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GARDENING WITH MARK AND BEN
June, 2025
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Gardening Together
This spring, Ben decided to take on yet another project that falls within his niche: too big to tackle on his own, too small to hire enough people to help him. This time it was a raspberry patch: over 400 plants, or roughly 1,000 linear feet of new beds to be tilled, planted, mulched, watered, and eventually picked…in addition to about 50 ft of asparagus crowns, and a small orchard of apple and nut trees. Spring, 2025: Year of the (Big) Perennial Food Garden. Why not? Ben is committed to the belief that we can only reach our potential after we have gone in way over our heads and out the other side.
Such was the thinking when that order was submitted to the wholesale nursery for a vanload of bareroot trees, crowns, and canes with no real plan of execution. Of course, you can’t sit on bareroot stock for long without risking desiccation, so he knew he’d have to figure it out before the delivery date. After procrastinating on these plans and with the spring planting season fast approaching, he finally did what we so often loath to do: he asked for help. To his surprise, rallying a planting crew came easily. His mother-in-law Marianne, his buddies Al and Dave, and of course his dad Mark were seemingly all happy to oblige. With five sets of hands, the work was finished tidily and not only was it satisfying, but it was also fun! Fun to be together.
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Gardening is so often a lonesome activity that Ben sometimes wonders if Mark took up golf for the social appeal and not the game. As two generations of extroverts, gardening can be an unlikely pastime for us up until the company starts arriving for a garden party. That is not to say we don’t enjoy the head-clearing time scratching away in the dirt on our lonesome- that is great too! – but inviting others into the gardening experience as active participants is something we don’t do often enough.
Across the Atlantic, celebrity chef Stanley Tucci seems to be thinking in a similar way. In promoting his new series Tucci in Italy, he tells the press ““I think cooking together is a really great thing — as a family, with friends and certainly as a community,” he said. “We don’t really do that very often anymore.” How true. Gardening was once also communal, before it was even considered a ‘past time’. People gardened out of necessity, and they often did so together. The evolution of gardening from a means of survival to a leisure pursuit is generally positive and reflects our rising standards of living.
In Tucci’s series, he asks a local why villagers stopped using the communal bread oven, “’Because today, everybody’s comfy,’ [she] said, with a shrug”. Is comfort how we became so focused on gardens and lawns as a personal pursuit? Maybe.
What we do know is that enlisting the help of others by offering a day’s lunch and future annuities in the form of (pick-your-own) berries make for a rewarding and memorable day in the field. We also know that feels more meaningful for having been shared. We think Tucci would agree.
For more on Tucci in Italy: https://www.salon.com/2025/05/27/stanley-tucci-wants-us-to-cook-together-again/
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Alternative Education
In Ben and Sam’s house, garbage and waste is a regular topic of conversation. Both mother and son, Peter, seem to share a passion. Sam works professionally consulting municipalities on waste management strategies, and four-year-old Peter is just fascinated by the works. He seldom flushes the toilet or washes his hands without narrating the passage of wastewater to the wastewater treatment plant, down the river to the lake, and from the lake out to the ocean (if it doesn’t evaporate into clouds along the way). Garbage trucks are similarly interesting, as is garbage sorting, and the phenomenon of composting.
| | Peter test driving a garbage truck at a municipal open house | | |
Recently, Ben was faced with a dilemma when it was time to dispose of some Birkenstock woolen slippers that had reached end of life. Ben is pretty sure that they are made mostly of glue but given the natural texture Peter had to ask: “will they decompose?”.
“Honestly son, I have no idea”. Dads hate admitting that.
A teachable moment came to mind. Thinking back to the Soil Conservation Council of Canada’s (SCCC) 2021 “Soil Your Undies!” campaign, Ben thought he and Peter should bury the slippers in the backyard. Burying slippers in the yard might sound bizarre but wait until we tell you that the SCCC’s campaign was all about burying cotton underwear in your soil to measure microbial activity. If they decompose, you have soil life!
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Ben is fairly certain that there is soil life in the backyard as Peter has produced ample worms to prove it. Whether the slippers decompose will be a testament to Birkenstock’s commitment to natural fibres. Stay tuned.
PS- for those readers who are heavily invested in Ben’s choice of slippers, he found replacements at the newly opened Hamro Village shop in Fergus, Ontario. Fair trade woolen goods imported from Nepal, cozier and more affordable than the Birkenstocks they replace. And we’re pretty sure these ones will decompose!!
