,” meaning that they’re extra beneficial.

Not only do they fight off harmful bacteria, but they make their way inside the tissues of the plants’ roots and stems and help fix Nitrogen from the air and soil into an easily absorbable form.

The microbes in Voodoo Juice also secrete plant growth promoting hormones into the sap of our plants. So not only does the root mass increase, but the overall growth of the plant shows great improvement.

Voodoo Juice contains 50 million PGPR super-strains in each millilitre. That’s an awful lot of microscopic helpers to unleash on our plants, but with climate change, we need all the help we can get.

2007-07-17T22:30:00.000-07:00

Snow Peas and Sweet Peas, Beans and Renoir Lillies

A neighbor was kind enough to give Sara a Jasmine plant (Jasminum polyanthum) and it’s blooming. The sweetest, most pleasing fragrance wafts over the section of the courtyard where it resides in a container.

Sara’s Shasta Daisies are fully blooming, as is Hedgehog’s Black Magic Rose, just in time for the release of the final Harry Potter book. Some dark blue Petunias make one of Sara’s containers a truly decorative addition to her flower beds.

Asiatic type Lillies are in bloom right now, and Sara has several of them. One of them is called Renoir, and it seems to have triple blossoms. It likes a heavy soil with a good supply of humus (which is Sara’s specialty, given her penchant for composted horse manure and kitchen compost).

Another way my wife ensures a rich, black, fertile soil is by using Grandma Enggy’s Humic Acid and Fulvic Acid from Advanced Nutrients. These products are designed to enrich your soil with ingredients derived from “leonardite,” an calcified, organic substance that has to be mined from underneath the earth.

Renoir Lillies like sun to partial shade, and they don’t like extreme heat. So avoid planting them next to south facing walls. Their petals tend to be blown off by strong winds, so a certain amount of wind protection is also a good idea.

I heard on the radio that the raspberry crop in the Fraser Valley was damaged by the recent extreme temperatures—over fifty percent of the fruit had to be discarded. When the thermometer goes above forty Celsius, sensitive fruits and flowers suffer.

Sara’s Sweet Peas are flourishing despite the spell of heat. They are intertwined with the Scarlet Runner Beans which are once again filling our their bamboo house quite nicely.

Contrary to what their name implies, Sweet Peas are a flowering plant. They inadvertently make me thing of Snow Peas, and I must confess, I have known to confuse the two.

Sara and I spent several hours a few days ago tying our Snow Peas to a black plastic mesh that I nailed to the back fence. We allowed the plants to grow wildly on the ground, since we were both busy.

The plants appreciated the extra support. Snow Peas are climbers and they get all tangled up when they don’t have any place to climb. Their suckers search for something to latch on to, so they latch onto each other’s stems, and it took quite a while to untangle the mess.

I planted two varieties this year, China Snow and Oregon Sugar Pod. The latter grows best in cool weather (thank goodness our heatwave has broken and our temperatures have dropped) and you can eat the pods either fresh or cooked, and they can also be frozen.

It’s much the same with China Snow. As the name implies, this Snow Pea is great in stir-fries. Peas should be fertilized when they reach four inches (10 cm) in height. We use 100% organic Iguana Juice Grow for this purpose. When they start flowering, we switch to Iguana Juice Bloom.

Snow Peas grow very quickly. As soon as the plants had a secure place to climb, they took off like gangbusters. They vegged for maybe three or four weeks and now they have flowers all over them. Time to switch to our bloom fertilizer.

It’s a bit tricky, since we also have Lettuce in our vegetable garden. We don’t want this plant to bolt and go to flower and seed. So we water selectively, and apply the nutrients individually to the base of the vegetables.

Each week we mix up two different nutrient solutions in large, pre-mix tanks. Along with our base fert (one using Iguana Grow the other Iguana Bloom) we also mix in Humic and Fulvic, as well as Seaweed Extract and Organic B.

