Madison Square Garden is investigating how a naughty online link promising fans can “get laid with any woman you want .. tonight!!” was posted on its Facebook page Tuesday night.

“We believe the Madison Square Garden Facebook page was hacked this evening,” an MSG spokeswoman said in an e-mail to the Daily News. “As soon as we were aware, appropriate steps were taken and the posting was immediately removed.”

The post, displayed on the page after 9 p.m., said, “weird but it works” — and linked to an unaffiliated site that claims a video will show users how to get a woman in their bed “in 2 hours flat.”

MSG didn’t immediately say how long the post was left up.

MSG Company Chairman James Dolan is also president of Cablevision, a major cable and Internet provider headquartered on Long Island.

The fact that the Garden’s Facebook page was inadvertently hacked wasn’t lost on some users.

“Awesome to see our cablevision money isn’t going into cyber protection,” Scotty Hockey commented on the page.

Others made light of the hacker’s bawdy suggestion.

“Thanks… better than getting updates of the Knick’s failures. appreciate it,” wrote user Dave Kerbaugh.

“I guess with hockey and nba playoffs over MSG needs to branch out,” joked Jonathan Fuhrman.

The post had at least 15 “likes” and generated more than 40 comments before it was pulled.

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ST. GEORGE – The midsummer period is a time when not much can be planted, but if you planted on time you should be harvesting onions, broccoli, carrots, beets, tomatoes, peppers and corn about now. Melons will take a bit longer.

If you didn’t plant in time, don’t worry – in late July and early August you can plant corn and melons again. Green beans can also be planted in early August.

Midsummer is also a time to prepare for the fall garden. You can till, mulch and fertilize areas you’ll be planting in during the fall. You can even set your drip irrigation lines so they are ready to use.  It’s a good practice to plant fall crops in areas where the beets are now harvested, or the potatoes, or other cool weather crops that are now finished. Crop rotation is a fundamentally sound practice. All farmers and gardeners should rotate their crops—it will improve your soil and productivity.

Composting: Summer is the time to be composting. I’m not a big fan of composting in a container, or outside the garden; it smells bad, can attract varmints, cockroaches, and other undesirable critters, and it’s labor intensive. My preference is to compost in the garden. By composting in the garden itself, the material will break down faster, is easier to turn, and you don’t have to handle it again once it’s ready to use. There are a couple of ways to approach this.

1. Leave a small section of your garden unplanted each year and use that section for composting. Dump your grass clippings, table scraps, leaves, pecan shells, and any other organic material on that area and just keep it moist and tilled in. Organic matter will not decompose in dry soil. It needs water, heat, and bacteria. The bacteria are already there, so keep it moist and tilled, and by summer’s end the grass, leaves, and table scraps will be completely decomposed and ready for your fall garden.

2. Another approach is to leave a wide enough distance between your planted rows to get your tiller through and dump your organic matter between your planted rows, then till periodically between your planted rows to keep the decomposition working. There are advantages and risks to this approach, however. Tilling close to existing plants can damage their roots and affect their growth, but the organic matter does shade the soil and keeps the weeds down.

Bacteria need nitrogen to feed on when they are breaking down organic matter. You can accelerate decomposition by sprinkling some nitrogen (or steer, horse or chicken manure) onto the compost. Compost is great for the soil, but it really adds very little nitrogen, if any, to the soil. The nitrogen must come from manure, commercial fertilizer or green manure (tilled in grass, grain, or alfalfa). If you allow grass clippings to dry out before being tilled in you’ll have lost nearly all the nitrogen. Grass clippings should be tilled in as soon as the clippings are dumped on the garden – then the nitrogen is retained.

Composting outside the garden: If you must compost outside your garden, just remember that you must keep it moist and you must turn or till it frequently. When the composted material can no longer be identified, it is ready to be tilled into your garden.

Rule of thumb: Here is a helpful rule of thumb: It takes as long to decompose something as it takes to grow it. A leaf takes only a few weeks to grow to full size, thus it only takes a month or so to decompose leaves. Twigs that took a year or two to grow will take a year or two to decompose. Grass takes a week or two to grow and a week or two to decompose. Corn stalks take 60-90 days to grow and will take 60-90 days to decompose.

