General growing and maintenance guidelines. Your plants and how to care for them…
On this day, June 26, 2015, I climbed a tree. I was out in the neighbourhood with friends, foraging cherries from a favourite spot behind an abandoned house. I noted that day that I felt physically strong, which hadn’t been the case for awhile. But I’d been working on it and it felt like I …
Small, but meaningful shifts are taking place in the garden. Over the weekend (April 13), I made my first, small leafy greens harvest of the season. It included: Radicchio, dandelion, stinging nettle, garlic, ‘Egyptian Walking’ onion, bloody dock, and strawberry leaves, as well as some chickweed, kale, and dandelion (including a flower) that are further …
“Welcome back, friends.” Lately, these words keep popping up in my mind as I slowly walk the garden looking for signs of growth and change. Sometimes I say them out loud, too, greeting each plant as they emerge. I feel so happy to see them again. Grateful that we are here, in spring. Back at …
Some would say there is too much going on here. That it lacks cohesiveness. But when I pass by this now empty stretch of concrete (the garden has been gone for years), it feels deadened and lifeless. I’ll take colourful and vibrant over lifeless any day. Don’t ever let anyone tell you your garden is …
In the spring of 2014 we took a second trip to Joshua Tree, California. We had gone on a much larger desert road trip the year before for our 20th anniversary and decided to return to the Joshua Tree area specifically since it was the part of the trip that we found most captivating. Little …
I’ve been growing borage (Borago officinalis) for almost as long as I’ve been a gardener, but when I look back, I can’t recall why I started growing it in the first place. Borage is an unpleasantly prickly if not painful plant. It grows scraggly and too tall in my well-cared-for soil and relies on neighbouring …
The creature at your feet dismissed as a bug or a weed is a creation in itself. It has a name, a million-year history, and a place in the world. – E. O. Wilson, biologist and naturalist (see Biophilia) It started with the snails. I’ve been remarking for years that the Banded Wood snails (Cepaea …
“Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.” – Henry David Thoreau Here is my garden this morning, August 15, 2018. This may be the most intentionally wild it has ever been. I use the word “intentionally” here, because in the years I was very …
I think you know I can’t resist a weird tomato. Crazy colouration, misshapen fruit, variegated foliage… the freakier, the better. One of the first tomato anomalies I tried were varieties with fuzzy foliage, and peach-like fruit. There’s a bunch out there: ‘Garden Peach’, ‘Wapsipinicon Peach’, ‘Elberta Peach’… I think you get the idea. All of …
Back in 2010, when I was travelling to promote the release of my second book, Grow Great Grub, I made a stop at a small bookstore in Montreal. Before the event, I went plant shopping with the store manager, who wanted to get a little herb garden planted in front of the shop. In the …
This year I am committed to writing more here about growing leafy greens. In my last post I provided photographic documentation of almost every one of my harvests of leafy greens in the 2017 growing season. As promised, this post is a complete list of every plant depicted in those photos. I omitted crops such …
Winter is halfway through and I’m sick of it. Over it. Tired of the back and forth freezing and thaw. This week snow and ice, next week thaw and mud. I’m missing the garden big time, but what I’m missing most aren’t flowers, bright colours, smells, or living soil, although I miss those things too. …