The latter is a B-complex Vitamin, which Seaweed Extract contains other Vitamins, as well as naturally occurring plant hormones for growth and natural antibiotics to help prevent diseases.

It doesn’t help against slugs, however. The other day Sara dug up two fresh and crunchy Lettuce plants for our evening salad and I proceeded to wash them at the kitchen sink. I started picking the leaves off and there, between two light green leaves, was a baby slug, ready to devour our salad.

I always wondered where slugs went in the daytime, so now I know. I’ll be cautious with picking Lettuce from now on. I might disturb the slumber of one of these slimy creatures. I guess all the slug bait we sprinkled around our vegetables in the spring didn’t quite get rid of all of them!

Slugs are about the only thing we have to worry about, since regular uae of Barricade and Scorpion Juice keeps most pests and pathogens at bay. Also, by using Piranha, Tarantula, and Voodoo Juice as prescribed by the Nutrient Calculator, we don’t have the nematode problems that plague untreated gardens.

2007-07-11T21:35:00.000-07:00

My Veg Garden Soaks Up the Sun, Gets Thirsty

The North American heatwave is alive and well on Gabriola. Today’s temperatures inland almost reached 40 degrees Celsius (104° F). Because we’re closer to the ocean, our temps were a bit lower, but still well into the nineties Fahrenheit.

I know that Floridians and Californians are used to such extremes, but this is Canada, the land of igloos and snowshoes and minus forty degree winters. We prefer to cook on our barbecues and not roast ourselves on the beach.

My vegetable garden looked parched in the noonday sun. I had gotten up at six AM to use a soaker hose but by twelve the soil around my Tomatoes, Lettuce, Cucumbers, Beans, Peas and Peppers looked like drought had set in.

I spray with Scorpion Juice early in the day, to keep Rose diseases such as Black Spot at bay. Also to prevent a whole array of bacterial, fungal, and viral infestations that plague our garden on a regular basis.

Scorpion Juice imparts induced systemic resistance to the plants, enabling them to ward off these pathogens through efficient use of their own immune systems. This product tricks the plant into thinking that a parasitic invasion is taking place, causing the immune system to kick into high gear.

I listen to my favorite radio station while I’m working. Earlier today, a gardening expert was talking about the importance of efficient watering. He emphasized that it is better to water the roots of your plants, rather than the foliage, since water on the leaves can cause trouble.

If you get water droplets on your leaves during the day when the sun is hot, they can act as tiny prisms concentrating the heat of the sun in certain spots and causing sections of your leaves to go brown. Ditto for flowers.

Water on your foliage at night doesn’t give them enough time to dry off before the cooler temps set in, and the result could be fungal infestation. For this very reason it is much better to get up early and give your plants a chance to dry off during the day.

If you water your plants too liberally on a continuous basis, you are actually encouraging vegetative growth at the expense of flowering. Conversely, if you deny the plant adequate water for a short time, it tends to go into stress mode (“I’m going to die so I better go into my reproductive mode and make flowers and seeds”).

Also, it is a good idea to water conservatively, since for the last few summers we’ve had a water shortage. Islands seem to have on ongoing problem with lack of fresh water. Kind of ironic, when you consider that we’re surrounded by water.

Of course, Sara and I don’t just irrigate, we fertigate our garden. By mxing up a batch of nutrients, supplements, and root colonizers on a weekly basis, we ensure that our flowers and vegetables receive the proper nourishment that they require in order to produce outstanding blooms and fruits-vegetables.

I use the word “fruit” in the sense that a pepper is the fruit of the Pepper plant, a tomato is the fruit of the Tomato plant, and a cucumber is the fruit of the Cucumber plant. I still remember when I was a child people arguing whether the tomato was a fruit or a vegetable.

Our lettuce should never go to seed, so we don’t want our Lettuce plants to flower. By picking the leaves regularly, we are in fact keeping the plant in a permanent vegetative state. Our Mustard plants bolted; a long stem grew out of them, with tiny, yellow flowers at the tip.

