Garden Talk: Tips for planning a thriving home vegetable garden

Jill and Rick Van Duyvendyk answer all your gardening questions in Garden Talk on 650 CKOM and 980 CJME every Sunday morning at 9 a.m.

Here are some questions and answers from the March 2 show:

These questions and answers have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Q: What is the best location for a home vegetable garden? Any other vegetable garden planning tips?

A: The more sun the better is the most important thing. Don’t put it underneath a tree. Decide between a raised garden or one in the ground.

Know which direction your yard is facing, and where the sun is coming up and where it’s setting and the type of vegetables you want to grow.

Tomatoes and squash require a lot of sunlight, and a south or west exposure. More leafy vegetables and herbs and some  brassicas like broccoli don’t like the heat in the summer, so you can grow those on an east exposure.

Learn about companion planting. Planting things like marigolds will keep a lot of insects away, and also attract a lot of pollinators.

Make sure you’re rotating your crops yearly. Don’t plant potatoes in the same spot that you did the previous year and be careful planting tomatoes after a potato crop for disease control.

Don’t overcrowd your garden — grid it into square feet and find out how many of a particular plant you can grow per square foot.

See Dutch Growers guide to Getting Your Garden Spring Ready here.

Q: Is it a problem to have a lot of condensation on seed trays covered with plastic?

A: No. Keep the plastic on until your seeds are germinated. Watch the soil is not saturated, it that is the case just lift up the side to let the condensation out.

Once leaves are coming out of the soil, take the plastic off to reduce condensation when there is about 60 to 80 per cent germination and use a small fan to get a little bit of moving air in the area to keep the seedlings strong.

Have any grow light sitting about six inches above the seedling. As the plant grows move it continually so it remains six inches above the plant.

Read more:

• Garden Talk: What is the trick to using a banana to help orchids bloom?
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Q: Should I fertilize hot pepper and tomato seedlings?

A: Seedlings have a lot of nutrients already in the seed and first two sets of leaves. When they start to get a second or third set of leaves, that’s the time to add some extra nutrients.

Use a complete fertilizer like 20-20-20 at half strength. Don’t use a slow-release fertilizer, use a water-soluble fertilizer and never fertilize a dry plant. Make sure you have a little bit of moisture in the soil before you fertilize.

Q: How high up do you trim tall trees that need to be pruned?

A: It really comes down to a personal decision. Some people branches low and some people like the branches so they’re not hitting their head on them when mowing the grass.

That applies to evergreens, too. Some people like boughs hanging  down because nothing will grow underneath, but some people like to be able to see and walk under the trees.

Otherwise, thin the branches as high as you can reach. There’s also things like pole pruners that will reach almost 12 feet up into the tree.

With apple trees, thin the centre almost right up to the top because there will be some V branches going into two leaders. Trim one and leave one to let more
light into the tree for better fruiting and bigger apples.

Q: How can I rid of dog spots on a lawn in spring?

A: In the morning when it’s still a bit frozen out there, do some cleaning up. There are people who come to your yard and clean it up for a fee as well.

When the snow disappears, do a light rake of your of the lawn and pour water on the area — it’s the urea in the urine that burns the grass.

Then aerate the area well and you can use a product called EZ Seed Dog Spot Repair or Lawn Response 911 that have grass seed and things to neutralize the
urine and get the grass growing.

There’s also a product called Dog Spot Prevent that is applied at the same time as fertilizer in the spring, summer, and fall.

You can also create a space with a chicken wire fence with an entrance or a dog run with gravel and train the dog to go into that spot.

(york010/Depositphotos.com)

Q: How do I get raspberries ready in spring?

A: As soon as the snow disappears trim the old canes that were fruiting last year —
third-year canes — to the ground, leaving the second-year canes, which will produce this year and also the new suckers (first-year canes) which will produce maybe at the end of the season or next year.

If there are second-year canes that are six feet tall, trim them in half or build a trellis  — put posts in the ground with wire between them to hold the canes up. If you’re going to transplant raspberries, the best time is as soon as the ground is thawed.

Q: Can I use rooting hormone on canna lilies when I’m potting them after storage?

A: No, you do not need to use rooting hormone. If you want to use anything, add a little bit of bone meal, just a slight amount of nutrients. Those bulbs have quite a lot of nutrients already in them.

Pot them up into a soil-less mix with good drainage in a pot one to two inches bigger in diameter than the size of the bulb.

Read more:

• Garden Talk: What is the trick to using a banana to help orchids bloom?
• Garden Talk: How can I deal with aphids in 2025?
• Garden Talk: Tips for a healthy tropical houseplant like bird of paradise