(First published in the Roses-Canada Quarterly Journal) The farmers’ market might seem a slightly off-key place to sell roses. There among the hand-crafted soaps and blackberry honey, the beaded jewellery and ancient grains bread, I know I seemed a little out of place. Don’t get me wrong. You’d sometimes find a vendor who offered a…
Public Speaking One of my favorite ways to get the message out about roses is to speak with garden clubs (online or in person). I ask a speaking fee of $150 for an in-person event at local clubs. I’m quite happy to bring along plants for sale, and I can set up online ordering in…
For most gardeners, pruning roses can feel like a maze of decisions: Is it the right time? Does the rose need heavy pruning or just a light trim? To make this process easier, Jason from Fraser Valley Rose Farm created a detailed flowchart. This step-by-step guide helps gardeners navigate pruning decisions with simple yes-or-no questions….
Propagating Roses: An Overview of Six Effective Methods For gardeners and rose enthusiasts, learning to propagate roses opens up exciting possibilities for expanding your collection, sharing favorite varieties, or even diving into commercial production. Jason, from Fraser Valley Rose Farm, provides a practical guide to the six most common propagation methods. Drawing from his experience…
For many rose enthusiasts, successfully growing a rose from a cutting to a fully rooted, garden-ready plant is a rewarding process. Jason, from Fraser Valley Rose Farm, has outlined the step-by-step journey that takes a cutting from its initial stage to a thriving 2-gallon plant ready for planting or sale. This article provides a detailed…
Continuing my Youtube series on the old garden roses, this on covers the Gallicas. This class of roses was so dominant in Europe in the middle ages, there were literally hundreds of cultivars. Treasured for its close-to-red color, breeding focused on high petal counts, deep shades of pink and purple, and novelty traits like stripes…
It is truly one of my favorite things to add roses to my collection. If this were a big commercial nursery, it would be a different story. I’d want to focus on a few of the best sellers – propagate them in large, uniform crops – sell out early in the season, and spend the…
See what I do when I have a little time on my hands? I start cementing PVC into funny shapes to move water around! Here’s the video: I’ll completely understand if you conclude this to be an eccentricity related to off-season idleness (actually, pretty busy winterizing roses right now, but whatever). The need for this…
I would need a fast-forward button to improve my skills at garden design. I could hold the button, and the years would zoom by to show me the eventual size and scale of the trees, shrubs and perennials I’m planting. Somehow, my imagination isn’t adequate to the job. One example of this is in the…
For the front garden, we decided on a fairly tight theme: plants chosen for their fall and winter features. You might think that this plan would feel restrictive or limiting, but I actually found it to inspire my creativity. I started by ordering a few varieties of willow, with their colorful winter stems. That led…
I’ve spent a lot of time at the local Farmers Market here in Mission BC – and I’ve made the rounds at other local community markets as well. My time as a vendor has given me a lot of respect for what the local food movement is about. The more I look at it, the…
At the risk of seeming foolish, I’m going to court controversy, and attempt to debunk a piece of gardening advice so commonplace that it’s taken as gospel truth. It goes like this: When planting a rose, dig a much larger hole than the pot size, and then amend the soil heavily before back-filling around the…
Roses are built to survive winter Don’t treat your roses like they’re the fancy dinnerware of the garden. Most are descended from tough, northern climate species, and they’re well prepared to get through the cold of fall and winter – at least in the mild-to-moderate climate of the Fraser Valley. Some of the “special care”…
You’re not freaked out by “bugs” in the garden – because you know a balanced population of insects is the secret to a healthy garden. There are all sorts of plants you can include in your garden to support the health of bees, butterflies, and other garden helpers. In general, any increase in plant diversity…
