South Winnipeg Senior Resource Centre
Master Gardener Teresa Lopata will cover the basics of growing herbs, including where to plant, how to store and use of various herbs.
Our members, Elsie Kathler and Anne Peters volunteering in Steinbach, MB at the Mennonite Village Museum.
An article about their volunteering: Click Here
By Marilyn N. Dudek, Master Gardener
With the recent onslaught of influencer vegetable gardeners, and all the information there is from them and in the world of media, I was on a mission to see if it should be done; using milk jugs outside as mini greenhouses. As we zone 3 local gardeners know, living in this climate, vegetable gardening outside in March is unheard of, but what I was hearing was, “yes, you can garden in March outside.” And so the ‘experiment’ began!READ MORE
By Debbie Stern, Master Gardener
I save my tomato seeds from year to year and start growing them inside my house in the beginning to middle of March. You usually cannot buy most varieties that I like from greenhouses. You have to buy the seed from seed catalogues.
When I grow tomatoes, I take notes on a spreadsheet under several headings, harvest, amount, taste , grow again, and description. See tomato list document at the end of this article.
Under the harvest column I document when the tomatoes ripen. The earlier they ripen the better. I want tomatoes that are ready before the end of August.
The amount column is how many tomatoes a plant produces. If it produces only a few tomatoes that isn’t good. I am looking for plants that produce a lot of tomatoes per plant.
My taste column is based on how the tomatoes taste. The best is super sweet and very sweet. The worst is good and ok. Ok is the worst, these tomatoes have no real taste.
BER means blossom end rot. These varieties are not good to grow because you don’t get tomatoes that are good to eat unless you keep the soil evenly moist to ensure the plants can absorb enough calcium. You don’t want the tomatoes to be alternately dry and then very wet.
Tomatoes that are F1 are hybrids, and they don’t breed true. You can save the seed if you want but it might not be as good as if you bought the F1 seed. Sun Sugar is like that. I have saved seed and grew it out but instead of being orange and super sweet, it was red and sweet. I try and buy that plant from greenhouses. It is the best tasting cherry tomato. It is orange and super sweet.
Sun Sugar Tomato
Cherry tomatoes that I plan on growing in 2022 are Sun Sugar, Sugary, Penny’s Perfectly Petites, World’s Smallest Tomatoes, Purple Cherry, Tumbler, and Sugar Rush. I picked tomato plants that produce lots and taste sweet and have early tomatoes. The Purple cherry are different looking and are purple when they are not ripe but turn red when ripe but still have some purple on the outside.
Purple Cherry Tomato
The Roma tomatoes I plan to grow in 2022, are the Large Roma because they are very sweet, but you don’t get a lot of tomatoes/plant. Another good variety is Roma because it produces a lot and is sweet. Little Napoli Paste produces a lot and is sweet so I will grow that too. Mine died in 2021 before I planted it outside in my garden.
An early variety that I like is Stupice because it tastes very sweet and has lots of tomatoes. Early Treat hybrid is early, produces a lot but isn’t that sweet but tastes better than store bought. I got seed that said Japanese Black Trifele; the tomatoes are small, red, and very sweet so I will grow it again. Tigerella are good early tomatoes too. Tigerella is a bi-coloured tomato, so they look nice too and are very sweet. Clustermato is another variety that I will plant in 2022 because it’s early, produces lots and is sweet. Another good early variety is Crimson Sprinter. Blue Bayou is a very early and very sweet tomato that is purple and turns red when ripe but is a small tomato.
A yellow tomato that was good is Golden Bison which is early, produces lots and is very sweet.
Regular tomatoes that I like are Beefy Boy hybrid and Druzba, the latter produced a few tomatoes which were very sweet. Chianti Rose was very sweet and juicy but is susceptible to blossom end rot. It was the best tasty big tomato that I grew last year. If you grow Chianti Rose, make sure that you water them diligently.
