Down The Garden Path Podcast

By: Joanne Shaw
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  • Summary

  • On Down the Garden Path Podcast, landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes. She believes it is important and possible to have great gardens that are low maintenance. On Down the Garden Path, she speaks with industry experts and garden authors to educate listeners on how to seasonally manage their gardens and landscapes.
    Joanne Shaw
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Episodes
  • October in the Garden

    October in the Garden
    Oct 1 2024
    In October in the Garden, Joanne Shaw reviews some of the tasks you can do this month but insists it's not as labour-intensive as you may think! Tasks you can do this month: Vegetable Gardens Clean up and remove the old stems of your tomato or pepper plants that have stopped producing.Sow cool weather plants like lettuce and some spinach: they grow better in the shoulder seasons, late spring /early summer or fall.Buy plants at a garden centre or start seeds and sow them right into the garden.Top up the vegetable garden with some compost or manure to get ahead of next year.Take pictures so you know where plants are because next year you may need to put things in different places.Plant a cover crop. Containers If you want to take advantage of the nice weather at the beginning of October, take your vegetable out of its container and pop in an aster. Annuals and Perennials Annuals: With no frost anytime soon, annuals are probably still doing okay. They may be a little bit leggy or sad-looking. Perk them up with water and fertilizer.Perennials: No need to cut them back. You can do some deadheading if things are really looking brown and not necessarily attractive. Deciduous Trees and Shrubs Trees: It is important to water deciduous trees, especially young ones, certainly ones that you just planted this year.Water them deeply every week. Evergreen shrubs: Enjoy the fall colour and shape of your shrubs. Cutting them back now is not necessary.Keep newly planted shrubs well-watered. They need some extra time to get established. Being in a drought situation as they go into dormancy in winter is never a good thing. Seeds and Bulbs It’s a good time to buy and plant your garlic.Spring bulbs: find and buy bulbs – just don’t plant them until the end of October, or the beginning of November!I recommend not planting tulips but instead looking at the interesting varieties of daffodils or alliumsDaffodils and alliums are poisonous to squirrels and other rodents, so they will leave them alone. Lawn Care Time to apply fall fertilizer.Pay attention to the weeds, especially crabgrass which is prolific this time of yearApply corn gluten to act as a preemergent, preventing the weed seeds from germinating. It’s best to apply during spring and fall. Resources Mentioned in the Show: Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden Have a topic you'd like me to discuss? Please let me know what other topics you would like me to discuss. Email your questions and comments to downthegardenpathpodcast@hotmail.com, or connect with me on my website: down2earth.ca Find Down the Garden Path on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube: @downthegardenpathpodcast. Down the Garden Path Podcast On Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes. As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade. She does her best to bring you interesting, relevant and useful topics to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible. In Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden, Joanne and fellow landscape designer Matthew Dressing distill their horticultural and design expertise and their combined experiences in helping others create and maintain thriving gardens into one easy-to-read monthly reference guide. Get your copy today on Amazon. Don't forget to check out Down the Garden Path on your favourite podcast app and subscribe! You can now catch the podcast on YouTube.
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    29 mins
  • Adding Asters to Your Garden

