General growing and maintenance guidelines. Your plants and how to care for them…
I’m pleased to announce that my 6th book, Grow Curious: A Journal to Cultivate Wonder in Your Garden, is now available for pre-order and will be published February 1, 2022 with Chronicle Books. The day before we went into the first lockdown in mid-March 2020, I signed a contract with to remake the Grow Curious …
I have so much to say right now, but my tongue is tangled in knots. I feel so much right now, but the discomfort makes me want to hide. There is so much discomfort: Of the violence we are seeing unfold daily. It’s a brutality and injustice we’ve all known was there… but perhaps it …
It was a nice enough day. There were pockets of sun. The pathways were dry and it was warm enough to work without gloves. I was enticed into the garden with plenty of good excuses. The elderberry needed pruning. So did the Rose of Sharon. And the Rosa glauca. And the black elder. And the …
Yes I did, and almost a month early! It’s a pretty good one, too. There are two reasons for the advanced harvest. One is that we’ve had a fairly mild March so far. Temperatures have gone above zero Celsius a number of times, for longer periods of time. As a result, plants kept under the …
I had a bad night of sleeplessness and pain. Too much anxiety. Too much worry about things I can’t control. Trying to predict what comes next, because my go-to is vigilance, as if that has ever kept me safe. Spoiler: it just keeps me in a state of sympathetic dominance (RE: stressed out). Eventually, I …
In late October, once most of the houseplants had been moved back indoors for the winter, I posted a series of photos to my social media accounts documenting the main spaces in my home where plants are kept. I thought I’d post them here with some explanatory text. As I have written before, my living …
A small infestation of mealybug was recently found on this variegated pothos (Epipremnum). I check my houseplants regularly, but they were camouflaged well against the white variegation. Of the many pests that can plague houseplants, mealybug are the one I’ve come up against most. This may be because I keep a lot of succulent plants, …
I recently joined the legions and brought home a Monstera deliciosa aka Swiss cheese plant. I wrote off the idea of getting one long ago due to a lack of space with appropriate growing conditions. However, we removed the living room TV this summer and that has opened up space around a south-facing window that …
I spotted this gorgeous, burgundy and olive-leaved bromeliad, Neoregelia ‘Fireball’* is my best guess since there was no tag, while walking out of a corner shop last week (having just purchased a plant, of course). I loved that there were already pups underneath and a long arm extending out with a forth, larger baby attached. …
Several creatures dropped into my bowl as I was harvesting black currants last night. First a jumping spider. Then, soon after, this bumble bee. Later, a yellow fuzzy caterpillar insisted on inching toward my hand even as I pulled away, repeatedly. Attempting to work around them. You’ve got to be mindful of where you reach …
It’s been hot here and difficult to get into the garden during the daytime, so in the interim, I’ve been repotting, refreshing, and propagating houseplants. I’m determined to give every single one their time this month, but they are legion. The process is laborious, but necessary as ill health over the last 4 years has …