When I grow tomatoes, I also plant peas in-between my rows of tomatoes. I plant the peas as early as possible because they like cool weather. It might slow down my tomato height until I harvest and pull out the pea plants. I can grow two crops in the same spot. The tomato cages help hold up the peas. Some say that the peas add nitrogen to the soil while some people say it really doesn’t. I just know that since I really don’t have a lot of room to grow my peas in another spot, it works for me. My favourite varieties of peas are Little Marvel, Bounty, and Sugar Sprint. They are very sweet. Sugar Sprint has an edible pod so you can eat the whole pod with the peas. Lincoln Homesteader was good too and it is heat tolerant.
Tomato and pea plant
Pea varieties that I don’t like are Provence, Blue Shelling Peas, Laxton’s Progress because they aren’t as sweet. I found that Sugar Snap and Woodbridge Peas are too tall for my garden. I like shorter pea plants so they don’t grow too big and cover up my tomatoes. Alaska and Edible Podded Snow peas were tall plants and not as sweet as other plants. Oregon Sugar was also not as sweet.
Download Tomato List: Tomato List final
Photos: Debbie Stern
Published: February 2022
Miniature Gardens – Diana Dhaliwal
March 29/22 – 6:30 – 7:30 pm
While most vegetable gardeners aim for sizeable produce, there are good reasons to consider miniature vegetables. Master Gardener Diana Dhaliwal will discuss the pros and cons of miniature vegetables–and a few fruits, including suggested varieties.
Winnipeg Public Library Zoom event!
Best Native Plants for your Garden – Linda Dietrick
March 8/22 – 6:30 – 7:30pm
Winnipeg Public Library Zoom Presentation
Registration required: Click Here
Master Gardener Linda Dietrick will discuss high-priority native plants that are essential for the survival of local pollinators and that can be attractive additions to garden designs. Many gardeners are making room in their yards for native plants like milkweed, which are a good way to support butterflies, bees, and other pollinators, as well as the birds and creatures that depend on them. She will also identify plants that are not native to our region, but can still provide many ecological benefits.
Please note: upon payment you will receive the link to register for the event. Once you have registered the link to join the event will be sent to you.
If you do not receive the Thank you email reply to payment within 24 hours, please check your Junk folder.
By Tim Evans, Master Gardener
I once had a reading a number of years ago by a medical intuitive who told me about my most recent past life, one which I was unable to recall because of the closeness of that very recent life. I was told it held a very strong emotional charge in this lifetime which explained why I was unable to access it easily on my own. For those who believe in past lives, you would understand that we can very easily have interests carry on from one lifetime to the next. It’s only natural. Towards the end of my very enlightening reading, the medical intuitive said to me “You had two main passions in your most recent past life – traveling and gardening!” (She didn’t know me from a hole in the ground) She sure was accurate with that comment. Old habits die hard! As a result, I feel travel destinations are not complete without touring the local botanical gardens, a winning combination of travel and gardens! Here are four of my favourites in no particular order.READ MORE
Newsletter (NL) – How long have you been gardening?
Lynne McCarthy (LM)- My interest in gardening began in 1986 when we moved to a house with quite a large yard for a city lot. We purchased the house in the winter, and moved in at the beginning of the following summer, discovering that the yard had been badly neglected for quite a while. We spent our first couple of years here (we’re still in the house 35 years later!) bushwhacking, trimming trees and shrubs, and weeding, weeding, and weeding. Goutweed had taken over the yard, and one of my significant gardening accomplishments was to eradicate the goutweed – I dug out the last piece 22 years after I started!READ MORE
Nigella damascena in flower
By Diana Dhaliwal, Master Gardener
So many lovely decorations can be made with natural things and thereby prevent more plastic from going into landfills. Think of the winter holidays as a time to plan ahead, to make your seed and plant orders for next year’s decor.
I usually order some annual flower seeds to scatter around in a sunny spot, enjoy their pretty blooms and then cut and dry their seed heads. Probably one of the nicest is Nigella damascena which comes in a variety of colours, although the clear sky blue is my personal favourite. We all know the poppy seed head of Papaver somniferum, one of the annual poppies with pink to purple colours, giving us a dual use of summer colour and winter décor. A lesser known and harder to source annual is Nicandra physalodes otherwise known as shoo-fly plant. It is an annual with lantern-like seed heads which are great in winter arrangements.READ MORE