When such plants bolt, their leaves become bitter and inedible. This year I’m experimenting with Sweet Leaf in order to enhance the taste of our lettuce. It is an Advanced Nutrients product that contains berry sugars and molasses. It is designed to boost the flavor and aroma of your plants.

Our vegetable garden is receiving Iguana Juice Grow, a 100% organic fish-based fertilizer that has been giving us excellent results ever since we started gardening. For Sara’s flower garden I use Iguana Juice Bloom as the basic fert, since most of her plants are already in flower.

In addition to the basic ferts, we also use Seaweed Extract, in order to supply multivitamins and natural growth hormones to our plants. These are beneficial, as opposed to the artificial growth hormones that farmers use to pump up their livestock and their crops.

Organic B is a Vitamin B-complex formula from natural sources. If you Google Vitamin B you get the full spectrum of the beneficial effects of Thiamine, Riboflavin, Niacin, and the other members of the Vitamin B group.

Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), like its close cousins Thiamine (B1) and Niacin (B3), takes part in the manufacture of plant energy through aiding metabolism and processing amino acids, as well as well as being involved in plant growth and reproduction. Research indicates that Riboflavin plays a major role in the rhizosphere of all plants.

The B-complex group is also influential in the reduction of plant stresses of every kind, including drought stress. For this reason, more and more gardeners are applying it to their gardens during these long, hot summers, which are here to stay.

2007-07-04T16:46:00.000-07:00

Celebrating Independence By Gardening

In Canada, we celebrated three days ago. July 1st is Canada Day—this year the 140th anniversary of the founding of our country. However, the kids watch so many American channels, that they became fascinated with July 4th, so I had to tell them all about the Declaration of Independence and the Founding Fathers of the U.S., who acted bravely in 1776.

Sara and I celebrated the Fourth of July by gardening. I thought it was an à propos thing to do, since if you grow enough of your own vegetables, you too can declare your independence from the giant food chains that seem to dominate our consumption in the 21st century.

Add to that growing your own flowers, instead of paying the outrageous prices the stores charge for them. Especially roses around the major holidays. And Sara’s roses this year look every bit as good, and smell every bit as good as those bought in the finest flower shops.

She grew the Hybrid Tea Rose Brandy last year as well, but this year it has really taken off from her repeated applications of Iguana Juice Bloom, along with the supplements, additives, and root enhancers that we mix into our weekly nutrient solution.

Brandy’s giant blooms are nearly six inches in diameter, which is truly a magnificent sight to behold. Many of our neighbors are asking for us to initiate them into our magic gardening club. When we clarify that all the products we use are made by the same Canadian company—Advanced Nutrients—they sort of wish that we had a magic wand or an incantation, instead.

Even Lovely Faerie, Hedgehog’s favorite rose at the moment, is starting to burst its buds into blooms. We’re in the grip of a string of very hot, sunny days, so all of Sara’s blooms are opening up to embrace the life-giving sunshine.

Repeated sprayings of Scorpion Juice and applications of Barricade have the Black Spot under control on the two Rose bushes that were bitten by the few really cold nights this past winter. However, periodically a few black spots return to remind us that fungal infections are not easy to get rid of. Despite the infestation, our generic Pink Rose bush has been putting out exquisite blooms with a lovely, sweet scent. It’s trying its best to beat the Black Spot, once and for all.

A neighbor asked Sara the other night if she favors the color blue. At the moment, many of her flowers are blue, lavender, or purple. But it’s a very subtle blend of various shades of each color, os it’s not bland or boring, by any means. Her Delphiniums are standing proud with their spires and thanking Sara for putting “yogurt crowns” around their infant growth to keep slugs from devouring them.

Many of the Nasturtium leaves have gone into our nightly salads, but the remaining ones have started to bloom, dainty orange and yellow flowers. Sara decided to treat all her flowering plants to a solution of Carbo Load Powder in order to fill them full of essential carbohydrates, which are the building blocks of future budding sites.

