The Lanark County and Ottawa-Carleton Master Gardeners are proud to present you with the February issue of the Trowel Talk newsletter. Articles of the month:
• Architectural Plants
• Bur Oak
• Oh No! Oak Wilt in Ontario
• Cutting Tools: A Cut Above
• Wild Strawberry
For more information on the Lanark County Master Gardeners, visit their website here.
Interested to further increase your gardening knowledge?
Select a category below to consult our archived educational documents.
The Lanark County and Ottawa-Carleton Master Gardeners are proud to present you with the January issue of the Trowel Talk newsletter. Articles of the month:
• Violets in Space
• Ode to the Sawzall
• Eastern White Pine
• Prairie Smoke
For more information on the Lanark County Master Gardeners, visit their website here.
Interested to further increase your gardening knowledge?
Select a category below to consult our archived educational documents.
The Lanark County and Ottawa-Carleton Master Gardeners are proud to present you with the December issue of the Trowel Talk newsletter. Articles of the month:
• Land Acknowledgement
• Native Trees for Ottawa Gardens
• Book review of Growing Joy
• Planting for Northern Cardinals
• Little Bluestem
For more information on the Lanark County Master Gardeners, visit their website here.
Interested to further increase your gardening knowledge?
Select a category below to consult our archived educational documents.
The Lanark County and Ottawa-Carleton Master Gardeners are proud to present you with the November issue of the Trowel Talk newsletter. Articles of the month:
• Ten Common Gardening Mistakes
• To prune or not to prune
• Planting for Sparrows
• New England Aster
For more information on the Lanark County Master Gardeners, visit their website here.
Interested to further increase your gardening knowledge?
Select a category below to consult our archived educational documents.
Master Gardener Top Picks:
Plants for Butterflies!
Text: Amanda Carrigan
Who doesn’t like seeing butterflies in the garden, fluttering here and there, and daintily alighting on a flower to sip the nectar? But they’re not just ornamental – butterflies and moths play a role in pollinating the plants they visit. And of course we all know they are caterpillars before becoming butterflies or moths, and perhaps cursed at those caterpillars eating our plants. But those caterpillars (and other insects) are a boon to many birds and some bees and wasps, serving as a food source for their offspring. So by planting things that attract butterflies, you are helping insect pollinators and birds as well!
We asked the Ottawa Master Gardeners what their favourite plants for butterflies were, and got a wide variety of responses – there’s certain to be at least one that will do well in anyone’s garden!
Top pick overall:
Swamp milkweed, Asclepias incarnata.
Photo: Amanda C.
A sphinx moth sipping from a swamp milkweed flower
Native to Ontario. A tall plant with pink or white flowers. Despite the name, it will do well in average soil, and likes sun. Serves as a larval host plant for the monarch butterfly, and is visited by other pollinators as well.
Runners-up:
Borage, Borago officinalis & Zinnia
Photo: iStock Photos : JillLang
Monarch butterfly resting on a zinnia.
Borage is perhaps more of a herb than an ornamental, but the blue flowers are attractive and edible. Annual zinnias come in a wide range of colours and sizes, but for best butterfly and pollinator results, choose more open, single flowers over highly double pompom types.
Other plants for butterflies:
Shrubs:
Photo: Nancy M.
Butterfly on Heptacodium miconoides flowers.
Photo: iStock Photos : ruthanburke
A swallowtail caterpillar feeding on dill.
Herbs and annuals:
Perennials and grasses:
Photo: Nancy M.
A swallowtail butterfly on sundrops (Oenethera fruticosa)
Author: Amanda C.
The False, or Wild, Blue Indigo, Baptisia australis, is in bloom at the Alcove for the first time. Baptisias are a lovely perennial, and they grow big enough to appear more like a shrub in the summer garden. At full size, they can be over 1.5 meters tall and wide. They grow significant taproots, meaning they’re drought-tolerant, but difficult to move. (Hmm, and this one is very close to the snowberry bushes already. Something will have to be done about that. Even experienced gardeners can make mistakes in placement.) Being legumes, they fix nitrogen in the soil. And baptisias are the only known larval food of the Indigo Duskywing butterfly.