    Adding Asters to Your Garden
    Sep 23 2024
    In this episode of Down the Garden Path, Joanne Shaw discusses how to extend the blooming season in your garden by adding asters. Topics covered in this week's episode: Gardens don't have to stop blooming in September. We can extend the season to October and November.It’s very important to have because the pollinators still need something blooming.There are over 30 different species of asters.They have a huge variety of growing conditions, so there is an aster for whatever challenging growing condition you have. Here are the five asters discussed: New England Aster, Symphyotrichum nova-angliae The showiest, and likely the one you’re most familiar withNative to most U.S. states and provincesIt is large and very showy, with a bright cozy blue flower with a yellow centreThe leaves on the stem are densely arranged on the stemPrefer soil moist and they can grow in part shadeOne of the larger varieties: up to six feet tall Whitewood Aster Eurybia divaricata Delicate looking flowersGrows in dry shade which means it makes a wonderful addition to the shade gardenNot super showy like most shade plantsFound in Ontario in dry, deciduous forestsSo that's exactly what we want in our garden. If you have maple trees, pine trees, or something like that where the soil underneath is very dry and it's very shady, then this is something worth giving a try toOnly gets two to three feet tall Smooth Aster Symphyotrichum laeve Similar to the New England Aster, although hence its name, it has leaves that are very smooth lavender and blueHas a daisy-type flower with a yellow centreBlooms from August to OctoberA huge pollinator for butterflies and a larvae host for the pearl crescent butterfly Heart leaf Aster Symphyotrichum cordifolium Lavender to light blueIt is one of the latest ones to bloom and actually goes into NovemberAn excellent pollinator for butterflies and bees at late in the seasonSpreads slowly by rhizomes and it lightly self-seedsTwo to three feet tall, sandy to loam soil, and part shade to full shade Panicled Aster Symphyotrichum lanceolatum This one blooms with sprays of white flowers, open spreading form, so also known as floppyBest grown with other plants to kind of support itIf you already have a native garden, or if you're planting a native garden with other large tall plants, then this could be an addition if you want thatPrefers moist soil, but it likes full sun You can purchase seeds from Wildflower Farm and you can again, sprinkle them or plant them in your garden this fallYou can also start them like you normally would do if you wanted them to grow in February/March under lights and go through that type of thing indoors and then put them out next year Resources Mentioned in the Show: Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden Fall Mums and Asters Have a topic you'd like me to discuss? Please let me know what other topics you would like me to discuss. Email your questions and comments to downthegardenpathpodcast@hotmail.com, or connect with me on my website: down2earth.ca Find Down the Garden Path on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube: @downthegardenpathpodcast. Down the Garden Path Podcast On Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes. As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade. She does her best to bring you interesting, relevant and useful topics to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible. In Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden, Joanne and fellow landscape designer Matthew Dressing distill their horticultural and design expertise and their combined experiences in helping others create and maintain thriving gardens into one easy-to-read monthly reference guide. Get your copy today on Amazon. Don't forget to check out Down the Garden Path on your favourite podcast app and subscribe! You can now catch the podcast on YouTube.
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    18 mins
  • Eco-Lawn & Native Plant Mixes with Miriam Goldberger from Wildflower Farm

    Eco-Lawn & Native Plant Mixes with Miriam Goldberger from Wildflower Farm
    Sep 16 2024
    This week on Down the Garden Path, Joanne Shaw speaks with Wildflower Farm's Miriam Goldberger about Eco-Lawn, the answer to a truly low-maintenance lawn, as well as some of her favourite native plants you can include in your garden. About Miriam Goldberger Miriam Goldberger is the founder and co-owner of Wildflower Farm, a wildflower seed production company in Ontario — a magical 100 acres where the flower gardens and meadows thrive without pesticides and are a pollinators' paradise. To learn more about Miriam’s journey, visit the Wildflower Farm website. Here are some of the topics covered in this episode: Miriam’s book, Taming Wildflowers, was published over 10 years ago. Joanne noted how Miriam has become a pioneer in the industry of native plants and wildflowers.The book contains helpful information about how to grow native plants in specific locations and is available on the Wildflower Farm website. Miriam recommends three of her favourite “polite” wildflowers: Black-eyed Susan, a stable perennial for late-summer/early-fallGaillardia or blanket flower, a vivid and bright yellow/orange/red colour that will stay in bloomPrairie drop seed, a clump-forming, non-aggressive grass that looks beautiful from late spring right through into the fall. Miriam also discussed Eco-Lawn: Our customers had urged us to develop a lawn that was just as sustainable, drought tolerant and low maintenance as our wildflower gardens and meadows.While walking in the forests of Ontario, we spotted clumps of rich green grass growing in the deep shade of the northern woods. Could these emerald patches be used as natural grass pathways around and through our wildflower meadows?After three years of research and trials later, Eco-Lawn was born.Since its introduction in 1998, it has changed the face of lawnscaping across North America for homeowners, businesses and municipalities.Eco-Lawn combines several native fescues that grow together to create a matte or lawn.The roots are deeper than our Kentucky Bluegrass which makes it much more drought tolerant and can grow under a variety of light conditions.You can start a new lawn with the seed or slowly convert an existing lawn into a low maintenance Eco- lawn.The fall is the best time to start Eco-lawn! Full instructions on how to prepare for applying Eco-lawn are available on their website. You can find Wildflower Farm at www.wildflowerfarm.com. Find Down the Garden Path on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube: @downthegardenpathpodcast. Email your questions and comments to downthegardenpathpodcast@hotmail.com, or connect with Joanne via her website: down2earth.ca Down the Garden Path Podcast On Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes. As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade. She does her best to bring you interesting, relevant and useful topics to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible. In Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden, Joanne and fellow landscape designer Matthew Dressing distill their horticultural and design expertise and their combined experiences in helping others create and maintain thriving gardens into one easy-to-read monthly reference guide. Get your copy today on Amazon. Don't forget to check out Down the Garden Path on your favourite podcast app and subscribe! You can now catch the podcast on YouTube.
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    50 mins
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