a good read

On the road to creating my dream garden, I know I am going to hit all kinds of road blocks and bumps.  Hey, I have a ton to learn!  So my goal is to hit the books in these winter months ahead after the kids go to sleep. (that is if they sleep!)   I just finished Larry Hodgson's book....

Making the Most of Shade

A straight forward read with helpful tips for those of us with a lot of shade.  I liked how Larry uses humor to cut through some common gardening stressors.  An example of this is his take on staking.  "In my opinion, a plant that flops deserves to be moved or removed. I refuse to stake anything but tomato plants!"

A few pointers I walked away with....

• planting petunias in different areas of the garden to test the varying degrees of shade 
• planting fast growing annual vines for coverage while waiting for perennial vines to fill in
• when planting in shade dust a pinch of mycorrhizal fungi in the hole-very beneficial to plants and is lacking in most home gardens
• spot planting with newspaper and using newspaper in general to give your new plant time to establish itself (do this for veggies but should start in my shade garden as well)   

And of course some inspiration.....

Elaine Sander's beautiful Montreal garden.  The link is below.

http://www.finegardening.com/item/25518/elaines-garden-in-montreal