A noun. A verb. A blog.
One, one, one li’l ‘Sungold’. Two, two, two ‘Bloody Butcher.’ Three, three, three li’l tomatoes. Well, you get the idea. Considering that this is how they looked when first planted two months ago and then this is how the Sungolds looked in mid-August, that’s worth singing about. And with the unprecedented dry spell of August-September […]
C’mon, little tomato flower (our first one). We’re rooting for you. You can do it! We have faith. And, do you know what? No matter what happens, all we ask is that you do your darnedest. That’s what counts. Way to go, little ‘Scarlet Globe’ radishes! Or should I say: Way to grow! You are […]
How can one describe the taste of a fresh, fresh beet? Sweet, with something of the earth about it. Beets from a store can’t approach this flavour. Typically, the time from field to market gives them the leisure to transform their sugars into starch. If you don’t grow your own beets, the city has an […]
This is one of Sarah’s tomato casualties, which I think we’ve IDed as being felled by beet curly top virus, an insect-borne malady. The leaves have curled upward and become stiff (Sarah says: like rigor mortis for tomatoes), with purple veining on the undersides. The whole plant has become stunted and curled, not older or […]
If you want to hook kids on gardening, let them plant beans. They’re one of the best veggies for the impatient gardener. A week away, and our late-sown crop has sprouted its first set of true leaves. They quickly turn a bare garden into something that looks like it’s really happening. What fun. Now we’ll […]
We have been lucky enough to gain the use of two unclaimed 4×10′ allotment plots in a local community garden. My husband and I haven’t planted veggies on any scale since we foolishly gave up our Leslie Street Allotment plot when we bought our first house 25 years ago. I don’t count an occasional cherry […]
Twitter. Wow. Only through Twitter did I learn about a garden a short drive from home – from someone hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away in the United States. Here’s how it happened. Through Twitter links, I won a copy of the book The Green Gardener’s Guide by Joe Lamp’l. This great book has a […]
This is for islandgardener, who wanted a close-up of the tomato stakes in the front-yard vegetable patch I wrote about earlier. These are sturdy stakes, tied together in a network at the top and anchored to the edging around the raised bed. I don’t know anything about knots, but I have a feeling this gardener […]
Please don’t think I’m all about the flowers. Walking through the neighbourhood today, I was impressed with this front-yard veggie plot. Unsure if you can see it in the smaller photo format, but this little river of vegetables goes aaaaaaaaall the way back. To me, this looks like the work of an experienced and confident […]
With the sudden spike in temperature expected over the next three days, I might just have left it a little too late to start sowing these lettuce and salad seeds I’d been saving — samples received through my membership in the Garden Writers Association. I hope not. I’ll be squeezing the seeds into some of […]