Your Questions Answered: Tall and Floppy Seedlings

Question: I bought an all-in-one seed starting kit that is supposed to make the procedure a breeze. I’m new to this so I tried growing stuff like marigolds, pansies, and herbs but everything died! The seedlings grew tall and floppy with a couple of sad looking leaves.

Seedy Saturdays

It is no secret that Seedy Saturday is by far my very favourite gardening event of the year. It’s a great way to trade and purchase local, organic and heirloom seeds and support small gardening and seed suppliers. It is also a turning point in moving forward from out of winter and starting to think

Seed Catalogues MIA

I had intended to write a post about seed catalogue arrivals and all of the exciting new things I want to try this year but so far only two catalogues have arrived (one of which I didn’t even order!) with rest of the usual suspects seemingly missing-in-action. I tend to shop online and don’t like

Grow-op Set-up

Guest post by Amy Urquhart There have been some whispers in the Forums about starting seeds already. Some of the members of You Grow Girl live in areas where it’s already the season for growing. Here in Southern Ontario, though, we’re still experiencing snow and wind chill warnings. I’ve started to think about what I

Where to Get Dandelion Seeds

I posted back in October about my new-found culinary interest in dandelion greens and a few of you have been writing to ask where I got the seeds. In my case the dandelions have been coming up all on their own in my community garden. If you’ve got the short-leaved variety and you’re looking for

The Eggling Experience: Update 1

Germination has taken place in both the Eggling and the Real Egg. The Real Egg showed a few sprouts about 6 hours before the Eggling. Sorry about the lack of photo to accompany this update however both seedlings are microscopic in size and I don’t have a macro lens. I’m glad I saved a few

Eggling versus Real Egg: Fight

While setting up my “Eggling Experience” I thought it would fall more into the spirit of the much loved but long forgotten “The Lab” section of this site if I were to make this into an Eggling versus Real Egg experiment. I made the claim in my introductory post that an Eggling could be closely

Saving Tomato Seeds

It’s mid September and sadly most of the container-grown tomato plants on my rooftop are on their last lap. A few green stragglers remain and the vines are starting to yellow and fade. Thankfully I’ve got another crop still running over at my community garden plot where the plants aren’t subjected to the intense sun

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

Project “Grow More Food”

It’s time for me to face the cold, hard truth; my plot at The Parkdale Community Beer Garden is officially crap for growing veggies. With every new year I have found that while my soil continues to improve, the light on my tiny plot has been slowly declining. A couple of overhead trees have been

Growing Hard Beans

Guest post by Emira Mears Last week, said friend and I were having a drink and discussing the ups and downs of local eating. He happens to be something of a literal expert on the subject and is a true wealth of info on all foodstuffs local. In my dream universe of local eating, life

A Tale of Two Lettuces

Two sets of lettuce seeds sown at the same time; the first grown under a plastic take-out container “cloche”, the second grown without. With Cloche Without Cloche Here it is with the cloche on.