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).
Yesterday, I made a timelapse video of the day in the life of one of the herb pots I am growing on the roof (1 pm – 10:30 pm). I choose to focus on the ‘Rose Petal’ thyme because it’s blooms were attracting a lot of tiny little bees and pollinators. My favorite portion is …
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 …
Nina Simone belts, “Save me, somebody save me” through my headphones and even though I know she is singing about a love gone wrong, not gardening, for just a moment I think she is singing about me. This could be my current theme song. You see, I might be drowning. In plants. And gardening. And …
I took advantage of the overcast conditions on Saturday afternoon to plant out some perennials into the street garden. And since I just used the words street garden (along with the above photo) you can probably predict where this is going. The next morning I went outside, looked over at the garden, and found a …
Sempervivums or Hens and Chicks as they are commonly called, are an incredibly hardy, and drought tolerant succulent that can take a fair amount of abuse, yet when I was starting out on my roof, they were the last plant I wanted to grow. I’d come to associate them with the few that had been …
We popped over to the community garden yesterday afternoon with a frozen pail of compost. I thought I would take some pictures so you can see what it looks like in the middle of winter. As you can see, not much is happening. Drab and dull. We stop using our plots between October/November and March/April …
This isn’t all of it, just some of the stranger items. Interestingly enough, the year I decide to give up on the garden is the year Operation Garden Terrorism seems to have come to a halt. Or maybe I just didn’t notice the damage because the garden looked so haggard! Past Interesting Items Found: Mystery …
Click the image to see full-size. I’m long overdue to present a mini roof garden tour this year, let alone a garden tour of any kind. As always I’m behind, which inevitably leads to thoughts that things aren’t just right yet. Or the light is wrong. Then of course there is the classic, “But wait …
One of our weekend projects was turning this vintage doll buggy into a mint planter. The plants inside are, from left: ‘Orange’ mint and ‘Ginger’ mint. I bought the buggy last fall. It cost 5 bucks at a street sale. At the time, I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, I …
On Saturday afternoon Mary and Joan (and Davin, of course) came by and helped us clean up hundreds of cigarette butts, several broken bottles, the bamboo fence we built two seasons ago that had been literally and purposefully kicked in inch-by-inch along its entire length, a bag full of miscellaneous garbage, concrete dust left by …
The snow has melted and it is time to take stock of what has accumulated in the street garden since the fall. In my neighborhood, gentrification is running rampant like a pack of drunken college kids and has brought with it bigger troubles than my little garden has seen in its decade-long existence. I’ve decided …
Miracle of miracles! Not only have I managed to begin my seed purchasing and acquiring process on time this year but I also spent a few hours the other night organizing them all. Ironic that the year I manage this feat is in a crazy busy one when I also happen to be unsure about …