Down The Garden Path Podcast

By: Joanne Shaw
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  • Summary

  • On Down the Garden Path Podcast, landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes. She believes it is important and possible to have great gardens that are low maintenance. On Down the Garden Path, she speaks with industry experts and garden authors to educate listeners on how to seasonally manage their gardens and landscapes.
    Joanne Shaw
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Episodes
  • Lasagna No-Till Gardening

    Lasagna No-Till Gardening
    Oct 15 2024
    This week on Down the Garden Path, Joanne Shaw explores the benefits and steps to creating a no-till lasagna garden. What is lasagna no-till gardening? Often called "lasagna" gardening because of the layering involved or no-till gardening because there is no need to dig up and disturb the existing organic matter. Reasons to consider a lasagna no-till garden: You want to create a new or expanded garden area in your yardYou’re considering planting a vegetable or herb garden next year When’s the best time? October/ November is the best time to do it and in the least back-breaking and simplest way. Joanne’s experience: Joanne did this with her garden in October 2016.Check out the Lasagna Gardening section of Joanne’s book, Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden. You’ll find pictures of Joanne’s garden in 2016 and how she tackled creating a new garden area that she planted in the following June of 2017. Or listen to her talk about it on a previous show.Here are some of the basics and her recommendations eight years later. Joanne lives on a corner lot with no sidewalks: her garden is in the front yard, to the right of the front door from the walkway to the curb and wraps around the corner and ends at the driveway.In 2016, she had a garden in the centre of that space surrounded by approximately 3-4 feet of grass (it was actually barren, dry soil that was hard to water because of the slight slope).It received A LOT of sun. She didn’t have time to baby a garden and wasn’t going to baby her lawn.She liked the idea of having more garden and less lawn and was looking for a simple way to make this happen.Her research led her to lasagna gardening where you cover your lawn with layers of material to not only kill your lawn but create a “new” garden or new improved garden area to plant in the following spring.Starting a new garden by digging up an existing lawn or maybe an old one that you inherited that needs some major refreshing seems straightforward. But not only is it hard work, it is often hard for most people to dispose of the old sod, or poor garden material. The steps: That is the beauty of this method. It starts with cardboard! Lots of cardboard, more than you think you will need because you want to make sure the boxes overlap.Make sure you remove the packing tape and don’t use any coated cardboard that may be found at the grocery store/or restaurants.Cover the cardboard with a quality organic material like manure or mushroom compost, at least to 2-3 inches, making sure the cardboard is completely covered.Cover everything once again with an organic mulch, again 2 to 3 inches. Don’t worry if this seems high, as everything starts to break down it will “thin” out. Joanne’s favourite: composted pine mulch (no dyed mulches please).This is the perfect time of year to do this and as the fall rain and winter snow (hopefully) cover the new garden, it will help everything to break down, especially the cardboard.Once May or June arrives, you should be able to start planting. It is as easy as that!This is great for areas large or small, but also ideal for challenging boulevards, where the grass doesn’t grow well or you’re tired of cutting it. Resources Mentioned in the Show: Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden Lasagna Gardening Have a topic you'd like Joanne to discuss? Email your questions and comments to downthegardenpathpodcast@hotmail.com, or connect with me on my website: down2earth.ca Find Down the Garden Path on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube: @downthegardenpathpodcast. Down the Garden Path Podcast On Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes. As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade. She does her best to bring you interesting, relevant and useful topics to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible. In Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden, Joanne and fellow landscape designer Matthew Dressing distill their horticultural and design expertise and their combined experiences in helping others create and maintain thriving gardens into one easy-to-read monthly reference guide. Get your copy today on Amazon. Don't forget to check out Down the Garden Path on your favourite podcast app and subscribe! You can now catch the podcast on YouTube.
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    25 mins
  • October in the Garden

