General growing and maintenance guidelines. Your plants and how to care for them…
Back in the spring, when I guiltily purchased this kalanchoe tubiflora (aka Widow’s Thrill) on impulse, it was all about the tall, spotted tubular leaves and the way it looks like a bottle cleaning brush. I didn’t look for photos online or in books to see how it would turn out down the road. I …
About two months before our Caribbean trip, I posted here on You Grow Girl reaching out to anyone who could help connect me with other gardeners living on the islands I would be visiting. This is how I met Celia. We exchanged emails before the trip and then met up in Dominica. It was all …
Like caladium, anthurium are a tropical I never could get into. I have a penchant for freakish, alien plants, but there is something about their waxy, fake phalus-like appearance that bugs me. They just seem so Hollywood — the plastic surgery disasters of the plant world. Last year’s trip to Dominica changed that. There, for …
Yesterday afternoon I was offered some bulbs for free, but I had to pass. I had a deadline for my next book to-be today, and I have a much bigger one in two weeks. When would I have time to plant bulbs? Never-mind the fact that it is already December and the top crust of …
Earlier this year I contemplated trying some unusual amaryllis (Hippeastrum) varieties including
My final Globe and Mail article for the 2010 growing season was on growing and eating cardoon. Cardoon is lesser-known relative of the artichoke that is considered a delicacy in Mediterranean cuisine. Like artichokes it grows into a stately and somewhat dangerous thistle-like plant, but unlike artichokes you eat the stems, not the flower buds. …
I like the droopy, thin leaves.
One of the unforeseen negatives we inherited with the new house is a Legion of Cats who have taken up residence in the yard. They’re not strays, just neighbourhood cats that have decided that since no one else was using it, the’d make the yard their playground. And so they’ve made themselves very comfortable back …
This little rosemary is ‘Blue Boy’ a compact variety that grows into interesting no-work bonsai shapes in a pot. I originally purchased several of these as table decoration and parting gifts for people who attended the Grow Great Grub book launch party back in February. I even took one home myself. And then I lost …
Once again my attempt at Wordless Wednesdays is a complete failure. As I was prepping this image, I realized I could not post it without saying something about these fascinating flowers. Begonia plants have male and female flowers that carry the reproductive organs on individual flowers. This flower is the female, aka pistillate flower. The …
Behold, the beautiful leaves of this Rex Begonia I bought last winter. It’s flowering! The trick to growing this particular begonia is shade and humidity. My time hiking through forests in Dominica really drove that point home in a clear way. I often found begonias growing in surprisingly dim spots underneath thick tree canopy and …
From the moment I first laid eyes on an Oxalis palmifrons I knew I wanted to take a picture of it with a tiny model train figure standing underneath the leaves as if she/he was a tourist posing among a bank of palm trees. This photo isn’t quite what I had in mind.