Saskatoon Gardenscape

This weekend is Gardenscape in Saskatoon. It is a well attended potpourri of garden related (and maybe some not so related) products and services. My garden does not include a hot tub for instance! But I can see where it could be a nice feature in a backyard in the city. Nothing really new but still quite interesting. The efforts of the folks who put on the display settings is to be commended. Following are some features which I took pictures of:

Check out Gardenscape on the net here. And also here.

Clematis progress

Just a little update on my Clematis integrifolia project. Several plates are showing germinations and some are showing a lot of bacteria/fungus growth. I have been spraying with 3% peroxide solution to see if that will help. Most seed groups look ok and may germinate yet. Here is a look:

Under the lights I expect quick growth so there is transplanting in my future. The root is growing down into the cotton pad so I will likely have to cut them out.
The ones that are germinating are looking quite healthy so that is good. Sadly I did not separate the green seeds from the ripe in groups so now when they are so dark it is quite hard to sort. I think the ripe seeds are the germinated ones though!

Clematis integrifolia varieties are the type which do not climb but rather crawl along the ground or can be encouraged to scramble over other shrubs when planted nearby. They can add a great burst of color to an otherwise bland shrub. There is a good listing of integrifolias on Clematis on the Web. The predominant colors are shades of blue/purple, rose and white. The plant is easy to care for and normally here I will cut them down to about 3-5 inches in spring and look for good growth through the summer.

This and that

Well it was pleasure this year to attend the Haskap Canada AGM at the University of Saskatchewan. There was a good turnout although smaller than some past years. I am always blown away by the folks who show up at the meeting investigating the growing of Haskap and Edible Blue Honeysuckle. A highlight of the meeting was the luncheon meal provided by President Paul and his family. Every item had Haskap in it: meat loaf, biscuits (with 2 kinds of spread), rice pilaf,(I think noodles too but I have forgotten) salad (haskap dressing) and for desert haskap tarts and cheesecake. All washed down with a haskap smoothie or haskap drink. Whew. Lots of color to follow later. Very very good! You can see some of the info on the Haskap Canada Blog. That's me visiting with President Paul's wife Jacquie. Imagine my amazement and joy to find out she is getting into lilies! And she knows Fred Fellner (some things about him here) who is a well known prairie lily breeder. I have sent her a note to ask her to write a guest post for my lily blog as she has a great story to tell! Hope she will do that!

So yesterday my wife came in with a butterfly who had fallen into the dog's water dish. Here it is having a drink from an orange slice.

So then it disappeared and we have not found it since. We thought it would really like the orchids but maybe there is no memory in it's genetics to tell it the orchids are flowers. It really dug into the orange though and maybe that was too strong.

Seeds and bright days

Today I received an envelope of seeds for a research project which you can read about at this link on GardenWeb. Should be interesting. And here are some good pictures on a tropical seed site. They will definitely not be perennial here but we grow the Cape Gooseberry, Physalis peruviana and of course tomatoes, peppers, and, potatoes as annuals with no problem. All members of the same family tree. Another interesting project.














 
Last week I posted the white day and today I want to post a bit of a bright day. This features a walking path which I keep blown out (as long as I can) for my wife to walk the dogs and get her fresh air. I get mine blowing snow, constantly! So here are some pictures of the path with our muttly friends Jacob (rusty color) and Molly (black of course) taking advantage of a run time. The last picture show a fresh woodpecker visit but I did not get a picture. I am hoping he is still around as I want to get a good identification. One of the large woodpeckers but I did not see any red on him anywhere. Not sure if he was the one who made the wing marks in the snow.

A very white day!

So today is a nice winter day but it is oh so white. White snow and a white sky! Wow. Just wanted to put up a little gallery of "white day" photos.

 Burr oaks and Manitoba Maples.

 I should have flown south! Whooo knew!!

 Waiting for spring!

 The mail boxes at the end of the driveway. The psychedelic one is our son's creation many years ago.

 

Browning is happening

We have been watching the large spruce trees in our front yard get brown edges and now going quite brown. It seems unusual that in the last several years this has been happening to the larger trees. One expects that shorter, smaller evergreen trees will show signs of browning usually as they burn from sun glare off of the snow. These however seem to be suffering from something else and I am speculating that the very high water table in fall has caused them to lack oxygen through the winter.Our soil here is a mix of layers of gravel and clay with alkali pockets mixed in so who knows for sure what combination of things are happening. It is quite distressing to see this as the ones which did this 2 years ago were just recovering by the end of last summer.