Doors Open Toronto 2011 at Toronto Botanical Garden

On Sunday, I spent three wonderful hours looking at a spectacular garden, and talking to people about it. What bliss. Most of these images are cleverly devoid of people... but be assured, the place was hopping. And the rain held off. Hope you enjoy the tour.

Lily leaf beetle season

Get those squishing fingers on. The lily leaf beetles are back, and they're noshing on your Asiatic and Oriental lilies.

In fact, they're making like the two-backed beast, or beetle, to create the next generations of bright red eating machines. Until they earn their red beetle wings, these will be squishy brown blobs of beetle poo with a hungry, hungry larva inside it. (There's one here.)

Not a pretty sight, no matter how attractively coloured the adult is.

Go to this post for a look at the beetle eggs, which are likely underneath lily leaves near you. Squashing the eggs is an easy way to control them while they're immobile. (Follow the other links in that post for more lily leaf beetle info.)

Catching the adults requires strategy, as they drop from the leaf when they feel you coming. The best manoeuvre is a two-handed catch, with one hand under the leaf. Then squish. Foot or gloved hand. The choice is yours.

These onions were made for walking

Upside down in this pic, these onion set form at the top of the stem

There aren't too many do-nothing perennial vegetables, but one of them is the Egyptian walking onion, Allium cepa var. proliferum.

That variety name, proliferum, isn't because these onions produce well, although they do. It comes from the botanical term proliferation or prolification, which means that a plant part can sprout from another plant part.

In this case, the flower at the top of the stem forms into small onions – but often enough also sprouts another stem from the flower, with another flower head and, if you're lucky, yet another onion set.

The elflike flower caps

This makes the walking onion an entertaining plant to have around, especially if you have kids and want to get them interested in gardening.

The plant begins to perform very early in spring with the new leaves, which you can use like chives. They grow from a base that tastes like mild, slightly watery green onions. Even the flowers are edible and, like all culinary alliums, the florets make pretty garnishes.

As perennials, they let you have onions for your salads just about anytime from spring to fall, year after year. You can also save the onion sets and enjoy them like shallots when the weather cools. They tend to be on the wee side, but you can't argue with that much utility.

In summer, walking onions put on an engaging floral show. I've described them as the Carmen Miranda of onions for their unusual flower heads. The shape is as unpredictable as fireworks; well, as unpredictable as unpredictable fireworks. In 2008, I showed them doing a deer act in this post on Alliums. And I captured more of their tricks in this set on Flickr.

As they ripen, their heavy heads cause the weakening hollow stems to bend, and the onion starts walking… to another spot in your garden. Unlike some plant volunteers, they're easy to find and transplant or give away. Walking onions grow in just about any soil, and even thrive (albeit, a little leggily) in my part-shade garden.

I'll be donating some to the East York Garden Club plant sale on Thursday, May 19. If you're in the nabe, why not walk right over!

Frugal Tomato Seed Starting

A tomato plant is indeed a beautiful thing. 

Don't throw out that coffee cup! Don't even toss it in the blue bin! They make great seed starting pots. Poke a hole in the bottom, fill with soil, and plant a few tomato seeds, or anything you want to start from seed. At planting time I am always looking for extra containers for seed starting and transplanting, and this spring I really did it on the cheap. For the last couple of months I've been saving all my take-out paper and plastic cups. They've been stacked in my kitchen in an annoying pile that I had to keep telling my son I was going to do something with, really. I had also saved a stack of plastic take out food containers, and they are perfect for seed starting, as they have a built in lid to keep soil moist for germination. Using these free containers, I seeded six types of heirloom tomatoes this weekend. It's a bit late, but better late than never, and I think there's still enough growing season to see them bear fruit. Tomatoes grow fast, once they get going.

Take-out food containers repurposed as tomato seed starters. I'll transplant these when they get about 2 inches high. 

I'm growing Anna Russian tomato, one that I fell in love with last summer when I got it as a take home tomato at Vivian Reiss's tomato tasting party. It's an oxheart variety tomato, which has smallish fruit, and a pointy end, just like a heart. My Anna Russian made such a fabulous tomato sandwich, and I want to relive it this year.

