Buried in Bounty

Blackberries and greenberries aka Morelle verte (Solanum opacum) The harvest is so bountiful this year. It’s no surprise really, considering the weather we’ve had. Dry and hot, then wet, followed again by heat. The plants love it. I collected enough herbs from our community garden plot yesterday to cover the kitchen floor. Literally. I then

File Under: Weird Food

Earlier this year I discovered that the fruit from the Kousa Dogwood tree (Cornus kousa) are edible and I’ve been waiting until the end of summer to get a taste. The first fruit on my friend Barry’s tree are starting to ripen and I managed, over the weekend, to collect a few from out of

Roof Garden Tour (Back Wall, June 2010)

Click the image to see full-size. As I begin to get the gardens sorted, I figured it was time to start showing what I’ve been up to all of these months. I’ve been growing on the roof since March; however, in a small space I don’t have a hidden area to put the in progress

My First Japanese Maple (Acer)

My first ever Japanese Maple (Acer)!!! I have always wanted one, but it was one of those plants I stayed clear of under the condition that I would get one eventually, but only when I got rich and/or became a homeowner. I bought a Purple Smoke Bush (Cotinus coggygria) instead; the poor man’s Japanese maple.

This is How Bananas and Plantains Grow

At one time just about everyone in Dominica grew bananas. Stabilized market prices made it possible for farmers to etch out a humble prosperity growing and selling bananas for export to the UK. But Dominica’s small-scale banana farmers can no longer compete with the massive plantation output of Latin America’s big banana business. Between that

Winter Flowers

Guest post by Beate Schwirtlich It costs nothing to bring the branches of flowering trees indoors for forcing. A mild day late in the winter or early in the spring is a good time to prune apple and other flowering trees anyway and collecting a few branches won’t damage the tree or shrub. So you