What to do with corn stalks: Corn stalks can be a challenge to deal with. They should always be tilled back into the garden, but tillers will not cut up six foot long stalks of corn. The stalks will wrap around the tines—it’s a pain. If corn stalks are allowed to dry out and die while standing, you lose some of the benefit of composting them, so they should be tilled in quickly as well. But how do you do it?

Most home gardeners don’t grow a lot of corn. Two to four rows of corn is the norm.

Here’s what I do: As I harvest the corn (a few ears at a time), I take a large knife with me to both cut off the ends of the ears to help me shuck the ears. Then I cut off the harvested corn stalks at the base and whack them into six to eight inch long pieces and leave them on the ground. Now the tiller can easily handle the corn stalks. You can get them into the ground while it’s hot outside and the stalks will break down quickly. By fall, you will hardly be able to find evidence of the corn stalks. A chipper will make quick work of corn stalks as well.

Do not compost tomatoes: Tomato plants should not be composted into your garden! Pull them out of the ground, throw them in your dumpster, and let the garbage guy take them to the landfill. Tomatoes are disease prone, and tilling them into the soil puts those diseases in the soil too. Just pull out the plants when they’re done and put them in your garbage can.

As I’ve stated before, it’s also wise not to till in cucurbit (cucumber, squash, melons, pumpkins) vines. All other garden plants can and should be tilled in.

Email: rjensen@stgnews.com

Twitter: @STGnews

Copyright 2012 St. George News.

Photo by Quentin Bacon

photos courtesy of Quentin Bacon
This dish of linguine with mushroom bacon sauce incorporates shiitake mushrooms, an ingredient that the White House garden grew in 2011.

Photo by Quentin Bacon

Fresh green beans, cucumber, tomatoes, lettuce and radishes are featured in this summer salad recipe featured in the book “American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America.”

Do you remember the first time a teacher had you plant a seed in a Styrofoam cup and allowed you to take it home once it sprouted?

Michelle Obama does.

That’s one of the childhood memories she recounts in her new book “American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America” (Crown Publishing, $30).

She doesn’t go on to say whether she transplanted that sprig into the ground, but more than likely it wound up on a kitchen windowsill, as most of them do, until it finally fizzled and died.

There are many messages in Obama’s new book, but if I had to pick one that gets to the heart of the matter it’s to take that tiny sprig, help your child transplant it, nurture it and watch it grow, because it might just be the catalyst for changing the way your child and your family view the foods that you eat.

At least she hopes it does.

When she moved to the White House she knew her platform would be to bring awareness of healthy eating to our nation and thought a garden might be a good beginning. But because the White House grounds are considered a National Park she wasn’t sure she would be allowed to change any detail of its lawn.

The idea was approved, and on March 20, 2009, Obama broke ground on the first garden she had ever worked.

But she didn’t do it alone. She had lots of help in the way of Jim Adams, National Park Service supervisory horticulturist; Dale Haney, superintendent of the White House grounds; and Jim Crawford, who operates New Morning Farm in south-central Pennsylvania.

She also had plenty of little hands to help turn the soil in the form of 23 fifth graders from the District of Columbia’s Bancroft Elementary School.

A month later (and with a lot of behind-the-scenes work done to prepare for planting), students from Bancroft returned and the first vegetable seeds planted at the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt’s Victory Garden went in the ground on April 9, 2009.

They included a variety of lettuces, spinach, radishes, broccoli, sugar snap peas, shallots, onions, shell peas, kale, collards, carrots and herbs. Marigolds, nasturtium and zinnias as well as blueberries, blackberries and raspberries were also planted.

Some of the seedsused were garnered from the gardens of Monticello where Thomas Jefferson was once a faithful gardener and collector of heirloom seeds.

She writes that her greatest fear was that the ground would lie barren, that nothing would take hold. Her fears were unfounded, and the 1,100-square-foot plot that she fondly refers to as “the people’s garden” produced 740 pounds of produce.

In addition to being used by the White House chefs, much of the harvest was and still is being donated to Miriam’s Kitchen, a nonprofit organization that feed the homeless in the D.C. area. A portion of the food is also preserved and given as gifts to visiting heads of state and other dignitaries.

Since 2009 the garden has continued to increase in size and the book features an illustration of each year’s design, down to the listing and location of each plant.

Lessons have been learned along the way, from how to avoid soil erosion due to heavy rain to the realization that not all berries “play well together.”

