Gardening shed in a new light

ONE FOR EVERYONE: Garden sheds come in all colours, shapes and sizes. Find the kind that’s best for you — and your budget — for a great addition to your yard.

By MARY FRAN MCQUADE

Garden sheds are something of a cult in England, I understand. They turn them into open-air bars, and build them to look like the Tardis time machine in the famous TV series Dr. Who (And wouldn’t I like one of those!) Battered wood cartons even become primitive retreats in allotment gardens.

I’ve always had a thing for garden sheds. It probably grew out of my fascination with old barns. Who knew what you’d find in them? My antique stained glass light fixture came from an abandoned chicken coop (I’m not kidding). And I found a wonderfully woven wire rug beater in the back of my grandpa’s barn.

• Whatever you want

The thing about sheds is they can be whatever you want them to be: a utilitarian storage space for outdoor tools and equipment, a play space for the kids or a hideaway where you can sit and think and watch the rain.

With all these possibilities, invest in the best possible shed you can afford. Home Depot has wonderful models with handsome resin exteriors that are almost nice enough to live in (think Henry Thoreau and his cabin at Walden Pond).

A tempting mailing from Bosman Home Front, makers of all kinds of sheds and outdoor goodies, had me dreaming over their wonderful designs. Their line of sheds is prefabricated, so you can install them yourself or have their crew do it for you. Not dirt cheap, but guaranteed for 20 years and a handsome addition to any garden (see www.bosman.ca, about 35 km northwest of Fergus).

If you’re saving up, of course, you can always make do with the standard aluminum shed from Canadian Tire, Home Depot and scads of other retailers. They’re dark and cramped and they don’t look very nice (tip—plant vines to cover them). They also bend and crack eventually, so keep the duct tape handy. But they do the job for a while, anyway.

If you don’t have a shed, now is a good time to get one. Many are on sale and you should have time to put it up and get it stocked before the snow flies.

• Got a shed? Get it ship-shape

And if you do have a shed — of any sort — October is a fine time to turn it out and organize all the bits and pieces it holds.

Pull out all that stuff you thought might come in handy over the summer: little plastic pots too thin or too small to be useful, broken tools and leaky garden hoses.

While you’re grubbing around in there, check the labels on fertilizers and other packaged products. Many need specific temperatures for storage. The hotshot soil additive Myke, for example, should be kept above freezing. Otherwise, it loses some of its potency and you’ll have to use lots more of it next year.

Liquid fertilizers and other solutions have to come indoors before the weather freezes, too, in order to avoid messy surprises in spring. And watch out for organic supplies like bone and blood meal. Raccoons and other critters will sniff them out and tear them apart for food over the cold months.

• Getting ready for the indoors

If you’re an indoor gardener, round up your supplies now. It’s really nasty to try to thaw a frozen shed door to get at your trowel or supply of plant pots. Before the snow locks you out, move the essentials to a heated porch or basement: potting soil, perlite/vermiculite, plant food, fork to mix soil, small stones for the bottom of plant pots, light gardening gloves and other basics.

Don’t forget to dig out your snow shovel (ugh), too, along with ice melters and scrapers. Something to toss your compost pile is useful, as well — a garden fork or compost tool — especially if you have a big pile that won’t freeze for a while.

• And in they go…

Now that you’ve shifted all that stuff, you can store the things that need winter protection.

1. Tidy up and put away garden tools. Wipe metal parts with a rag and stand tall digging tools in a bucket of dry, coarse sand. Rub wooden handles with a little mineral oil.
2. Wash your favourite garden gloves before you pack them away, so they don’t turn into crumpled, mud-hardened horrors over the winter.
3. Pull summer annuals out of any containers and empty the worn-out soil. Then scrub pots with a 10 percent bleach solution and put them away clean and shiny for next year.
4. Stash ornamental containers in the shed to extend their lifetime. That’s essential for clay pots, which will soak up water in winter and crack when it freezes.
5. If you grow perennials in containers, try storing them in your shed over winter. That may give them just enough protection to survive until spring. I’ve had ornamental grasses, garlic chives, mint and even a young rose spend winter in the shed and come back out to deck and patio for many seasons.

Spend some quality time in your shed. The weather is too cold to garden, but just right for this kind of manual labour — and you’ll be able to enjoy being outdoors that much longer.