I am an urban gardener through and through. My current garden is small, bowling alley-style yard in Toronto. Prior to this I maintained four very urban spaces: The rooftop of my building where I have been growing a wide assortment of edibles in containers for over a decade, a Guerrilla Garden on a very busy urban street corner (also about 10 years in the making), a community garden plot, and a local yardshare (new for 2010).
Clockwise from Top Left: 1. My garden today, January 28, 2013. 2. October 2012. 3. April 2012. 4. June 16 2012. This morning I took a photo of the garden as it was after a fresh snowfall. Shortly afterward, I dug into my phone’s photo archives and found an image taken from the same perspective …
Every week, from now until I can no longer find anything living to fill up the boxes, I will be photographing and posting a collection of flowers, leaves, stems, and other plant parts that are in my garden. This is an experiment in celebrating diversity and I hope it will allow me to focus more …
We arrived home late from an evening spent with friends on Thursday, October 27 to the realization that several plants and crops would be spoiled or dead by the morning if we did not act fast. So it was in a panic that we bundled up and headed outside with flashlights and bowls to collect …
Oh dear. I really have been remiss in providing updates and photos of the garden in its first year. The last photo I posted was on June 29. We were headed to Denver and I wanted a record of it before I left. Until that time June was still a bit wet and sometimes cold. …
Since moving in, Davin has been taking morning cellphone photos of the yard. We’ve compiled shots taken between January and June into a quick timelapse movie that mark the changes thus far. The last shot is dated for two days ago. We have since done even more work and you will notice when I update …
First up I need to clarify the meaning of the last post. A lot of people thought I was talking about gardening hardship, when I was actually talking about work deadlines. I was REALLY tired and not too with it when I wrote that post. Please excuse my lack of clarity. Hardening off (back and …
About a month ago we looked at a house with a yard and about 10 minutes after the viewing I tweeted that this was the next place I wanted to live. I could envision our life there and it looked rather nice. We didn’t get the house. Or that yard. That yard. Yard…. Sweet, sweet …
I’m not even sure how a whole sweet potato got in there in the first place, but this one really wanted to grow. That giant pile of wood chips in the background is the result of a large weed tree that fell down and flattened a portion of our community garden, including our ramshackle compost …
Click on the images to see full-size. Davin took these photos of the Yardshare Garden the other day, using his iphone and an app called AutoStitch. The first image is a somewhat inaccurate representation of the garden as I believe what you are seeing is approximately 360 degrees in a straight line. What is a …
Back in June I wrote in my Globe & Mail column about growing beans. Within the piece I mentioned a favorite pole variety ‘Trionfo Violetto.’ It’s been years since I have grown this particular variety and now that the plants are in full swing and producing a little crop of beans daily, I can’t understand …
It was an insanely busy working weekend. Come Monday morning and I was desperate to unwind from the weekend, not the other way around. I still managed to get some time in most of the gardens, with the exception of the street garden, which is taking care of itself these days. Thankfully we got some …
When I wrote about the Morelle de Balbis (Solanum sisymbrifolium) last it was on April 30, 2010 when the seedling was still living in the greenhouse. It had just begun to produce its thorns and I was beginning to get a glimpse into what I’d signed on for. It is now July 1 and the …