Even honeybee hives are located on the White House grounds, something the President was leery about as they were being positioned near the basketball court.

Perhaps he had cause for concern, as the book includes the tale of when the queen honeybee decided to leave her nest and take up residence in a bush near the northwest gate of the White House where the press and other visiting guests routinely enter.

A call to Charlie Brandts, longtime White House carpenter and resident beekeeper, remedied the problem while members of the Secret Service and press corps took refuge in a nearby guard booth.

The book also documents various plants nurtured by other presidents, including an herb garden used by the Carter administration and pots of tomatoes grown during President Clinton’s and President George W. Bush’s administration.

There’s even a feature on Lady Bird Johnson and her dedication to preserving and protecting native wildflowers.

The book highlights community gardens across the nation that operate much like our own CAC Beardsley Community Farm (www.beardsleyfarm.org), where volunteers come together and work the land while learning the details of successful farming.

Programs to bring awareness of food choices, geared toward children, are also featured in the book, including “Let’s Move!” (www.letsmove.gov), the program she helped organize.

The book concludes with 16 recipes created by White House chefs, including the summer chopped salad recipe featured below.

“American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America” is available in hardback as well as on CD, as an e-book and as a digital download from Random House audio. All proceeds from the book will benefit the National Park Foundation to be used for programs promoting gardening and healthy eating, as well as for the care of the White House garden. A portion of Random House profits will also be donated to the National Park Foundation.

Summer chopped salad

Yields 4-6 servings

INGREDIENTS

Salad:

1 cup fresh corn kernels

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

½ pound green beans, trimmed

1 pound assorted summer lettuces, such as Bibb, romaine and red leaf, well washed and drained

½ cucumber, peeled and cut into ½-inch cubes

2 mild radishes, such as breakfast radishes, trimmed and thinly sliced

1 ripe tomato, cut into ½-inch cubes

½ bell pepper, cut into ½- inch cubes

3-4 scallions, white part only, chopped

Pecans:

½ cup pecan halves

1 tablespoon honey

1 ½ teaspoons brown sugar

1 ½ teaspoons melted unsalted butter

½ teaspoon Cajun spice mixture

Dressing:

¼ cup white wine vinegar

Juice of 1 lemon

1 shallot minced (about 1 tablespoon)

1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon leaves

½ cup extra-virgin olive oil

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

DIRECTIONS

1 To prepare salad, spray a large skillet with cooking spray. Heat the pan over medium-high heat and add corn kernels. Cook, stirring constantly for about 5 minutes, until corn is brown in spots. Season with salt and pepper and set aside.

2 Bring a medium saucepan of salted water to a boil. Add the green beans and cook for 1-3 minutes. Be sure that you don’t overcook them as they should remain a little bit crisp. Remove beans using a slotted spoon and place in a bowl of ice water. Drain, pat dry and slice into 1-inch pieces. Set aside.

3 To make the pecans, preheat oven to 250 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil and spray foil with cooking spray. In a small bowl toss the pecans, honey, sugar, melted butter and Cajun spice mixture together. Place on prepared baking sheet. Bake 30 minutes, tossing the nuts every 10 minutes, until fragrant and caramelized. Set aside to cool.

4 A small bowl is needed to prepare the dressing. Combine vinegar, lemon juice, shallot and tarragon. Slowly whisk in olive oil and season to taste.

5 In a large mixing bowl place the salad greens, cucumber, radishes, tomatoes, bell pepper, green beans, corn, scallions and spiced pecans. Pour the dressing over and toss lightly. Serve immediately.

Linguine with mushroom bacon sauce

Yields 6-8 servings

INGREDIENTS

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

4 slices bacon, cut into small pieces

6 cloves garlic, minced

1 medium onion, chopped

1 ½ pounds shiitake mushrooms, stems removed, sliced ¼-inch thick

1 cup half-and-half

½ cup low-sodium chicken stock

1 (14.5 ounce) box whole-wheat linguine

Zest and juice of 1 lemon

¼ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

DIRECTIONS

1 In large saucepan over medium heat, drizzle in the olive oil and add the butter. Add the bacon and cook for about 2 minutes. Add garlic and onion and cook until translucent, 5-7 minutes. Add the mushrooms and cook for about 5 minutes, until fragrant, stirring occasionally.