“In this way we’ll have blooms well into September and October,” explained Sara, who is now talking about building a Solarium to be able to grow flowers year round. The Delphinium Black Knight, for instance, with its dark purple, extra tall spires, blooms in the Spring and Summer, but may repeat in early Fall. Sara is counting on it!

Several different types of Lilies are starting to bloom as is the Foxglove (Digitalis x mertonensis). The latter produces large spires to begin with, but on the Advanced Nutrients diet the towers of dangling bells grew huge this year. A word of caution—keep your pets away from this plant. It is toxic, if eaten.

Sara pointed to Phlox divaricata or “Sweet Lilac” Phlox as thriving on the Iguana diet. “Too bad I planted it in the middle of that flower bed,” she said, “if you could get your nose close to it you’d be able to smell its sweet fragrance.

Periodically, Sara’s flower garden does have lingering clouds of divine smells around various bushes. The Miss Kim Lilac, which unfortunately has finished blooming for the season, was my personal favorite. Its scent used to transport be to heaven.

We were lucky—the Tulip BreakingVirus did not infect any other plants. Sara reported seeing aphids on a few of her blooms, so I’m spraying every other week with a solution of horticultural oil and baking soda, in addition to the Scorpion Juice. I’m also thinking about using Piranha as a foliar spray in order to combat some of our stubborn fungi invaders.

The beneficial fungi in Piranha actually fight off and disable harmful fungi, keeping them from attacking our plants. I’m also going to have to buy more slug bait, since some of our close to the ground vegetables are being chewed by these slimy creatures.

In order to enhance the smell of some of Sara’s blooms, I’m adding some Sweet Leaf into our nutrient mix. The berry sugars and molasses in Sweet Leaf not only enhance the taste of blooms (some flowers are edible) but also boost the potency of their fragrance.

“I’ll have to check the Nutrient Calculator to see how I could fit this ingredient into the mix and still maintain our desired parts per million,” I said to Sara. She’s a great cook, but she doesn’t cook to recipe. She improvises—a pinch of this and a tad of that. She doesn’t understand that in horticulture exact pH and EC and PPM readings are required in order to maximize the yield of our plants.

“Why don’t you just call the AN technical guys, and let them do the figuring,” said Sara, making a lot of sense. Except if everybody did that, the AN support line would be tied up from morning ‘til night.

“Advanced Nutrients is helping us grow the finest flowers and most robust vegetables imaginable. The least I can do is to do the math myself, and not burden their tech guys with all the details. Then I can go to them when I really need help,” was my logic.

Looking forward to in Sara’s flower garden are the blooms of two of my favorites: Purple Cornflower (Echinacea purpurea) and Black-Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) “Indian Summer.” The latter blooms midsummer to early fall, while the former should be blooming any day now. These beautiful ornamentals are truly pleasing to the eye!

Historians say that George Washington’s household made other use of flowers and herbs. Fruit tarts were flavored with rose, orange-flower, or mint water. Most substantial kitchens in the 18th century had a “still room,” where bushels of rose petals, along with other flowers and herbs, were distilled into small bottles of strong-flavored alcohol.

A totally appropriate drink for the Fourth of July!

2007-06-27T14:58:00.000-07:00

Tiny Tree has Transplant Shock, Roses, Campanulas Bloom

Between the Delphiniums and the Campanulas, Sara’s garden is ablaze in blue. These usually tall spires of clustered blooms are even taller this year than last. We had to stake some of them with thin bamboo sticks. But the overall effect on the garden is one of magnificence.

Sara is growing different types of Campanulas this season. There’s the Campanula Peachleaf Bellflower, Campanula latifolia, Pritchard’s Variety, and Campanula Chettle Charm Bellflower.

The official Latin name of Peachleaf Bellflower is Campanula persicifolia blue form. It’s light lavender bell-shaped blooms are of the heirloom variety. Although the average height of this plant is listed as two to three feet, ours are more in the four to five foot range.

