All about taking it inside, especially through the long, cold days of winter. Getting my gardening fix year-round.
Cape Sundew (Drosera capensis) Guess who bought 3 different sundews and a Pinguicula at The Montreal Botanical Gardens gift shop? I could not resist setting up a quick photo shoot yesterday afternoon before repotting them into nicer containers. Delicate and deadly sundews are my favourite carnivorous plants but are particularly difficult to find for sale …
Earlier this Fall I wrote about bringing your hot pepper plants indoors for overwintering. I’ve put together a short 2 minute clip showing how I dug up a ‘Variegata’ hot pepper plant from my community garden plot and transplanted it into a pot to spend the next 7 or so months indoors. There are lots …
Look what my spouse brought home for me yesterday as a gift for being sick. If this is what I get for being sick what do I get for being a fully-functioning, productive member of society? Actually being sick was a nice excuse to lay in bed watching Wonder Woman reruns and re-reading back issues …
Here’s the follow-up to last week’s Toasty Pot Coaster project. This windowsill warmer is easily crocheted much like coaster using double crochets and shell stitches as a decorative edge. Start by measuring the width and depth of your windowsill. Make chains until the width matches the width of your sill. Double crochet into each chain, …
Guest post by Amy Urquhart This morning on my blog I wrote about how we’re getting crowded out of our dining room by the sheer number of plants in there, so it seems only natural that the next thing I did this morning while drinking my coffee, and in my housecoat, no less, is root …
Like many apartments mine boasts poorly insulated windows and baseboard electric heating. Yep, it’s a keeper. With the weather being in the high My Ass is About to Fall Offs I’ve been scheming ingenious ways to keep the plants that are stuck enduring their fate on the cold windowsill warm and alive through these dark …
You know you’re suffering some major mid-winter gardening itch when you set out to spend a few minutes on a sunny Sunday morning bathing orchids and watering African violets… and then the next thing you know 4 HOURS have passed!! In a joyful haze you have repotted several plants, taken cuttings, showered tropicals, preened away …
Loads of gardening articles and books proclaim that it is easy to grow herbs indoors; however, it is my experience, and I bet it’s yours too, that most herbs are fine during the summer months, but many take a real beating towards the last half of winter. The conditions inside a typical North American apartment …
A constant stream of questions comes flooding through my inbox on a regular basis. I try and answer as many as I can but it’s quite an arduous task. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe I should start answering these questions publicly where everyone can benefit from the information or add their own thoughts …
Living room gardeners needn’t be limited to corner-store variety orchids. Paphiopedilum, aka ‘slipper’ orchids (not to be confused with the cold hardy North American Lady’s Slipper) are an exotic tropical that produce a stunning, solo blossom sometime between late fall and spring. Each bloom lasts as long as 2-3 months and many varieties have dramatic, …
I bought this Hibiscus rosea plant back in May at the Parkdale Horticultural Society Annual Plant Sale. At the time the plant was a wee cutting but just today it opened its first bloom with two buds on the way. I generally dislike the over-bearing tackiness and waxy leaves of tropical hibiscus plants, reserving my …
I closed up shop on my rooftop garden this weekend. The terra cotta containers are all brought indoors and stored away for the winter. I’ll admit that while I’m sad to see it end for another season, I have begun to realize that I really need the freed-up time and energy to focus on indoor …