2 Add the half-and-half and chicken stock and let simmer for about 10 minutes.

3 While the sauce is cooking, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook the pasta for about 8 minutes, until al dente.

4 Drain the pasta and add to saucepan. Add lemon zest and juice, parsley and Parmesan. Toss the pasta with sauce until thoroughly coated. Season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately on a warmed platter.

6 Tips for Helping Kids Try New Foods

1. Try a Family Trip to a Farmer’s Market. Get your family inspired by the fresh fruits and vegetables that are in season at your local farmers markets. If you don’t have a farmer’s market near your home, try to find a CSA and get weekly produce delivered for your meals. Show your kids some other unique veggies such as jicama, leeks, fennel, shitake mushrooms, heirloom tomatoes and fresh herbs.

2. Grow Your Own Garden. Try growing zucchini, eggplant, kale, exotic Thai herbs and cherry tomatoes. You’ll be more likely to try them and experiment with them if they’re right outside your door or on the windowsill.

3. Set a Family New Food Goal. Get the family together on a Sunday night — look at your favorite magazine whether it be Food Wine or Food Network magazine and choose a new dish for each week. Tear out the recipe and pin it to your fridge for a reminder to purchase the ingredients and to create excitement in your family to try new flavors and ingredients.

4. Make an Inspiration Food Board. Take a large cork board and place it on the wall in your office or a side room where you and your family can constantly tack tear-outs of new ideas and inspirational recipes, ingredients and ideas from magazines, blogs and newspapers. Then, on Sunday nights you can gather together all of the new tear-outs and sit around the table with your family to set a schedule for what to make for the week ahead.

5. Start a Supper Club. Create a fun gathering with friends, neighbors or adventurous eaters. Use email invitations sites to help coordinate and plan your foodie event. You can base each get-together on an ingredient, holiday, country or time period. You could have one occasion be a potluck where everyone brings a dish and you have an outdoor picnic or eat your meal on blankets and pillows on the floor. Let the kids participate in the festivities; they can make the decorations or help set the table.

6. Take a Road Tip to an Ethnic Food Store or Market. Kids will love jet-setting in the car for a road trip. Bring along a camera and a notebook and pen for the kids to write down each new food they see. Then, purchase a few new items to bring back home and research recipes to use them in your weekly meals. Kids will enjoy the process from picking out unique ingredients to discovering recipes, cooking the meal and getting to bite into the final creation.

Follow Amie Valpone on Twitter:

www.twitter.com/TheHealthyApple

On a beautiful June afternoon, there’s no place I’d rather be than my garden. If you want to create an outdoor space that revives and inspires you, here are three tips for turning your garden into an oasis.

I’m no gardener, so two very dear friends of mine took pity on me several years ago and turned the patch of weeds that surrounded my home into Eden. Through the years, Gloria and Lynda, who are master gardeners, have taught me a lot about creating lovely and livable outdoor spaces. Thanks to their guidance, I’ve learned what every garden needs:

1. Plantings suited for your space and skills:

The key to success is to know your space and know yourself, then create a garden that suits both. For my garden, that meant giving up on fussy, finicky plants that need a lot of care and opting for shade lovers that have an irrepressible desire to live, despite all odds. Lynda and Gloria rimmed my beds with shrubs that give me four-season color, then under-planted them with hearty perennials like hostas.

Adding a sprinkler system ensured that my plants would be watered on a regular basis — something I could never remember to do on my own.

The only annuals you’ll find in my garden are in a few intriguing pots and urns. I used to plant an array of flower-filled pots and put them all over my porch. Unfortunately, I felt like a slave to those things, and by July, they looked awful. Zero in on just a few annuals, and your garden will be beautiful and carefree.

2. A place to rest and reflect:

What good is a garden if you can’t go out there and enjoy it? After a long day at work, I can’t wait to flop into a comfy chair in my garden, put my feet up and let myself unwind. If that’s your style, too, then add a few seating areas to your yard.

And for a little drama, add some height. Try stacking a wrought-iron side table on top of a wrought-iron coffee table to create a two-tiered structure. The top level is a perfect spot to put an iron urn filled with a gorgeous hydrangea.

A small table and chairs on the front porch make a perfect place to drink your morning coffee, or enjoy a glass of wine after work. For entertaining, take the party out back, where a large, round concrete table can be the center of a courtyard, deck or patio.

