This year, the leading trend is The Small Garden.  As the editors explain, "These days, space is at a premium — but, designers are determined to make even the smallest of gardens useful and attractive. While small gardens are by no means new, we've noticed great progress in the way they are designed. In this case, less really can be more."  Read more here ... and enjoy!

The winter solstice has passed with its darkest night.  Holiday gatherings bring the light of celebration, love and friendship. And another year draws to a close.  To everyone who stops by this site, I am sending out a happy if reflective winter greeting.  May the garden you imagine grow with abundance in the coming year.
~ Holly at There Blooms a Garden
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I've mulched with leaves for many years.  I discovered their value when I gardened on a steep south-facing slope where the soil would warm enough to thaw, and then freeze again. This can spell certain death to many shallow-rooted plants.  I've come to think of leaf mulch as my secret weapon.  

In the north, our winters seem to be characterized by more frequent temperature fluctuation. I believe this is a marker of climate change. Applying leaves as a mulch provides a layer of insulation while allowing plants to breathe. Under the leaves, the soil temperature remains even and soil heaving is reduced.

Have you noticed how hosta leaves slide into a soft brown skirt that gracefully covers the plant's crown? This is nature's leaf mulch.  I top up this covering with more small or deeply-lobed leaves.  Manitoba maple leaves – which are abundant in my neighbourhood – are ideal.  ​​​

When should you mulch?
It's best to mulch after the soil freezes. The goal is to keep the soil frozen longer, allowing plants to slumber on for the whole winter with their roots frozen and resting, even during  thawing periods.  I always wait for a hard freeze before I mulch, but weather conditions dictate when this fall chore is best done.  It's not much fun to be outside in the freezing rain mulching garden beds.  If light snow has fallen, you can still mulch. Work leaves around the plants and in wind-swept areas, anchor them with spent plant stalks or evergreen boughs.  When the snow comes – or even a crisping frost – everything will be held in place.

About getting leaves ...
I live in a treed neighbourhood.  Leaves are everywhere.  This year, as my neighbours raked, I asked them to save their leaves for me. 'No need to bag them,' I said. 'I want them for my gardens.' One brought me a huge tarp full. Another leaned a mattress bag full of beautiful dry leaves by my front steps. Marvelous.

Come spring, the leaf mulch will find its way, a little at a time, into my composter.  With luck, they will also go into a bin for fine shredding with a weed-whacker, only to return as a finer, weed-blocking mulch for summer.  Yes, leaves are definitely my secret weapon.​

About mid-August each year, I find myself wishing I could have a garden 'do-over'.  I wish I could take everything I've learned during the season and well, start over,  I imagine doing it all again, only better.  

It's September now and the wish for a 'do-over' has passed.  I've accepted the season for what it was – wet and cold, definitely tough conditions for tomatoes and other heat-loving plants.  That's just the way it was all across the north.

My modest experiment in vegetable growing continues.  Here are some lessons learned.  Experienced vegetable growers may laugh at these 'lessons'.  Still, we learn from our mistakes, don't we?  

My garden taught me ...

• It's easy to overestimate the number of kale plants one person can eat, share or store.
• Cucumbers don't like competition.  Memo for next year, banish scarlet runner beans from the cucumber supports no matter how charming they look.
• Shallots are classy produce worth growing.  Give them room to be their best.
• Swiss chard can grow happily in a mixed perennial border.
• Surprisingly, a zucchini plant can fail to produce.
• Carrots are tricky.
• In future, plant way more lettuce.
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 The last lesson?​  The often-quoted H. Fred Ale said it best ...

It's a different story when it comes to vegetable gardening.  In this, I am a relative newbie.  I am learning slowly about seeding, planting dates and spacing.  I am starting over, it seems, to build knowledge about a different aspect of gardening.  

This season, I have felt off balance.  The weeks leading into summer were downright cold.  The ground stayed miserably cold even after the risk of frost had passed.  Peas and beans easily rot in such conditions. Looking increasingly sad, tender vegetable starts were left languishing in pots when they should have been in my raised bed. It seemed planting would go on indefinitely or worse, that summer would never arrive.  

Indeed, in some areas of the north, summer seems to have been cancelled. Gardeners I know in the Timmins area are despairing, having faced at least two frosts and the loss of soon-to-be productive plants.  Sadly, it is now too late in the season to replant.  

This is all very distracting for an inexperienced vegetable gardener.  Each rainy day has me wondering what will I harvest this year? 

Still, I've had more than one salad with fresh arugula.  The carrots and beets are coming along.  The beans and kale – which I transplanted as small seedlings as a hedge against foraging chipmunks and crows – are growing ably.  The zucchini have set their first fruits; so have the cucumbers as they climb up their supports.  

Yes,  there is the green exuberance of hostas, ferns and astilbes to enjoy as a consolation.  Whatever the season's outcome, I will gather experience– if not ripe tomatoes!  I will take what my vegetable garden teaches me.