Searched everywhere for "Anna Russian" tomato seeds and found them at TomatoFest. Of course I had to buy four other kinds as well.

Other heirloom tomatoes I am trying this season are Blondkopfchen, (Little Blond Head), Super Snow White, San Marzano Redorta, Amish Gold, and Big Beef. I got all these heirloom seeds from Botanical Interests and Tomatofest. Tomatofest threw in an extra package into my order, which was cool, and Botanical Interests supplied me with several samples of vegetable seeds. (Yikes, since writing this, I just found another couple of packets of tomato seeds I bought from other suppliers. I found Paul Robeson tomato at Terra Edibles. Where am I going to put them all? I'm going to be handing out tomato plants to everyone I know, as I won't have room for everything.)

A few weeks ago I started several cherry tomato Sugar Sweetie in a large plastic water jug. They are around 3 inches high and I've just potted those ones on into coffee cups, where I will let them get a bit bigger under my grow lights before I plant them outside. I've learned that waiting an extra week or so to get tomatoes in the ground is often better than rushing them in on the typical planting weekend, May 24th.

I also had two oriental lily bulbs, Penthouse, in a sawdust packet and used a coffee cup to plant each bulb. Better they get a head start in a paper cup than languish in the package till I get time to plant it in the garden. Head starts are always good.

Two favourite spring ephemerals

Double bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis forma multiplex AKA S. canadensis 'Flora Pleno')

At last, I can put a tick mark on my Lust List: I now have double bloodroot, the fluffier, multipetalled version of the native spring ephemeral, Sanguinaria canadensis. The large-format image was a must here, that's how much in love I am. They look so fetching with a few raindrops on the petals! Sigh.

Bloodroot is a diminuative ephemeral that blooms in the spring. Ephemeral means it sends up flowers and leaves, then in late spring disappears. No, you haven't killed it. That's how it protects itself from the heat of summer; it goes into dormancy. Then, next spring, the beautiful display begins again. The flowers are a joy. After they fade, the lovely foliage enlarges until it's time to say bye-bye.

Already, a lovely clump

The name bloodroot comes from the orange sap that exudes from the cut root. Native Americans used this as a dye, and in fact gave this plant its another common name, red puccoon (from Virginia Algonquian poughkone via Merriam-Webster; it means a plant used for a red or yellow pigment).

Double bloodroot can be hard to find. I know that Marion Jarvie sometimes has some for sale. One online nursery in the States was listing it for $28 a crack. I was lucky. Mine was a gift.

This is its first spring, and I'm hoping it will be happy. The site conditions are favourable: partly shady, with well drained soil, and right by my rain barrel, so no excuse for not keeping it moist.

Uvularia grandiflora, also known as bellwort or merrybells

Another favourite among the spring emphemeral natives isn't found in my garden… yet. However, it grows down the street at my neighbour T's, so I have hopes. [hint hint] It's called Uvularia grandiflora.

Uvularia is quite the name, isn't it? Apparently, it was so called because the nodding buds looked like an uvula – that little dangly thing at the back of your throat. I prefer the common name, merrybells.

By coincidence, the plant sale for the North American Native Plant Society is May 7, 2011 at Markham Civic Centre. I don't know if they'll carry these two, but you're sure to find many other beautiful natives for your garden.

Alas, my bouquet of tu*ips

Call me superstitious, but some garden things are best left unsaid. For example, it can be dangerous to look forward to the blooming of t***ps.

I dare not speak their name.

Because the squirrels who, each spring, unceremoniously snap off the heads of the handful of t***ps in my tiny, tiny garden have been at it again.

In fall, we live in terror that squirrels will dig up our newly planted bulbs. Using all the mental might our big human brains, we try to foil them: covering the bulb site with chicken wire; caging the bulbs in baskets; laying flat stones on the soil till the tempting smell of fresh turned earth calms down; sprinkling cayenne pepper on the bulb planting area. Sometimes it works, and we rejoice.

We spend winter in anticipation. Till, hooray, it's spring! Then, as we get a few fine days, this happens.

And this happens.

And, oh look, over there, this happens. Again.

My garden is strewn with the shredded bodies of partly eaten flowers. But, shhhhhhhh! There are three buds that the squirrels didn't see. For heaven's sake, don't say the word tulips.