3. Intriguing focal points:

Outdoor rooms must have a few arresting focal points. These well-chosen treasures will give your garden beds character and provide a place for your eye to rest as you drink in the whole scene. In my garden, I’ve used different types of artwork. One of my favorites is concrete statuary. I nestled a petite seat right into one bed, providing a hideaway under the green canopy. Other focal points could include iron urns, birdbaths, trellises and fountains.

The old adage “less is more” is definitely true when it comes to decorating with outdoor art. It’s essential to keep the number of pieces you feature in your garden to a bare minimum. Otherwise, your garden runs the risk of looking like a graveyard or an amusement park. Pick just a few pieces that capture your heart, then subtly weave them into your landscape.

This column has been adapted from Mary Carol Garrity’s blog at www.nellhills.com. She can be reached at marycarol@nellhills.com.

Madison Square Garden is investigating how a naughty online link promising fans can “get laid with any woman you want .. tonight!!” was posted on its Facebook page Tuesday night.

“We believe the Madison Square Garden Facebook page was hacked this evening,” an MSG spokeswoman said in an e-mail to the Daily News. “As soon as we were aware, appropriate steps were taken and the posting was immediately removed.”

The post, displayed on the page after 9 p.m., said, “weird but it works” — and linked to an unaffiliated site that claims a video will show users how to get a woman in their bed “in 2 hours flat.”

MSG didn’t immediately say how long the post was left up.

MSG Company Chairman James Dolan is also president of Cablevision, a major cable and Internet provider headquartered on Long Island.

The fact that the Garden’s Facebook page was inadvertently hacked wasn’t lost on some users.

“Awesome to see our cablevision money isn’t going into cyber protection,” Scotty Hockey commented on the page.

Others made light of the hacker’s bawdy suggestion.

“Thanks… better than getting updates of the Knick’s failures. appreciate it,” wrote user Dave Kerbaugh.

“I guess with hockey and nba playoffs over MSG needs to branch out,” joked Jonathan Fuhrman.

The post had at least 15 “likes” and generated more than 40 comments before it was pulled.

We’ve put up with April’s showers and have seen May’s flowers, but now we’re transitioning into the months that keep us outdoors.

Because of the amount of time we plan to spend in our backyards (or patios for those living in apartments) we consulted Peter Cantley, vice-president of floral and garden at Loblaw, to give us some of his insider tips on creating the perfect garden.

From an unexpected use of cayenne pepper to making your backyard feel like a room, Cantley’s tips are unconventional and simple for any gardener.

Here are Cantley’s 10 tips for creating the perfect garden. If you have any gardening secrets let us know on Twitter.

• Easy Colour Coordination

  “One of the biggest challenges that many gardeners face is what colours and plants go together? Visit your local Garden Centre and look for combination planters that are specifically developed to make it so easy to colour coordinate your entire backyard. Simply take these and plant them into containers, window boxes or in the garden. The plants and the colours work incredibly well together and provide non-stop coordination all season long.”

• Attracting Hummingbirds

  “Everyone loves to watch hummingbirds as they hover in the garden. We discovered an incredible “hummingbird magnet” at the California Spring Trials last year. Hummingbirds love bright red flowers and, of course, fragrance. As a matter of fact, when we were in the greenhouse looking at the display plants, there were actually three hummingbirds going from bloom to bloom on the plants.”

• The Lived-In Look

  “When it comes to furnishings, consider old patio furniture or weather-resistant indoor furniture. If pieces are mismatched, all the better — the point is to go for an eclectic, casual look. Benches and rocking chairs are a great touch and very affordable. Add outdoor cushions in vivid colours and prints to all the seats.”

• Set The Tables

  “Old tables can be easily adjusted to better suit your outdoor area. Table legs can be cut down and lowered to a more comfortable height for playing games or enjoying refreshments. Plastic tables can be draped with a pretty floral tablecloth and wooden tables can be unevenly sanded to create that great distressed look.”

• Lighten Up!

  “Proper lighting is essential for entertaining on summer evenings and creating the perfect ambiance for your garden getaway. Light from candles, lamps or a solar illuminated planters are available at an affordable price and provide a splash of colour.”