Baptisias are an exclusively American genus, ranging across the continent. B. australis is the one which grows the furthest north. Many of the others have white or yellow flowers rather than blue-purple, and cross-breeding has produced hybrids flowering in various purple, bronze and bi-coloured combinations also. The seed pods can be an attractive feature after flowering.
Why ‘Indigo’ in the name, when most species aren’t blue-flowering? It was reported as being used as a substitute for real indigo (also a legume family member), to produce a blue dye. At least one species of Baptisia, B. tinctoria, does produce some blue pigment, but it seems to be a very small amount – one modern dyer who tried it found that a pickup truck bed full of plant material was only able to dye about 30 grams of wool light blue. So it seems that False Indigo, rather than Wild Indigo, is the more accurate common name for the genus.
False Blue Indigo in bloom at the Alcove Garden
Photo: Amanda C.
Author: Amanda C.
A work colleague mentioned this week that she had seen a small black bee crawling into some bamboo cane she had on her balcony, presumably nesting in it, and wanted to get some flowers for the bee and any friends that came. She didn’t have a picture, though, so the question was, what bee was it and what would it eat? Some research found the information that there are possibly several small, black, cavity-nesting bee species active here at this season, and that some are generalists (i.e. they aren’t picky eaters), but the specialist (picky) ones mostly like plants in the rose family – which includes roses, obviously, but also things like potentillas and strawberries.
The next day at the Alcove Garden, the potentillas (Dasiphora fruticosa) were in full bloom. And lo and behold, they were hosting at least two different types of small black bees! If you’re not really looking, you may not notice them, or you may wonder if they’re flying ants; they’re about ant-sized, and they don’t sit down for long or make noise compared to what we expect from the larger bumblebees and honeybees. But they are out there zipping about and doing their job of pollinating. Crouch or sit close to a potentilla shrub and watch for a few minutes this week, and you may see them in action.
A small dark native bee gathers pollen from a flower in a blooming potentilla shrub.
Photo: Amanda C.
Author: Amanda C.
Well, we know we’ve got ants in the garden at the Alcove! Which is not the bad thing some people think it is. All right, no-one likes having an ant-hill pop up under their moss phlox. But ants are important seed dispersers for a number of native plant species with relatively large heavy seeds, including bloodroot, wild ginger, and trillium. The seeds of these plants include a fatty growth, called an elaiosome, on the surface, which the ants want to take and store for food. So they pick up the seeds and bring them home, and when the elaiosome has been eaten, the seed gets put on their midden/compost heap. So the seed gets essentially planted in compost by the ants, and has a chance to sprout at a distance from the mother plant. The baby bloodroot shown here is close to the parent, but other seedlings of this, and the wild ginger, are showing up over a foot from the parent plants, so someone’s moving them!
A bloodroot seedling near the parent plant. Seedlings of bloodroot and ginger farther from the plant are probably moved by ants using the seed elaiosome for food.
Photo: Amanda C.
Author: Amanda C.
The weather’s been warm enough this past week that things have started growing quite nicely. A quick rooting around at the Alcove to see how things had wintered showed the Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginiana) I put in late last season had survived and were coming up, with leaves and flower buds showing in shades of violet. Very exciting, because they were dormant when I planted them (they go dormant early), so there was no real way to tell if they had survived until now! Some of the violet colour is probably from the cooler weather – there were other purple-tinged shoots of things in the garden – but soon enough it will turn to green leaves and pink and blue flowers.
Some of the other garden inhabitants were enjoying the warm weather as well. While I was checking under the leaf mulch for new shoots of things, I came across several seven-spotted ladybugs, awake, and clearly ready for another season of their aphid-fighting duties after their winter’s rest.
The purple shoots of Virginia bluebell leaves and flower buds emerging from the soil at the Alcove Garden in April
Photo: Amanda C.
Dog Strangling Vine...
Put Your Battle Gloves On!
Text: Candace Dressler
Diagram: Publication 505, Ontario Weeds, OMAFRA
What is Dog Strangling Vine?
Dog-strangling vine, Vincetoxicum nigrum (L.) Moench, aka: cynanque noir, Black swallow-wort, Cynanchum nigrum (L.)