It likes average to moist soil (I guess it thrived on all the rain we’ve been getting), but it must be well drained. Its spread is 12 to 18 inches. It is one of the most popular of perennials, having graced cottage gardens for hundreds of years.

The Campanula latifolia is more purple than lavender, but it’s also meant to grow up to three feet. Ours is way beyond that height, attesting to the efficacy of our basic ferts, Iguana Juice Grow and Bloom, as well as all the supplements and additives we mix into our nutrient solution.

Plant this perennial in full sun or partial shade, and since it loves to grow near ponds it must like moisture. The English name of this flower is Great Bellflower, “Brantwood.”

The Chettle Charm Bellflower is also a Campanula persificolia variety. It has spikes of bell-shaped flowers, mostly white in color, with violet-blue around the edges. This is a new Peachleaf Bellflower that was recently introduced into North America by a British grower.

Hardy to USDA Zones 2-9. This one is true to its published height, around three feet at present. If Sara removes the faded flower heads at the end of July, she might be able to extend the blooming time of this perennial.

Campanula lactiflora Pritchard’s Variety likes sun or partial shade, but the soil must be well-drained. It needs to be watered well until it’s established and then you can cut back on the watering. It provides an explosion of small, bell-shaped lavender flowers that bloom from early to late summer.

Sara is very proud of her two types of Delphiniums. They’re growing especially tall, as well. The Magic Fountains Delphiniums (Delphinium x cultorum) is supposed to be a dwarf variety, but you could have fooled me. Instead of the two and a half feet mentioned on the label, ours is up to four feet and growing. And the flowers are towering and superb.

The New Millenium Delphinium is supposed to grow tall, from four to six feet, and definitely requires staking. It’s one of Sara’s favorites, since it was selected in New Zealand. On its stately spires grow flowers of deep sapphire to navy blue.

The Woodfield Hybrid Lupine was listed as among the top 10 varieties for 2006. It requires rich soil, slightly on the acidic side. It grows to around three or four feet, and produces distinct spires of multi-hued blooms. This plant already bloomed once this year and is now in its second flowering.

When you use Advanced Nutrients products, your garden outperforms those of your neighbors. We have people constantly asking how we got our blooms so big and how come theirs are so small. “100% organic nutrients,” we reply, “from a company that cares about living plants, by making them the best possible nourishment to guarantee beautiful flowers and large, robust vegetables.”

Advanced Nutrients makes Organic B, which is designed to reduce plant stress. They also make Colossal Bud Blast, a foliar spray that increases the size of your buds and flowers. Grandma Enggy’s Seaweed Extract contains natural hormones that help with food distribution throughout the plant, cell division, and root formation.

Hedgehog’s Roses are producing award-winning blooms, one after another. The Gentle Giant Rose is pink, with yellow highlights. All Ablaze is a deep-red climbing Rose. Cecile Brunner is a delicate, pink-colored Rose, which carries the nickname “The Sweetheart Rose.”

First hybridized in 1881, this Antique Rose will bloom from mid-spring, until frost. Ours took a bit to be established, but given the healthy diet of our nutrient mix, it is perky and we expect many more buds and blooms this year.

It usually stays a compact bush, while the flowers resemble Hybrid Teas in form and are lightly fragrant. Cecile Brunner is a very tolerant Rose. It can grow equally well in poor soil or in partial shade.

This weekend we’ll spray all our Roses once more with Scorpion Juice, in order to maintain the induced systemic resistance that this very effective product imparts to our plants. Whether they’re threatened by fungi, bacteria, or a viral infection, the salicylic acid in Scorpion Juice helps to restore full immunity to our plants, much like a flu shot.

Sara took the kids for a hike last weekend, and they found a tiny spruce growing by the side of the road. Hedgehog was worried that someone would step on it, so they dug it up and bought it home.

They didn’t know that it was a spruce, all they knew that it was an evergreen. When they got home, Sara planted it into a clay pot filled with rich soil. Ironically, the evergreen is suffering from transplant shock and it’s turning yellow.

