For an avid gardener, the childlike thrill of Christmas might be more poignantly felt with the first sunny, warm Saturday in spring, picking a juicy, sweet strawberry in June or harvesting a perfectly ripe tomato on a warm summer day.
In any case, Christmas may not be the time of year gardeners think most about, well, gardening, but it is the perfect opportunity to build excitement and prepare for the coming season.
If you’re looking to bring some joy to a gardener in your life this Christmas, here are some great gift ideas to consider.
First, a new year is just around the corner, and with it will undoubtedly come an onslaught of new seed catalogs. With seed-starting season coming up in the next couple of months, one of the most helpful tools you can give a gardener to start seeds is a seedling heat mat.
Garden seeds all sprout at different temperatures, which is why planting pea seeds in the ground in February can be successful but planting pepper seeds in the garden at the same time most definitely won’t.
For plants that require warm soil to sprout or are slow to take off — peppers and tomatoes being a couple of common examples — a seedling heat mat allows you to start those seeds indoors weeks or months before you plant starts outside, and the radiant heat that the mats provide helps to compensate for cool air and water temperatures, ensuring more even germination and quicker establishment of seedlings.
Second, any task in the garden is made ten times easier with the right tool — or, on the flipside, 10 times harder without it. Admittedly, working in the gardening industry means I do an inordinate amount of pruning relative to most gardeners, but nothing is more frustrating than going outside to trim a shrub or cut a bouquet and only having a dull, stiff pruner to work with.
For a gardener who wants a reliable, easy-to-maintain hand pruner, Felco is my go-to choice every time. Are they inexpensive? No — but like anything else, you get what you pay for, and a Felco pruner will last decades with some simple maintenance. And because every part of a Felco is replaceable, a single pair of pruners can last a lifetime.
Visit a local garden center and check out the different models made for different-sized hands or ergonomic needs to pick out the perfect pruner for your loved one.
Third, every homeowner with a yard probably has a rake and shovel at their disposal, but if your loved one grows dahlias — a very popular hobby these days — and doesn’t have a digging fork, I highly recommend putting one under the Christmas tree for them this year.
Digging forks work well for breaking and turning hard soil in the spring before planting dahlias and for loosening the soil around the tubers in the fall when it comes time to dig and store them for winter.
Finally, if you’re going to a Christmas party this season, a poinsettia is a great seasonal gift to bring for the host or hostess. For a classic Christmas look, red is hard to beat, or for longer-lasting appeal beyond the holidays, white or variegated colors work well.
If you’ve avoided purchasing poinsettias for their toxicity to pets, fear not — there have never been documented cases of pets being poisoned by eating poinsettias, so you can give a poinsettia without fear of it hurting Fluffy or Fido.
With Christmas just over two weeks away, now is the time to get your Christmas shopping done, and if you have a gardener in your life, you have the perfect opportunity to both build excitement for spring and make their life easier with a gardening Christmas gift.
— David Vos is manager of Vander Giessen Nursery Inc. of Lynden who writes his monthly column In Bloom that appears in the Lynden Tribune in Country Life.
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