A member of the Milkweed Family (Asclepiadaceae), it is thought to have been imported from Eurasia to North America in the late 19th century. It is a Noxious Weed as listed under the Ontario Weed Control Act, R.S.O. 1990, Chapter W.5. Dog strangling vine is a rapidly growing single stemmed vine with opposite oval leaves. It gets pretty little purple-brown star shaped flowers and then distinctive 4 – 6 cm long thin seed pods that split in late August to spread up to 30 000 seeds per square meter. It spreads by seed and by rhizome. It grows in a wide range of soil and light conditions, preferring to start at the edge of a hedge or forest. It smothers other plants out. It changes the soil around it so it is uninhabitable for native plants.
Photo: Barbara Long – MG
Dog Strangling vine can produce up to 30 000 seeds per square meter.
Photo: Barbara Long – MG
Dog Strangling vine invading a nearby woodland.
Why is in a noxious weed?
And why do we want to get rid of it?
It will strangle and smother off the native and cultivated species in your garden within a couple of years if left unchecked. It will reach 2 meters in height wrapping itself around trees and anything else it can find. Dog Strangling vine threatens the Monarch Butterfly. The butterflies mistake it for milkweed and lay their eggs on them, but the larvae cannot feed off the dog strangling vine and they die. The Ontario Weed control act states “Every person in possession of land shall destroy all noxious weeds on it. R.S.O. 1990, c. W.5, s. 3.” So now we know it needs to go how do we go about it?
Removal of Dog Strangling Vine
On large plants do not pull out, you will get a better response to cutting it off than pulling it. Pulling it causes the root to splinter and results in more plants: Each of the root threads will sprout a new vine and where you had one vine you will now have four.
MANUAL CONTROL
Remove them to stop the spread by rhizome
• Physically remove the plant by digging it out, you need to get all of the crown of the root. Use a Japanese garden knife to dig out the young seedlings.
• Till the soil and then sift it to get all the pieces of crown root.
After removal a good thick layer of mulch will help stop the germination of seeds.
Control them to stop the spread by seed.
This will keep your invasion from spreading to your neighbours.
• Remove the flowers and seed pods: Cutting the plant off as close to the ground as possible.
• You may have to do it a couple of times per year.
• If the seed pods are starting to mature dispose of the plant material
in a black garbage bag, leave it in the sun for a couple of weeks before putting it in your regular waste, do not compost.
Volunteers working at removing Dog Strangling vine in an infested area.
Whatever you do do not ignore Dog Strangling Vine, it will only get worse.
Photos: Barbara Long – MG
Dog Strangling vine root crown.
SOIL SOLARIZATION
This will sterilize the soil and kill any seeds left behind.
1. Cut the plants off as close to the ground as possible
2. Cover area with 2 to 4 mil clear plastic sheeting, anchoring the edges.
3. Leave for 6 – 8 weeks.
This method works best in the summer with lots of sunshine
You can find more detailed tutorials online.
CHEMICAL CONTROL
According to The Landowner’s Guide To Controlling Invasive Woodland Plants the only herbicides recommended for dog strangling vine contain imazapyr.
OMAFRA’s Publication 75, Guide to Weed Control lists ARSENAL, glyphosate and TRUVIST as effective.
The Fletcher Wildlife Garden says glyphosate has variable results and may have to be reapplied over several years.
n.b. Imazapyr and glyphosate are listed as a class 9 herbicides, banned for use in Ontario unless the use is excepted. Exception may be given for invasive plant control, but you will need to have a licensed pesticide operator apply it
References
http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/facts/ontweeds/dogstrangling_vine.htm
https://www.down2earth.ca/dog-strangling-vine-control-aggressive-weed-garde
The Landowner’s Guide to Controlling Invasive Woodland Plants
https://www.thespruce.com/soil-solarization-method-for-killing-weeds-2132941
http://agri3.huji.ac.il/~katan/about.html This is a very good video with techniqu
http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/facts/ontweeds/dogstrangling_vine.htm
https://www.down2earth.ca/dog-strangling-vine-control-aggressive-weed-garde
The Landowner’s Guide to Controlling Invasive Woodland Plants
https://www.thespruce.com/soil-solarization-method-for-killing-weeds-2132941
http://agri3.huji.ac.il/~katan/about.html This is a very good video with techniqu