Hedgehog is worried that it will die So I went to the garden shop and bought some Advanced Nutrients Revive. I’ve used this product before and it truly works miracles. If you have a plant that is stressed out and needs to be rejuvenated, don’t forget to get Revive.

Revive contains Calcium, Magnesium, and Nitrogen, along with Zinc and Iron Chelates. Stress also happens as a result of nutrient deficiency. Sara mentioned that the road where they picked up the sapling was pretty dry and had poor soil.
Evergreens propagate themselves by dropping their cones full of seeds. The seeds have little wings attached to them, so once they fall out of the cone, they can get blown every which way by the wind.

Nutrient deficiency is sometimes called the “yellow plant syndrome.” We pray that with the infusion of the macro and micro nutrients in Revive, Hedgehog’s little spruce tree will come back to being an evergreen.

I looked it up in a book about “Trees,” and I believe it is a Brewer Spruce, which is native to Northern California and Southern Oregon. It is not inconceivable that it has made it this far North, either as a Christmas tree or by way of cones or seeds transported by whatever means.

2007-06-20T12:49:00.000-07:00

Nasturtiums Take Over Hedgehog's Barrel

We grow Tiger Lily and Malva in containers on the back stairs, along with some other flowers and plants. Finally, it’s starting to feel like summer here on Gabriola, so more and more blooms are opening to absorb the life giving light and warmth.

The Sun Flare Rose is continuing to grace us with new blooms, while the Sweet William provides the pinkish purple cluster of blooms that characterize this lovely plant. Our vegetables continue to grow, with a whole row of Sweet Peas making their appearance against the back fence.

The oddest behavior of all our plants seems to have fallen on the prolific Nasturtium. Hedgehog grew quite a few of these annual plants from seed in jiffy pots, and Sara helped her plant them in Hedgehog’s chosen barrel, alongside some store-bought flowers.

Well, the Nasturtium has taken off like gangbusters, not just in the barrel, but a few of them spilled over into our window boxes. Since then, Sara has been told that Nasturtiums actually prefer to grow in poor, but well drained soil.

I also found out that they don’t like to be fertilized. So Sara’s rich, black, humus-like soil, coupled with her frequent applications of Iguana Juice, has spurred this edible plant to multiply like rabbits.

“Did you give it Grow or Bloom?” I asked. “Well, I gave it Iguana Juice Grow for the first application in the barrel and the window boxes, but then I switched to Bloom, since most everything else was already blooming,” was her answer.

Well, obviously the poor plant gobbled up the Nitrogen in Grow and started to grow foliage like crazy. Sara says she has never seen the circular leaves of this plant so big. Unfortunately, all this vegetative growth will be at the expense of flower production.

Hedgehog is not too upset, ever since Sara told her that we can just pick off the leaves at any time and throw them into a salad. In fact, the flowers of this plant are also edible.

Thank goodness they seem to like it, because I chewed a leaf and I’d rather stick to ordinary salad greens. But Nasturtium has ten times the vitamin C content of lettuce, so I might try it once more.

Sara must have had a premonition with regard the dominant behavior of Nasturtiums, since she didn’t plant any in her regular flowerbeds. Some plants just seem to take over wherever they grow. That’s why we grow Malva in pots, since they also behave in a dominant fashion.

“I love Morning Glory,” explained Sara, “but I would never grow it in my garden, since it covers the whole flower bed in the blink of an eye.” As it is, Sara’s flower garden is flourishing as never before, on a steady diet of organic plant food and supplements from Advanced Nutrients.

In addition to our 100% organic basic ferts, we also feed our gardens (both Sara’s flowers and my vegetables) regularly with a nutrient mix, containing Humic and Fulvic Acid—to create and maintain a highly fertile soil—as well as the root colonizers Piranha, Tarantula, and Voodoo Juice. These provide beneficial bioactive microorganisms to strengthen our root systems and help them absorb food more efficiently.

