Plantarium

The Gardening Educator in me wants to tell you why products like the Plantarium are not viable tools for growing healthy seedlings. Look for a moment at the product photo. The seedlings inside the vial are very leggy, thin, and weak. They have elongated, delicate stems that will make the transition from the vial to …

Your Gardens

While harvesting a-plenty from my own gardens, I have been eagerly following the harvest from your gardens. The Garden Show & Tell section of the homepage has been filling up lately with photos of vine-ripened tomatoes and piles of peppers. And I have noticed an abundance of mature garden photos on display in the Show …

‘Black Pear’ Tomato

I would love to bring you more hard-core gardening experience type information but I am completely emersed in the harvest season and relishing the fruits of my labour. I just ate lunch — a fried egg sandwich on spelt toast with a slice of garden tomato, fresh basil, mayo, and oyster mushrooms — and I …

Feed Them to Assorted Mammalian Creatures

My first response is a loud string of expletives followed by a very long and drawn, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!” ‘Black Cherry’ tomato with chunk extraction. Oh the humanity. A mysterious mammalian creature has been visiting the rooftop deck and taking nibbles out of random produce. We think it may be an opposum this time since one has …

Why I Love This Time of Year

Click here to see variety names. I have been in love with my rooftop garden this past month. Every meal includes something picked fresh from the garden that morning – there’s a bowl of fresh produce on the counter everyday! This is what I love about the harvest season (besides all of the eating). No …

Another Reason to Compost

I discovered another cost of garbage, both economical and environmental, while watching a segment on solar powered trash compactors on Daily Planet. I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me, but of course fuel is needed to operate the garbage trucks that haul garbage off your curb and out of the city to a …

Can’t Stop the Tomatillo!

In an effort to grow new-to-me determinant tomato varieties, I completely forgot to grow tomatillos this year. By the time I realized my mistake it was too late to start tomatillos from seed and none of my favorite local transplant suppliers were growing them. I’m told that tomatillos aren’t a popular crop. For shame. Well …

My Minty Centrepieces

Guest post by Amy Urquhart I got married last month and I sure as sugar wasn’t going to incorporate the usual, boring, over-the-top, expensive floral centrepieces I saw in most wedding magazines into our reception! Instead, I thought I’d buy scented geraniums. However, when I got to Richter’s to buy them the week of the …

EcoForms

The world of gardening containers is a sad carnival of ugly. I grow A LOT of plants, therefore requiring A LOT of pots. Unfortunately, the few stylish containers out there fall outside of a price range affordable to the bountiful, yet thrifty grower. That’s why I was excited to find these gorgeous plant pots at …

Home-Grown Edamame

My spouse, our cat (she LOVES edamame!), and I just finished sharing a small plate of fresh edamame aka soy beans harvested from the rooftop garden. This first harvest came from one plant grown in a medium-sized container. The variety name is ‘Toyha.’ To be honest the taste was not unlike the frozen beans I …

The Scented Garden

Guest post by Emira Mears With summer in full swing most of my garden work these days is about maintaining: watering, weeding and reseeding the odd head of lettuce. For the past week or so these chores have been particularly lovely as a few of my scented flowers are in full bloom. Now many of …