It’s time to rub elbows with the greenery. We’re chock full of Christmas trees, grape-vine orbs, evergreen fronds, pine cones, bright red berries, elegant coloured twigs and garlands. Pop over to the garden centre and we’ll inspire your holiday spirit. “Let the festooning begin!”.

Holiday planters, artfully put together by John, at Fiesta Gardens.

We take the Christmas and Holiday season to twinkling heights at Fiesta. The garden centre is aglow with festive delights, glistening greenery, decorative winter planters, and an unparalleled array of Christmas tree varieties. The scent of the pine needles is worth the trip alone. We’re quite proud of our full-service tree lot, we trim and help you get your tree hoisted onto your sleigh, or whatever vehicle you operate. Plus, our large variety of trees are displayed in full, not all wrapped up, so you can pick out the perfect one.

We’ve got natural dogwood and willow twigs, winter berries and evergreen fronds, as well as man made. And our man made decorations are a superior quality non-bleed sort, which can last you a few seasons. Whether you like to decorate your holiday planters yourself, or get one already decked out by our talented planter designer, John, you’ll find all the inspiration you need for the wintry season at Fiesta Gardens. Oh, and did we mention, there’s cocoa, and a cheery fire?

If you are pushed for time, holiday decorating can be as simple as tossing out whatever straggling annuals are in your doorway planter and sticking in an armful of pine and cedar fronds. Even little touches add a cheery note to the hibernating season, and make a beautiful spot for snowflakes to land. More ideas to come as the season progresses.

Poet’s Narcissus, Narcissus Actaea is lovely, and fragrant. You can’t have too many of these.

You know that sick feeling when you feel your shovel going through a bulb already in your garden bed? It’s a tricky flower bulb planting challenge to remember where the heck you planted them last year. Or the year before. Here’s a great method to get some bulbs in the ground and allow you to increase your spring display without endangering any bulbs planted previously.

We’ll talk about daffodils and crocus here, because they are the garden gift that keeps on giving, if you have the right conditions, mainly, a sunny spot. Unlike tulips, that tend to run down (get smaller and stop blooming) daffodils will increase where they are happy. Full sun allows leaves to fully ripen in the spring and enrich the bulbs, which then double by creating offsets, giving you many more daffodils to spread around. And all for free! Here’s how to do it:

1. Use your empty vegetable garden or any corner of your garden that’s bare, to plant daffodils in clumps of five (crocuses, grape hyacinths, scillas too). The soil is already worked, so planting is easy.
2. In spring, dig them up, bulbs, leaves and all, and replant in spots in the garden where you have bare patches. The other bulbs will be in flower, or leafed out, so you know you won’t damage any. You’ve now created the beginnings of your host of golden daffodils.

Fruit is heavy. Stake and tie before they flop.

Potato plants in my garden exploded with top growth last week. They’ve been surging up and up with mad abandon, then suddenly got tired of being upright and flopped dramatically over the sides of the container. “It’s harrrd being a potato plant,” I may have heard them moaning. What to do?

Ten containers of heirloom tomatoes have also responded to the heat and burst every which way with gonzo growth. I did catch these mostly in time, and gave myself a gold star. Here are a few staking tips to keep your garden veggies from tumbling over.

1. Tie tomatoes (and potatoes in containers) up before they flop. You will feel like a superior human being if you manage this.
2. Recycle old pantyhose to make no-cost plant ties. They’re kind to plants, as they are soft and stretchy. Cut the legs horizontally in one inch strips, keep cutting till you have a pile. Use one loop or loop more together to make a longer plant tie.
3. Tie onto the stake first, quite tightly, then wrap tie around plant firmly but gently. Don’t strangle it.
4. Get the sturdiest stakes you can find. If there are two widths of bamboo, go for the thicker one. Conduit pipe and copper pipe also make good stakes and will last forever. Plus they are easy to hammer into the soil. Wood stakes are fine too, but don’t use any pressure treated wood.
5. In a container you may need more than one stake, as the growing depth is shallower. More stakes give more stability.
6. Large sections of twigs can also be good for staking. I used several dogwood stems I pulled out of my spring planters to stake cherry tomatoes. Does the job, plus looks attractive.
7. Handle tomato plants gently, especially if they have already started flopping, as the stems can snap easily.

Getting in amongst the plants like this can be quite an enjoyable chore, if you like the pungent, green smell of tomato plants, as I do. And they always look so happy when it’s done. Once the tomatoes start forming, you may need reinforcements with your staking, so keep cutting up that pantyhose.

The inspiring, entertaining, and straightforward Ruth Stout (1884–1980) was an American gardener and writer who perfected what she called the “No Work” vegetable garden method: the principle of using a year round mulch of hay. She came to gardening late in life and wrote several gardening books on making gardening easy. Ruth was one of the first to propose the no-dig, no-plow vegetable garden, a practice that preserves the soil structure and valuable microorganisms. The video above shows Ruth planting potatoes by casually tossing sprouted spuds on the ground, then covering with hay.

A thick layer of straw, newspaper, or any other organic mulch is essential in the hot, dry days of mid summer especially now, in the middle of a heat wave and drought. As Ruth says, “mulch keeps the soil soft and moist”, the perfect growing medium for most plants. When watering, if soil is very dry, pull newspaper away from base of plants to make sure water sinks in, then re-cover to hold the moisture in.

I can’t argue with Ruth’s gardening philosophy, “I don’t do anything I don’t want to do, and I don’t have to.” I also like her professed habit of having her breakfast Roman-style, on the couch.