We also mix in Barricade to allow its potassium silicate molecules to thicken the cell walls of our plants. Thick cell walls repel pathogens and pests, including the sucking mouthparts of spider mites, aphids, and whiteflies.

I spray regularly with Scorpion Juice, since this AN product also wards off pathogen attacks as well as deters insects from sampling our plants. Scorpion Juice imparts induced systemic resistance, which boosts the immune systems of our garden cultivars.

SensiZym and Seaweed Extract are two additional AN products that we use regularly. The latter is like a shot of multi-vitamin as well as of naturally occurring plant hormones that aid in cell division, food absorption, and overall growth.

Organic B is not only a highly effective B-complex vitamin from organic sources, but a veritable soothing agent for our plants whenever they get stressed out. We try to water them regularly, in order to prevent drought stress, but too much rain can also stress out a garden, and we’ve had plenty of precipitation in the past few weeks.

Some advice pertaining to Nasturtiums. Make sure to keep them trimmed back, or else they’ll crowd out the other plants. Soon after I took the above pictures, Sara picked quite a few leaves for a salad, so Hedgehog’s barrel and the window box in question look much better.

Nasturtium flowers are an array of colors—cream, crimson, orange, or yellow—and they are self-seeding. So left to their own devices they will come back the following year, provided they are allowed to go to seed and the winter is not too cold.

They don’t like to be watered too often, one deep-watering every seven to ten days is sufficient. So the copious amounts of rain we’ve been getting, almost on a daily basis, could also account for their prolific vegetative growth.

They’re members of the genus Nasturtium of the Mustard family. In fact the name could refer to one of eighty species of annual or perennial plants in the genera of Tropaeolum, one of three on the family of Tropaeolaceae.

Hedgehog is growing T. majus, one of three very popular varieties of the plant. Native to Central and South America, the Conquistadors brought the species to Europe. Today, it is grown all over the world.

You may grow them either in direct or indirect sunlight, but some varieties prefer partial shade. After doing a bit of research I decided to grow them on the edges of my vegetable garden next year, since they seem to repel some pests that plague cucurbits, such as squash and cucumbers.

Caterpillars don’t like them, so they stay away, and supposedly they attract predatory insects. They ward off aphids and whiteflies, so next year they’ll go next to my tomatoes, but not too close. And if they get out of hand, Hedgehog can have them in a salad. She should be eating more vegetables anyway.

Some people, those who have a lot of time on their hands, will no doubt enjoy making Nasturtium Butter, Nasturtium Mayonnaise, or Nasturtium and Potato Soup. The latter I love, so I might look up an easy recipe and attempt it myself.

2007-06-13T16:51:00.000-07:00

Leaf Miners on Roses, Slugs on the Zucchini

Whenever things get hectic in our household—when Hedgehog is chasing one of the cats and Jim is acting up and Sara is trying to answer the phone, balance our chequebook, and keep the pizza from burning in the oven, all at the same time-I escape by stepping into our garden.

There is great solace to be had communing with nature. Sara’s flower garden is very eclectic, so many different kinds of plants and flowers are growing side by side. Her Delphiniums and Monk’s Hood have shot up like there’s no tomorrow. The Catmint is in flower right now and has overrun the borders of several of her flowerbeds.

Another beautiful flower that’s at the peak of perfection is the Campanula Blue Bells. I seem to remember this plant at the side of country roads in my native Hungary. Its string of lovely blue flowers truly signal the arrival of summer, even though that season hadn’t yet officially arrived on Gabriola.

Sara attributes the thriving of her flowers to our basic fertilizers, Iguana Juice Grow and Bloom. We have switched over to Bloom in Sara’s garden, but are still using grow for my vegetables, which have yet to grow tall and lush like her blooms.

Of course, we realize that the other Advanced Nutrients additives, supplements, and root colonizers we use also contribute to the overall health of our plants.