• Define Your Space

  “You’ll need to put up “walls” to make it feel just like a room. Use part of your fence, big potted plants, a trellis or simply arrange furniture to create privacy and separation. Also, lay down patio tiles or an outdoor rug to define your “floor” and further separate your room from the yard.”

• Planters In Minutes

  “Here’s a little secret that I use when planting up my planters at home. I have a lot of planters in clay, fibreglass and concrete and instead of buying individual plants and doing all the work of planting them all together, I pick up some hanging baskets in my favourite colours. Then I remove the hangers and take them out of the basket (you can do this really easily by carefully turning the basket upside down and removing the plastic basket. Then I simply drop the root-ball into my planters, add more fresh soil to fill and presto! — you’re done. And there’s no waiting for individual small plants to grow larger and fill in — your planters will look professionally done in minutes.”

• Tropical Paradise

  “One of the great new trends in gardening is adding a tropical flavour to decks, patios and balconies. We’ve got just the ticket with our new Tropical Plant Collection. These come in a tree-shape and the leaves are a glossy dark green, but the real joy comes from the beautiful, heavy fragrance of the gardenia flowers! Imagine sitting out on your patio next to one of these plants in the evening as you enjoy the refreshment of cool summer air — there’s nothing like it.”

• Don’t Let All Of Your Hard Work Go To Waste

  “Here’s an insider tip to keep those pesky animals away from your beautiful garden: to deter large mammals or rodents from a particular area one can use a mixture of black pepper corns and cayenne pepper as a soil surface dust. When applied to the soil surface this becomes an eye and nose irritant to rodents or mammals that may be snooping around that area of the garden.”

• Make a Big Impression

  “Liven up your garden with some easy to grow plants that, although they might start small at the beginning of the season, reward you with huge results. My favourite is the PC Super Gigantico Dragon Wing Begonia. I planted these in my planters last year and in a matter of a few weeks, they were massive — they finished up the season almost 3 ½ feet to 4 feet tall! And they were covered with flowers right up until frost.”

Easy Colour Coordination
“One of the biggest challenges that many gardeners face is what colours and plants go together? Visit your local Garden Centre and look for combination planters that are specifically developed to make it so easy to colour coordinate your entire backyard. Simply take these and plant them into containers, window boxes or in the garden. The plants and the colours work incredibly well together and provide non-stop coordination all season long.”

Attracting Hummingbirds
“Everyone loves to watch hummingbirds as they hover in the garden. We discovered an incredible “hummingbird magnet” at the California Spring Trials last year. Hummingbirds love bright red flowers and, of course, fragrance. As a matter of fact, when we were in the greenhouse looking at the display plants, there were actually three hummingbirds going from bloom to bloom on the plants.”

The Lived-In Look
“When it comes to furnishings, consider old patio furniture or weather-resistant indoor furniture. If pieces are mismatched, all the better — the point is to go for an eclectic, casual look. Benches and rocking chairs are a great touch and very affordable. Add outdoor cushions in vivid colours and prints to all the seats.”

Set The Tables
“Old tables can be easily adjusted to better suit your outdoor area. Table legs can be cut down and lowered to a more comfortable height for playing games or enjoying refreshments. Plastic tables can be draped with a pretty floral tablecloth and wooden tables can be unevenly sanded to create that great distressed look.”

Lighten Up!
“Proper lighting is essential for entertaining on summer evenings and creating the perfect ambiance for your garden getaway. Light from candles, lamps or a solar illuminated planters are available at an affordable price and provide a splash of colour.”

Define Your Space
“You’ll need to put up “walls” to make it feel just like a room. Use part of your fence, big potted plants, a trellis or simply arrange furniture to create privacy and separation. Also, lay down patio tiles or an outdoor rug to define your “floor” and further separate your room from the yard.”

Planters In Minutes
“Here’s a little secret that I use when planting up my planters at home. I have a lot of planters in clay, fibreglass and concrete and instead of buying individual plants and doing all the work of planting them all together, I pick up some hanging baskets in my favourite colours. Then I remove the hangers and take them out of the basket (you can do this really easily by carefully turning the basket upside down and removing the plastic basket. Then I simply drop the root-ball into my planters, add more fresh soil to fill and presto! — you’re done. And there’s no waiting for individual small plants to grow larger and fill in — your planters will look professionally done in minutes.”

