A noun. A verb. A blog.
When I sprinkled the seeds of this lovely ‘Dukat Leafy Dill’ from Renee’s Garden, I was hoping this would happen. ‘Dukat’ is said to be leafy, delicious and a little slower to bolt. I had room for them to fluff up between the Gladiolus corms in my second trough, which this year is more of a […]
A quick post, because I’m in Chicago accepting an award for the blog from the Association for Garden Communicators. Before leaving Toronto, one of the last things I did was pick this lovely bowl of ‘Emerite’ pole beans. Are beans worth the space they take in a tiny garden like mine? You might not think so. […]
No room for a veggie garden? Do what this Buffalo gardener did: Put one on the roof of your garage. Getting up there to harvest your crops can be half the fun, as you’ll soon see. But, first, take a look at those crops! Lots of good things growing in that August sunshine, including eggplant, […]
Have you ever eaten a begonia? I hadn’t even thought about eating one until a tour with the National Garden Bureau introduced me to a Pink Lady garnished with one, courtesy of plant breeder Benary. It was the flower of one of their BIG series (Begonia x benariensis) and its lemony flavour was a complement to […]
If you’ve read our review of two books on growing not-the-usual vegetables, you might be curious about where to find the seeds to grow them. By coincidence, a couple of leads fell into my hands last month, and sent me into a digging expedition for more. Like the cute little mouse melon above? Read on to find seeds. […]
It doesn’t always happen, but when my review copy of Veggie Garden Remix arrived – the latest garden book by Niki Jabbour – I sat right down and read it. Cover to cover! Jabbour began with a garden best-seller in her Year-Round Vegetable Gardener, which is in something like its eighth or ninth printing now. Her newest is on its way […]
This desiccated winter planter turned my head near George Brown College a few weeks ago. Not for its artistry, but for the realization: Hey, those red “pine cones” are loofahs! Loofahs! Not sea creatures, but the fibrous cores of mature gourds such as Luffa aegyptiaca – all in the cucumber or squash family. We associate loofahs with sponges because they hang […]
Back in July, my Microgarden report mentioned some of the tomato cultivars I was growing this year. Now here it is at almost the end of November, and I’m still eating fresh tomatoes, harvested back in October. How did that happen? I picked them while they were still green. Some, I kept in a tightly closed […]
Whether you’re a bona fide homegrown vegetable gardener or, like me, simply grow veggies on a small scale, right now you’re probably taking stock of what worked this year and what didn’t. You probably roughly know your yields. Perhaps, like Margaret at Homegrown, you’re fairly rigorous about it. But have you calculated your return on investment (ROI) […]
Houseplants and vegetables are the “gateway drugs” to gardening. They certainly were for me, and I think they are again today. I was a university student with a windowsill full of houseplants when first bitten hard by the gardening bug. Later, Mr TG and I had our first apartment and an allotment garden at the Leslie Street Spit. One […]
We should be grateful to Philippe Kahn, credited with inventing the camera-phone, back in 1997. (Or not, according to C-Net.) Whomever the mastermind, he (or she!) ensured we could have a camera, all the time and everywhere. So as we walked briskly past this fence near Woodbine Park one evening this May, I could follow up my double-take with the […]
Thankful to be passing by, and spotted this little art piece by the sidewalk in someone’s garden Think of this as an Almost-Wordless* Wednesday-on-Saturday. Love the use of milkweed seed here. Gratitude to the internet and search engines for satisfying my curiosity: The fluffy, parachute-like structure at the top of the milkweed seed, or achene, […]