Organic B. for instance, helps all of our garden to withstand and be able to cope with stress. It’s a natural source Vitamin B product that is easily absorbed by just about any plant, and permeates the plant cells with vitality and vigor.

We discovered two setbacks in this past week. Some of our Roses have been attacked by Leaf Miners. I’ve been lax with my spraying regimen, since my work has been occupying all of my time, so this particular moth has been laying its eggs on our rose leaves.

Once the eggs hatch and larvae emerge, they burrow into the soft tissue of the leaves and leave unsightly, white markings on the leaf’s surface. I’ve been spraying once every three weeks with Scorpion Juice, alternately with a mixture of horticultural oil and baking soda.

I will have to accelerate my spraying schedule to once every two weeks, alternating with the oil. These moths are supposedly repelled by the oil on the leaf’s surface. Luckily, only a small percentage of our rose leaves are involved, so the mere removal of infected leaves goes a long way to solving the problem.

We use Barricade regularly, but I ran out of it last week, so this week’s nutrient solution does not include this potassium silicate product that makes the cell walls of all of our plants stronger, helping them to repel attacks such as the Leaf Miner infestation.

Another problem occurred in the vegetable patch. Sara purchased some zucchini and cucumber seedlings that didn’t look too healthy. The garden shop was running out and she grabbed what she could. I had my eye on these ever since we planted them.

They never quite perked up, even with the application of Iguana Juice Grow. So I applied Piranha, Tarantula, and Voodoo Juice to their roots. Still, they looked unhealthy. An application of Scorpion Juice followed, hoping to knock out whatever was ailing these plants.

They are still quire sickly and might have to be removed, in order to keep my other vegetables safe from any contagious diseases.

My vegetable patch started to show signs of slugs chewing on plant leaves. I bought some slug bait and sprinkled it around the plants. It seems to work.

I remembered the yogurt containers with the ragged edges and the egg shells that Sara placed around her Delphiniums and some of her other flowers. Judging from the six-foot plus Delphiniums, those slug preventative methods worked beautifully.

.Some of Sara’s Roses are already blooming. Her Stainless Steel shows a pink streak-edged bud, but once it opens, the flowers are a mixture of white and cream, sort of metallic in color. We’ve had a lot of rain, so some of the buds have brown spots on them, an unavoidable reality when growing Roses in the rainforest.

Her Blue Girl has one very special Rose on it, while Sun Flare has several Yellow Roses, with more buds ready to open. Sun Flare she bought from a garden shop just this year, while the single bloom of Blue Girl was one of the prides of her garden last year, as well.

Other flowers blooming in Sara’s garden at present are Sweet William, Campanula Canterbury Bells, and the perennial Lady’s Mantle Irish Silk (Alchemilla mollis), which grows in either sun or shade.

Its delicate lime green flowers appear in a cluster and add an ethereal touch to the garden, especially when morning dew drops cling to the flowers. It grows better in the shade, but with all the rain we’ve been getting, so far too much sun is absolutely no problem.

In the constantly changing climate of Canada’s West Coast it is hard to keep up with a regular watering regimen for your garden. You get up and see the black rain clouds in the sky, so you figure that watering is not necessary. Then you go out at lunchtime and the hot sun has already dried the soil from last night’s shower.

Sara and I try to follow the rule of watering only in the morning to give our garden a chance to dry out during the day. However, if the noonday sun comes out and dries everything out, we have to water in the afternoon, in order to keep everything from wilting.

It’s hard to follow the advice of the gardening guru on radio, who keeps saying that you should let your soil totally dry out between waterings, and then drench the soil to get the moisture to the roots. It makes beautiful sense, but in practice it doesn’t always work out that way.

Some of the newly planted vegetables look wilted and dried out by the middle of the afternoon and they’re begging me for a drink. I don’t have the heart to deny them the life giving liquid. Especially when the liquid also contains life- sustaining nutrients that feed our plants the finest plant food available.

Made by Advanced Nutrients, naturally.