Tropical Paradise
“One of the great new trends in gardening is adding a tropical flavour to decks, patios and balconies. We’ve got just the ticket with our new Tropical Plant Collection. These come in a tree-shape and the leaves are a glossy dark green, but the real joy comes from the beautiful, heavy fragrance of the gardenia flowers! Imagine sitting out on your patio next to one of these plants in the evening as you enjoy the refreshment of cool summer air — there’s nothing like it.”

Don’t Let All Of Your Hard Work Go To Waste
“Here’s an insider tip to keep those pesky animals away from your beautiful garden: to deter large mammals or rodents from a particular area one can use a mixture of black pepper corns and cayenne pepper as a soil surface dust. When applied to the soil surface this becomes an eye and nose irritant to rodents or mammals that may be snooping around that area of the garden.”

Make A Big Impression
“Liven up your garden with some easy to grow plants that, although they might start small at the beginning of the season, reward you with huge results. My favourite is the PC Super Gigantico Dragon Wing Begonia. I planted these in my planters last year and in a matter of a few weeks, they were massive — they finished up the season almost 3 ½ feet to 4 feet tall! And they were covered with flowers right up until frost.”

For more information, visit pc.ca or Loblaw banner store Garden Centres across Canada.

Want more? Be sure to check out HuffPost Canada Style on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.

Related on HuffPost:

On a beautiful June afternoon, there’s no place I’d rather be than my garden. If you want to create an outdoor space that revives and inspires you, here are three tips for turning your garden into an oasis. — I’m no gardener, so two very dear friends of mine took pity on me several years ago and turned the patch of weeds that surrounded my home into Eden. Through the years, Gloria and Lynda, who are master gardeners, have taught me a lot about creating lovely and livable outdoor spaces. Thanks to their guidance, I’ve learned what every garden needs:

1. Plantings suited for your space and skills:

The key to success is to know your space and know yourself, then create a garden that suits both. For my garden, that meant giving up on fussy, finicky plants that need a lot of care and opting for shade lovers that have an irrepressible desire to live, despite all odds. Lynda and Gloria rimmed my beds with shrubs that give me four-season color, then under-planted them with hearty perennials like hostas.

Adding a sprinkler system ensured that my plants would be watered on a regular basis — something I could never remember to do on my own.

The only annuals you’ll find in my garden are in a few intriguing pots and urns. I used to plant an array of flower-filled pots and put them all over my porch. Unfortunately, I felt like a slave to those things, and by July, they looked awful. Zero in on just a few annuals, and your garden will be beautiful and carefree.

2. A place to rest and reflect:

What good is a garden if you can’t go out there and enjoy it? After a long day at work, I can’t wait to flop into a comfy chair in my garden, put my feet up and let myself unwind. If that’s your style, too, then add a few seating areas to your yard.

And, for a little drama, add some height. Try stacking a wrought-iron side table on top of a wrought-iron coffee table to create a two-tiered structure. The top level is a perfect spot to put an iron urn filled with a gorgeous hydrangea.

A small table and chairs on the front porch make a perfect place to drink your morning coffee, or enjoy a glass of wine after work. For entertaining, take the party out back, where a large, round concrete table can be the center of a courtyard, deck or patio.

3. Intriguing focal points:

Outdoor rooms must have a few arresting focal points. These well-chosen treasures will give your garden beds character and provide a place for your eye to rest as you drink in the whole scene. In my garden, I’ve used different types of artwork. One of my favorites is concrete statuary. I nestled a petite seat right into one bed, providing a hideaway under the green canopy. Other focal points could include iron urns, birdbaths, trellises and fountains.

The old adage “less is more” is definitely true when it comes to decorating with outdoor art. It’s essential to keep the number of pieces you feature in your garden to a bare minimum. Otherwise, your garden runs the risk of looking like a graveyard or an amusement park. Pick just a few pieces that capture your heart, then subtly weave them into your landscape.

(The column has been adapted from Mary Carol Garrity’s blog at http://www.nellhills.com. She can be reached at marycarol(at)nellhills.com.)

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DEEP offers tips on deterring deer from gardens

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It’s time once more to lift my head from the HouseWorks salt mines and turn this space over you.

I call this twice-a-year column of reader and Internet wisdom the Followup Files.

Frozen glue

I don’t know whether this actually works, but I was trolling the web one evening and came across a suggestion that you can keep SuperGlue flowing by storing the tube in the freezer.

