Calling all gardeners who want to feed their addiction to plants or wish to share some plants with others.
The annual Kelowna Garden Club plant sale is happening this coming Saturday April 26 at Guisachan Heritage Garden. On hand will be Master Gardeners who can help with the information on the plants you are interested in buying and members of the garden club will be there to tell you all about this wonderful organization.
The sale itself starts at 9 a.m. Gardening tools, containers, books and magazines will be included for sale as well as a wide variety of plant material.
If you have something you would like to donate to the sale the organizers would appreciate receiving it on Friday evening from 5 to 7 p.m. or on Saturday morning from 7 a.m. on. If neither of these drop off times are suitable to you, then please call Alicja at 250-717-0570 to arrange to make arrangements.
Also at the show for the enjoyment of the attendees will be an invasive plant display, a Master Gardeners table, a Container Planting Demonstration and a Xeriscape display.
This perfect way to kick off the spring gardening season just gets better every year. Good for you Kelowna Garden Club.
I always try and donate something to the sale and this year it will be a flat of Kelsey Spanish onion seedlings.
What a great time of year it is to take time and do a garden walk or drive or bike ride around the city or just the neighbourhood. Some of the exciting colourful plant material you will see include all the yellows such as forsythia, daffodils, euphorbia (cushion spurge) and of course the dandelions.
The pinks and mauves of the magnolias, the flowering plums, the red buds and the daphne stand out.
The whites, including star magnolias, are magnificent as will be soon the bridal wreath spireas and mock orange.
The blue hyacinths, glory of the snow, and Japanese iris are striking and the hot reds mainly in the tulip family round out the colour spectrum.
Test old seeds
If you are like most gardeners you probably have a lot of old seed packs in your inventory that may or may not contain viable seed. Before taking a chance on planting questionable seed you should do a germination test.
Take a few seeds, I generally do five, and put them in a wet paper towel or Kleenex tissue in a saucer. Keep them at room temperature for a few days and monitor the results. If only a couple of seeds out of the five germinate I would say it is time to discard and them all and purchase new seed.
Otherwise, at least you will have an idea of what to expect when sowing the seed.
For best results store seed in sealed containers at room temperature; some seed such as onion does not keep well while some such as tomato will stay viable for years.
Dormant spray
Just a reminder: If you didn’t get the dormant spray on your roses yet there is still time even though they are leafing out.
On the other hand now that the peaches and nectarines are showing colour it is too late to spray without causing damage to their blossoms.
