Rubble Gardens

I like all sorts of gardens, no matter where they are made. Here are a few gardens, including a few edible plants, tucked into crumbling concrete crevices in a local alleyway (around Niagara St and Tecumseth in Toronto). Photos taken by Davin Risk. Related: Alley Tomatoes From Out of a Crack… Behold, a Tomato N’

‘Chinese Ornamental’ Hot Pepper

I know it’s been a slow week around here. I’ve been fighting off the worst cold/flu/virus I can remember in recent history and have been in bed all week feeling like utter crap. Today is the first day I have felt confident about sitting up for more than an hour-long stretch or forming complete sentences

The Greatest Potatoes of All

It has come to my attention that I do this every year: fish around in the soil for potatoes before they are due. As I said last year, it’s the anticipation of not knowing what is going on underneath the soil. This aspect of my personality comes as no surprise. I’m the kind of person

Experiments in Garlic Growing, Part 2

Let us turn our minds back four months (almost to the day by coincidence) to April of this year. Way back then, in a season that felt not so much unlike this one in many ways, what with the rain and the fact that I was wearing rain boots and long sleeved shirts, and it

‘Gezahnte’ Tomato

Behold, the first of the non-cherry, indeterminate tomatoes that has reached maturity for 2009. And it’s a beauty. Incidentally, I’ve managed to grow several ruffled tomato varieties this year purely by happenstance. Well, that and the fact that I have a very obvious preference for that shape. I’m yet to try it out, but I

‘Mini Purplette’ Onions

Every year I go a little nuts growing large crops of onions such as ‘Egyptian Walking’ over at my community garden plot. Onions grow easily in the ground, but they tend to take up a lot of space in containers. In the past I have grown smaller, bunching onions in pots as a way to

Grow Great Grub

As I mentioned earlier today it’s been a L O N G year. Actually, it’s been a long year and a half. Or two years. Where am I? I’ve mentioned it briefly here and there but was finally given the go-ahead today to speak freely(ish) about the main project that has been taking up so

Mid and Late-Season Planting

My latest Globe and Mail Microfarming article came out on Saturday. I’ve included the text below. My editor sent a photographer out this time so there are some pictures in the printed version not taken by me, and one of me planting arugula online. I didn’t lay chickenwire over the flat as protection after planting,