General growing and maintenance guidelines. Your plants and how to care for them…
I’ve had my new lighting setup in place for a while now, and last week I finally got around to sowing the lithops seeds I purchased almost a year ago. Here they are this morning, a few days after they first started to emerge from the soil. Based on the size of the vermiculite, you …
Those of us in the northeastern reaches of North America are something like just past the halfway mark to spring. The days are getting longer, and even though I am thoroughly discouraged by endless applications of boots and layers of heavy clothing, there is some hope. Spring is within a reasonably foreseeable future. There are …
Seed buying and seed starting season is upon us. It won’t be long now (let’s pretend, even though the snow outside says otherwise) before we’re happily knee-deep into the growing season. Yesterday, I put out a call on Twitter for an online list or chart of garden companies (as well as makers of garden products) …
I was saving this photo, taken last May, for a larger piece on growing broom (Genista lydia), but the greyness today has really brought my energy level down to barely subsistence level. I’m practically in a coma at my desk. I need colour! And here it is.
I promise this will be my last amaryllis post of the season, if only because I am fresh out of blooming amaryllis to write about. Well, that’s not entirely true. The ‘Nymph’ (or ‘Sydney’ or who knows what anything is anymore since nearly all of my bulbs came misidentified) has a second stalk that will …
I have begun to purchase seeds for the 2011 growing season, and because I now live in an Italian neighbourhood, I have easy access to Italian edibles. The above photo represents my first, in-store (as opposed to online), impulse seed purchase of the year. Most of the seeds I bought were varieties of radicchio (Cichorium …
We moved a few months back. Over the last year I’ve received a few threatening emails. I’m not talking about, “You’re a jerk, I hate your stupid website” type emails. No, these threatened my person in a clearly violent manner. I knew that when we moved I’d be more protective about where we lived and …
I apologize for temporarily turning this site into You Grow Girl: The Amaryllis Story, but I promise you I have more posts on other topics on the go. Until then, as promised, here are a few photos of the ‘Green Dragon’ amaryllis. And here are the flowers with red streaks down the centre of each …
Back in November, I wrote about receiving a green amaryllis from a friend (it’s just starting to bloom) and mentioned another variety that I was coveting called ‘Green Dragon.’ Well, I went and bought that one, too. Or rather, I bought three.
It must have been the influence of that month in the Caribbean where they are as big as trees, because I haven’t craved a holiday poinsettia in ages. The last time I remember growing one was the year I published a piece on restoring a dormant poinsettia to its original glory. That must have been …
One of my goals for the 2011 growing season is to try expanding into other species of the nasturtium genus (Tropaeolum). My love of the well known and edible Tropaeolum majus is well documented on this site, and elsewhere, but I have never tried to grow, nor have I even seen any of the other …
Guest post by Davin Risk I am asked now and again if “I am a gardener too” and my answer is an invariably unsure, “Well, yes and no, I help.” As Gayla’s partner I am often by her side in gardens and a certain level of gardening knowledge has seeped into my brain via osmosis. …