Spring tune-up with gardening expert Niki Jabbour
It’s the most wonderful time of the year for Nova Scotians who are planning their summer gardens. We chatted with gardening expert, author, radio host and speaker, Niki Jabbour of Halifax, to get her advice on getting started.
Niki’s website, SavvyGardening.com, reaches over a million readers each month. There, you will find several courses and lots of in-depth information, but we wanted to touch base on the basics, especially for our readers who are new to gardening or just need a refresher. Whether you live in an apartment with a small balcony or have a yard with space to grow, Niki breaks it down for us.
Getting organized in spring
For gardeners with some experience, when the warm weather hits, it’s hard to resist digging into the soil straight away. But before you get to work, Niki has some words of advice.
“There are many garden tasks to tackle in May,” says Niki. “[Resist the urge to] clean up the perennial garden too early. Many species of beneficial and pollinating insects overwinter in leaf litter, hollow stems and garden debris.” Niki advises waiting until the temperatures have been above 12 degrees Celsius for at least a week before cutting back last year’s stems and tidying up your garden.
Much like the saying, “If you build it, they will come,” now is the perfect time to prepare your soil in your veggie garden. Niki like to start by topping her raised garden beds with a couple inches of compost or aged manure. Before she plants, she incorporates a slow-release organic vegetable fertilizer.
Niki says this is also the time to get your pots and planters ready for the season by giving them a good wash with the hose and refilling with fresh potting soil and compost. It’s also an opportune time to sow seeds. “You can now sow seeds for crops like lettuce, arugula, spinach, radishes, scallions, beets and carrots, and plant onion sets.”
Balcony gardening
For people who have a smaller space to work in, there are still lots of options to flex your green thumb.
Many plants, including vegetables, herbs and flowers, do very well in smaller containers. “I love growing vegetables like bush tomatoes, peppers, bush cucumbers, leaf lettuce, bush beans, kale and Swiss chard in pots. Plus, herbs like basil, thyme, rosemary, curly parsley and Greek oregano also thrive in containers,” says Niki. “Add some colour with million bells, petunias, pansies, marigolds, nasturtiums, zinnias and nemesia.”
One of the most important things to keep in mind if you’re growing on a deck or patio is that your containers need to have good drainage. Niki advises to look for containers that have several holes in the bottom to let excess water drain away. Be sure to pair those containers with a high-quality potting mix before you get planting.
Buying seeds
This time of year, it seems that everywhere you turn there are seeds for sale. If you’re not an experienced gardener, it might be hard to know what to choose. “There are benefits and drawbacks to both heirloom and hybrid seeds,” says Niki. If you’re not familiar with these terms, Garden Therapy describes heirloom seeds as having been saved and passed on for many generations and that hybrid seeds come from cross-pollinating strong characteristics of different varieties, making new varieties.
“[Produce grown from] heirloom seed varieties often has more flavour but can be more prone to disease problems. That said, hybrids are bred for vigour as well as disease resistance,” explains Niki.
Niki often saves seeds from her garden. If you’re going to try and save veggie seeds this season, she says that beans, peas, heirloom tomatoes and lettuce are easy to try. As for flowers, “I tend to collect annual flowers like nasturtiums, poppies, calendula, and bachelor buttons.”
Savvy Gardening community
Niki’s business, Savvy Gardening, has a fundamental goal in mind: to inspire and educate gardeners of all skill levels and interests. Given the rising cost of food prices, and the joy and mental health benefits that can be derived from gardening, the content from Savvy Gardening couldn’t be timelier. Niki says, “It’s a fun website created by three people passionate about plants.”
Not only does the site offer inspirational expert gardening content, but it also offers online courses.
“This spring I launched my online course, ‘How to Build and Use Mini Hoop Tunnels in the Vegetable Garden’ to help gardeners learn more about pest prevention and season extension,” says Niki, who harvests year-round from her Halifax vegetable garden. “Plus, we have just launched a new course, ‘Organic Pest Control in the Vegetable Garden,’ which is a detailed two-and-a-half-hour course with plenty of strategies and tips on reducing pest damage to plants.”
As much as Niki loves belonging to the digital garden community she’s found with Savvy Gardening, she also loves being a part of the local gardening community in Nova Scotia. “We have such talented, knowledgeable and passionate gardeners throughout the Maritime provinces, and we all have a lot to learn from each other.”
Some final words of advice from Niki if you’re new to gardening: “Start small – begin with a couple of containers or a single raised bed. Pay attention to watering, weeding and soil care. Once you build a few basic skills you’ll be able to grow almost anything!”