I kid. A little hyperbole on a Thursday afternoon. The leaves on this particular plant expand as much as 25″ across! Those of you living in warmer climates must wonder why in the heck I have such a large agave indoors! They’re big, heavy, and their spines are painful. At this size they are not …
Ground control to Major Tom. Perhaps it is the trippy name or the reference to outer space, but David Bowie comes to mind whenever I look at the little cluster of earth stars aka cryptanthus that I keep in a terrarium. In reality, the common name of this unusual Bromeliad family plant has a much …
You Grow Girl is celebrating 14 years online this month! As you can imagine an awful lot of articles have been posted in that time and with so much to choose from it can sometimes be tricky to find what you’re looking for. To make things easier, I have been slowly building an archive of …
Starting from seed is not just an economical way to produce edible crops or access unusual plants and specific varieties. Over the years I have found that it is also a good way to really get to know a specific plant type more intimately and I’ve found myself ordering seed from all types of plants …
A few years back, we spent a week at Rancho la Puerta, a spa in Tecate, Mexico, an hour or so south-east of San Diego, California. I had a great time exploring the landscape of the coastal Baja California desert chaparral and the many fascinating cultivated and wild plants that thrive there. I didn’t do …
Organic Gardening magazine recently unearthed a personal piece by me that was originally published in their February 2008 print edition. Some confusion was created by the timing of the story’s promotion. Many people, including in-real-life friends thought it was newly written and couldn’t comprehend why it fixated on gardens that I have long since moved …
Fresh sage blossoms are a tasty garnish in savoury, tomato-based beverages. Fortunately, it feels like my toothy saga is nearing the finish line. After a few consultations, I opted for an extraction of the offending tooth. It had a significant crack, and due to an experience Davin had some years ago and the options presented …
Some of us begin working the soil fully consciousness of a desire to become a gardener, while others can spend years growing plants before we awaken to the realization of who we have become. For me it was the latter. I spent years, on and off, collecting houseplants, nurturing cuttings, and messing around with the …
Continuing in a running theme of hot peppers that aren’t hot, I present to you another exceptional variety, ‘Pimenta Biquinho’ aka Little Beak Peppers. Hailing from Brazil, these funny little peppers are round with a distinctive, tapered point or tail that resembles a birds beak (hence the name). Like ‘Trinidad Perfume’, another not hot, hot …
Growing up in the 70s and 80s, it wasn’t uncommon to find a collectable card or sticker inside packages of potato chips, cereal, and other junky treats and snacks. We’d save our pennies to buy them, enticed more by the possibility of finding a River Phoenix or Cyndi Lauper card than the treats themselves. It’s …
I grew my first multiflora tomato variety back when I had the rooftop garden. Multifloras (aka compound inflorescence) are tomato varieties that produce legions of fruit, usually cherry-sized, per cluster. In a hot year, some multifloras have been known to produce as many as 50-100 fruits on a single cluster! I can’t recall which variety …
I must admit that despite the myriad of wood spoons, boards, and whatnot in my kitchen, I didn’t think about protecting them from the dry, winter air until we bought a kitchen island with a solid wood countertop. The instructions that came with the island suggested liberal applications of mineral oil to prevent cracking, and …