Apparently, it never dries up and the cap comes off easily, and — if you keep it upright —the spout never gets clogged with dried glue.

Because I always seem to have to buy a fresh bottle on the infrequent occasions when I need SuperGlue, I’m going to give this a shot next time around.

Kitty damage

A column I wrote last winter that suggested ways a reader might eliminate claw scratches on a window pane prompted Sue to suggest: “You might try polishing compound. … It’s the type used for automobiles. Might help — won’t hurt.”

Not a bad idea at all.

Whither whetstone

After reading a nostalgic HouseWorks column about my grandfather’s garage — and the contents thereof — Bill, a retired geology professor, wrote to suggest the limestone sharpening stone I remembered from childhood actually might have been fine-grained sandstone.

“I’ll bet that it originated at the whetstone quarries near Hindustan, Ind. Limestone is soft — much too soft to sharpen steel tools — and sandstone grinding wheels were common on farms before World War II. I remember using the one at one of my grandparents’ tool sheds to sharpen hatchet blades in the 1930s.”

Likely so. The last time I saw that tool I must have been about 10 — so I think I can be forgiven the lapse in memory.

Elementary, my dear gardener

A copy of “Beginner’s Illustrated Guide to Gardening” by Katie Elzer-Peters (Cool Springs Press; $21.99; large-format paperback) kept me amused one evening last winter.

The term “elementary” doesn’t begin to describe how incredibly basic this manual is.

As is to be expected, there are chapters on tools and supplies, selecting and care of trees and shrubs, planting flowers and vegetables, and caring for a lawn and its mower.

But there also are directions for navigating the garden center (including how to read a plant tag or seed packet) and lessons on parts of a tree branch and parts of a seed. I vaguely recall such things from grade school science class.

There’s a whole page devoted to how to spread mulch. Frankly, I challenge you to find a 5-year-old who couldn’t be entrusted with such a chore.

It is very basic.

But …

But if you know someone born and bred in the concrete jungles of, say, Detroit or Chicago, it might not make a bad gift.

Walnut rubout

Some suggestions I made to a reader about repairing scratched paneling prompted Judy to drop a line from Oregon:

“Why not try walnut meat to cover real-wood scratches?” she asked. Not a bad idea, although it might be tough to match the color.

She also said, “I found on the laminate paneling, when it was icky … I just covered it again with Contact paper. That seems to be similar to what it’s covered with in the first place.”

Frankly, that probably would work, but it would take an awful lot of Contact paper to cover a wall — or an entire room.

The natural-er way

Larry, an old college buddy who lives in Aurora, Neb., sent me this suggestion for fruit growers who don’t want chemicals tainting their fresh produce:

“Take a gallon plastic container and fill it with about ¼ water and half a package of yeast. Drill a hole about an inch from the top but leave on the screw top, then hang it in the lower branches of a tree.

“Bugs check in because they are drawn to the yeast smell of rotting fruit, but they don’t check out.”

Hang the containers early in the season, he advised, before pests appear but after pollinators have done their job.

Larry also suggested that those with deer problems might be able to fend off the grazers by hanging bars of deodorant soap (Irish Spring, for example) in the branches of smaller trees. One or two per tree should do it, he said.

Epiphany moment

Now and then I get what I call an epiphany tip from readers.

Such was the case in February, when Rob wrote to suggest yet another use for a one of my favorite tools.

For light snow removal, he wrote, “use a leaf blower instead of a shovel or broom. It’s fairly quick and less laborious.”

Thanks to a record warm winter, we had pretty soggy stuff last year — and precious little of that — so I didn’t get a chance to try out Rob’s idea.

But the next time I wake to find that ice-cold powder covering the walks, I’ll give it a try.

Bleach or not

A column that suggested using bleach to kill mildew spores on outdoor wicker furniture brought a note from James in Corvallis, Ore.

James recommended peroxide as an environmentally safer alternative. His concern was that bleach might harm the water table or a septic system, and he even cited some Extension Service expertise.

Although I doubt a solution of a cup of bleach in a gallon of water would have much effect on water quality, all else being equal, I see no reason not to give it a try.

(Send your questions to: HouseWorks, P.O. Box 81609, Lincoln, NE 68501, or email: houseworks@journalstar.com.)