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Park Party
We recently celebrated a fourth birthday for Peter. What does a four-year-old want? To paint pots and run around the park with his friends.
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Plant all hot crops. Corn, zucchini, squash (all cucurbits), peppers, potatoes: virtually every crop that requires heat to thrive are ready to plant in the first week of June.
Mulch. June is mulch month because May is planting month. After you get most of your plants in the ground you can save yourself up to 70% in watering and 90% in weeding by laying down a 5 cm layer of shredded cedar or pine bark mulch.
It is blossom time for roses, peonies, clematis and many other 'early' season flowering perennial plants. If you have room for more, now is the perfect time to plant them! Make sure that the plants you DO have are supported.
Container plants. Time to finish planting up containers using fresh Mark's Choice Container mix, plants that suit your exposure and be sure to add a slow release fertilizer like Feed-and-Forget. You apply it once for the whole season.
Herbs. Plant them. Harvest them as needed. Don't over water them. With the exception of basil, they love to get dry between watering.
Tomatoes. Stake with a spiral stake and never tie them up again. Get them off the ground and double your crop. Mid-June, start applying Bordo Mixture to prevent early and late blight.
Fast growing flowers can be sown now wherever you have a blank space in the garden. There are lots of great wildflower mixes out there that can bring pollinators to your garden. An easy way to plant these is by pouring the seed mix into a bucket with some dry potting mix, sand or vermiculite (one packet/25 sq ft). Pour the seed/sand or soil mixture back and forth between two buckets until they are fully mixed. Broadcast the seed by hand over a bed of soil and rake it in.
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BIRDS IN FOCUS:
Get Ready for Hummingbirds
By Jody Allair
Hummingbirds are back and visiting yards across the country. Want to make your home a hummingbird-friendly destination? Then you’ve come to the right place!
We have five regularly occurring species of hummingbirds across Canada. From Alberta to the East Coast, you can find the widespread Ruby-throated Hummingbird (pictured here). From Alberta to British Columbia, you can spot the Rufous Hummingbird and the diminutive Calliope Hummingbird. The final two species are found only in British Columbia – the Anna’s and Black-chinned hummingbirds.
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Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Photo credit: Ron Ridout
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Feeding hummingbirds is very popular. And why wouldn’t you want to attract these amazing little fireballs to your backyard? One of the best things you can do is grow plants that have nectar-rich flowers for hummingbirds to feed on. Having a mix of trees and shrubs in your yard will also provide habitat for roosting and nesting. To learn more about which plant species you should consider growing visit our fantastic free online resource: www.birdgardens.ca.
For those who use traditional hummingbird nectar feeders, it is very important that you follow a few guidelines. First, make sure that you clean your feeder with hot, soapy water every few days. For heavily soiled feeders, you can use a vinegar solution or a mild bleach solution – just be sure to rinse well. When purchasing a feeder, make sure it has a large opening so that you can clean the inside of the feeder thoroughly. There is no need to purchase packaged nectar solution, and absolutely no need to purchase artificial solutions containing red food colouring. You can make nectar using four parts water to one part sugar. Boil the water, remove from heat, and stir in the sugar until dissolved. After the solution has cooled, fill your feeders and enjoy the most spectacular birds in the world!
Good Birding!
Jody Allair
Director, Communications
Birds Canada
Connect with me on Instagram or Bluesky at: @JodyAllair
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TREES FOR LIFE
Golf Tournament
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Attention golfers!
Registration is open for the 7th Annual Trees for Life golf tournament on Thursday, August 21st at Pheasant Run Golf Club.
Join us for another incredible day of golf, prizes and great company! And if golfing isn't your thing, we have some wonderful sponsorship opportunities available as well. We are so grateful for your support!
Register today and support our mission to create a healthier, happier Canada by planting native trees where we live, work and play.
https://www.treesforlife.ca/charity-golf-2025
| | MONTHLY OFFER FROM FOOD & SHELTER GOODS | | |
Food and Shelter Goods is a 100% Canadian curated collection of extraordinary gifts and household essentials. Food and Shelter Goods is owned by Ben's sister/Mark's daughter, Heather.
For the month of June, spend $50 before tax, add a Free handmade botanical soap to your cart.
Enter Code: Junesoap
This promotion expires June 30, 2025.
| | For more seasonal recipes, as well as Mark and Ben's regular gardening column, pick up a copy of Harrowsmith's Summer issue, available on newsstands now. Better yet, as a subscriber to this newsletter, you can get a one year subscription to Harrowsmith for a special price of $29.95. Click here to learn more. | | | | |
