Murray Wood: Of Easter bunny bells and Juicy Fruit gum
For Murray Wood, Easter brings to mind grandma's practical advice about repurposing, and some of life's little lessons.
Your garden might be like Goldilocks this weekend in all this heat.
Too much water, not enough water.
That will be the struggle for many gardeners in Regina this weekend, as temperatures will hit the low 30’s from Saturday through Monday.
Rick Van Duyvendyk, host of Garden Talk on 980 CJME, said it’s all about consistency when it comes to gardens, especially vegetables like cucumbers and peppers.
“They don’t like to go wet, dry, wet, dry, wet, dry,” he explained. “Just to keep consistent moisture is very important for vegetables to keep diseases and those kinds of things away from them.”
Van Duyvendyk suggested setting sprinkler timers for some time between 6 and 8 a.m.
“Don’t water at night time,” he said. “The moisture will sit at the top of the leaves all night and especially in this kind of heat and you humidity, you’ll get – all of the sudden– a lot of powdery mildew starting in your garden and then you’ll have a lot of problems in your garden with fungals.”
You can get a bit more heavy duty when it comes to bigger trees, like spruce or maple.
“If you just turn on your lawn sprinklers on for maybe 20-30 minutes, that’s almost the same equivalent of, you know, sitting on the middle of an asphalt parking lot and just misting your face and expecting that to be enough water for them.”
Van Duyvendyk said big trees need “deep water” and he advises people to let their hoses soak the trees for about an hour.
“They transpire so much that they need the moisture to keep up with the heat,” he said.
Van Duyvendyk said many people are dealing with fungals in both their grass, trees and gardens this year, due to humidity. He said people are also asking him about insects, like aphids.