    October in the Garden
    Oct 1 2024
    In October in the Garden, Joanne Shaw reviews some of the tasks you can do this month but insists it's not as labour-intensive as you may think! Tasks you can do this month: Vegetable Gardens Clean up and remove the old stems of your tomato or pepper plants that have stopped producing.Sow cool weather plants like lettuce and some spinach: they grow better in the shoulder seasons, late spring /early summer or fall.Buy plants at a garden centre or start seeds and sow them right into the garden.Top up the vegetable garden with some compost or manure to get ahead of next year.Take pictures so you know where plants are because next year you may need to put things in different places.Plant a cover crop. Containers If you want to take advantage of the nice weather at the beginning of October, take your vegetable out of its container and pop in an aster. Annuals and Perennials Annuals: With no frost anytime soon, annuals are probably still doing okay. They may be a little bit leggy or sad-looking. Perk them up with water and fertilizer.Perennials: No need to cut them back. You can do some deadheading if things are really looking brown and not necessarily attractive. Deciduous Trees and Shrubs Trees: It is important to water deciduous trees, especially young ones, certainly ones that you just planted this year.Water them deeply every week. Evergreen shrubs: Enjoy the fall colour and shape of your shrubs. Cutting them back now is not necessary.Keep newly planted shrubs well-watered. They need some extra time to get established. Being in a drought situation as they go into dormancy in winter is never a good thing. Seeds and Bulbs It’s a good time to buy and plant your garlic.Spring bulbs: find and buy bulbs – just don’t plant them until the end of October, or the beginning of November!I recommend not planting tulips but instead looking at the interesting varieties of daffodils or alliumsDaffodils and alliums are poisonous to squirrels and other rodents, so they will leave them alone. Lawn Care Time to apply fall fertilizer.Pay attention to the weeds, especially crabgrass which is prolific this time of yearApply corn gluten to act as a preemergent, preventing the weed seeds from germinating. It’s best to apply during spring and fall. Resources Mentioned in the Show: Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden Have a topic you'd like me to discuss? Please let me know what other topics you would like me to discuss. Email your questions and comments to downthegardenpathpodcast@hotmail.com, or connect with me on my website: down2earth.ca Find Down the Garden Path on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube: @downthegardenpathpodcast. Down the Garden Path Podcast On Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes. As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade. She does her best to bring you interesting, relevant and useful topics to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible. In Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden, Joanne and fellow landscape designer Matthew Dressing distill their horticultural and design expertise and their combined experiences in helping others create and maintain thriving gardens into one easy-to-read monthly reference guide. Get your copy today on Amazon. Don't forget to check out Down the Garden Path on your favourite podcast app and subscribe! You can now catch the podcast on YouTube.
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    29 mins
  • Adding Asters to Your Garden

    Adding Asters to Your Garden
    Sep 23 2024
    In this episode of Down the Garden Path, Joanne Shaw discusses how to extend the blooming season in your garden by adding asters. Topics covered in this week's episode: Gardens don't have to stop blooming in September. We can extend the season to October and November.It’s very important to have because the pollinators still need something blooming.There are over 30 different species of asters.They have a huge variety of growing conditions, so there is an aster for whatever challenging growing condition you have. Here are the five asters discussed: New England Aster, Symphyotrichum nova-angliae The showiest, and likely the one you’re most familiar withNative to most U.S. states and provincesIt is large and very showy, with a bright cozy blue flower with a yellow centreThe leaves on the stem are densely arranged on the stemPrefer soil moist and they can grow in part shadeOne of the larger varieties: up to six feet tall Whitewood Aster Eurybia divaricata Delicate looking flowersGrows in dry shade which means it makes a wonderful addition to the shade gardenNot super showy like most shade plantsFound in Ontario in dry, deciduous forestsSo that's exactly what we want in our garden. If you have maple trees, pine trees, or something like that where the soil underneath is very dry and it's very shady, then this is something worth giving a try toOnly gets two to three feet tall Smooth Aster Symphyotrichum laeve Similar to the New England Aster, although hence its name, it has leaves that are very smooth lavender and blueHas a daisy-type flower with a yellow centreBlooms from August to OctoberA huge pollinator for butterflies and a larvae host for the pearl crescent butterfly Heart leaf Aster Symphyotrichum cordifolium Lavender to light blueIt is one of the latest ones to bloom and actually goes into NovemberAn excellent pollinator for butterflies and bees at late in the seasonSpreads slowly by rhizomes and it lightly self-seedsTwo to three feet tall, sandy to loam soil, and part shade to full shade Panicled Aster Symphyotrichum lanceolatum This one blooms with sprays of white flowers, open spreading form, so also known as floppyBest grown with other plants to kind of support itIf you already have a native garden, or if you're planting a native garden with other large tall plants, then this could be an addition if you want thatPrefers moist soil, but it likes full sun You can purchase seeds from Wildflower Farm and you can again, sprinkle them or plant them in your garden this fallYou can also start them like you normally would do if you wanted them to grow in February/March under lights and go through that type of thing indoors and then put them out next year Resources Mentioned in the Show: Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden Fall Mums and Asters Have a topic you'd like me to discuss? Please let me know what other topics you would like me to discuss. Email your questions and comments to downthegardenpathpodcast@hotmail.com, or connect with me on my website: down2earth.ca Find Down the Garden Path on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube: @downthegardenpathpodcast. Down the Garden Path Podcast On Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designer Joanne Shaw discusses down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes. As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade. She does her best to bring you interesting, relevant and useful topics to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible. In Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden, Joanne and fellow landscape designer Matthew Dressing distill their horticultural and design expertise and their combined experiences in helping others create and maintain thriving gardens into one easy-to-read monthly reference guide. Get your copy today on Amazon. Don't forget to check out Down the Garden Path on your favourite podcast app and subscribe! You can now catch the podcast on YouTube.
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    18 mins

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