So, you haven’t carved your pumpkin yet? It’s not too late, and now you don’t even have to waste time being creative. You Grow Girl has a Jack-O-Planner, a fun little flash game that allows you to, well, you know, plan your jack o’ lantern.

(For those of you who were too obstinate to read the instructions, you drop the pieces by hitting the space bar.)

I have kind of a love-hate relationship with mushrooms. I grew up loathing them; being forced to try “just one more bite” before I could leave the table. Now I largely like them; shiitake, oyster, enoki… anything but the bland, styrofoamy “white mushroom.” Oh, and they all have to be cooked before they cross my palette.

Nevertheless, I find myself wanting to grow my own. I love the idea of being able to harvest something as exotic and gourmet as shiitakes, or Chicken of the Woods for that matter.

As you can see from these photos, I actually do grow my own. Except I’m not trying to. And I can’t eat them because I have no idea what they are and don’t feel like dying from a toxic mushroom. But I love them! I don’t understand why people want to eliminate them.

These make me want to find a miniature gnome or Smurf figurine and give it a home.

You can buy shiitake starter kits at Dominion Seed House.

You Grow Girl, a website dedicated to – you guessed it – gardeners of the female persuasion, has a good blog. What’s neat about it is that it’s written by a dozen or so gardeners from around the world (well, North America, Australia and the UK anyway).

The most recent post is about seed saving, which I always find thrilling. There’s something inherently satisfying about being able to perpetuate a plant you’ve grown. It’s kind of addictive.

And, if you run out of seeds to collect and save, volunteer for the seed collector program at Van Dusen Botanical Garden.

Apple season is in full swing here in B.C., which brings loads of fresh apples to our farmer’s markets and grocery stores. If you came home with just two or three of the 30,000 lbs of apples that were sold at the UBC Apple Festival, you’re probably going to want to check out All About Apples.

TastingMenu.com has a free online cookbook written by North West neighbour, Scott Carsberg, Chef at Lampreia in Seattle. All About Apples is available via free download. Scott says:

When I created this menu it was between September and October in the state of Washington. Apple orchards are everywhere, especially in eastern Washington. There are so many varieties of apples, and they all have different textures and flavors. I wanted to combine them, not so much in a theme menu, but in a way that takes advantage of the season. I just wanted to do something that was true to this area. Apples are one of those products we’ve always exported. They’re a commodity. But there’s more to apples than apple pie.

He proves it with recipes like Dungeness Crab wrapped in Red Delicious Apples and Pork Prepared two ways with Apple Cider Sauce and Pippin Apple Dumplings. Mmm mmm good! And such a fabulous way to celebrate the apple harvest.

Fallen

Clematis seed head

Naked Canna

Scarlet

Tired

I’ve discovered the digital macro feature on our new camera! Now I’m starting to build my flickr library. Stay tuned for more images.

To go with your chocolate garden… Melianthus major (Peanut butter plant). It’s a weird, dramatic shrub with large, serrated leaves. And yes, it really smells like peanut butter. Zone 8.

From the Cute-but-impractical File: Egglings (from Japan) look and feel like a real egg, but are made of white porous ceramic. Kids (or adults!) just crack it open, add water and sun… and voila! Basil, thyme or Italian parsley at your fingertips.

Plants grow for up to five months in the eggling’s fortified peat mixture, and can then be moved them to your garden or window box.

But it begs the question, doesn’t it? Why not just use real eggshells? Let Martha show you how.

Buy it at Romp.

Via Popgadget.

Chocolate. Plants. Put ‘em together and you’ve got one of the hottest trends in gardening. If it weren’t enough that there are a number of plants with “chocolate” in their name, (Heuchera ‘Chocolate Ruffles’ and Eupatorium rugosa ‘Chocolate,’ for example), there are several plants that smell like chocolate as well. Here are a few of the best.

Berlandiera lyrata (Lyreleaf Greeneyes, Chocolate-scented Daisy, Chocolate Flower)

Berlandiera lyrata is the most chocolately-smelling of all chocolate-scented plants. A night bloomer, so your garden will smell like cocoa in the morning. Zone 4-10. Full Sun.

Cosmos atrosanguineus (Chocolate Cosmos)
A must have for the chocolate garden. Plants form a medium-sized clump of dark green leaves, bearing cup-shaped blooms of deep burgundy-red, with the distinctive fragrance of dark chocolate. Sun. Zones 8-9.

Akebia quinata (Chocolate vine, Five-leaf akebia)

A deciduous to semi-evergreen twining vine with a chocolate scent, – Akebia quinata has clusters of rounded leaves and racemes of captivating purple-brown blooms with a spicy fragrance. Warning: potentially invasive if left to own devices.
Zone 4 but deciduous in zones 4 through 6. Height 20′ to 40′. Full sun.

Mentha piperita cv. ‘Chocolate’ (Chocolate Mint)

Chocolate mint doesn’t really taste like chocolate to me, but lots of people claim it smells like a combination of chocolate and peppermint. Who cares when it’s got lovely bronze-green leaves. 12-24″ tall. Sun to part shade.

Gilia tricolor (Bird’s Eyes)

This annual California wildflower is deliciously fragrant. Meadow plantings. Full sun. Height 3′.

(Now only if they tasted like chocolate…)

Chocolate Flower Farm is a Washington-based specialty nursery offering “chocolate” (scented as well as coloured) perennials.

Read more about scent in the garden in Scent for all Seasons.

Never thought I’d say it, but I’ve found a diet I can fully endorse.

Fellow Vancouverites Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon are halfway through their one-year committment to the Hundred-mile Diet. No, it has nothing to do with the town named for the hundredth mile on the gold rush trail (my mom, whose parents dragged her city-girl ass up there “to homestead” half way through her grade 12 year, has another name for that diet. It’s called bitterness.)

But I digress. Smith and MacKinnon’s diet is based around a vow “to live with the rhythms of the land as our ancestors did.” For one year (they started with the spring solstice in 2005) they are only consuming food and drink produced within 100 miles of their home in Vancouver.

This may sound like a lunatic Luddite scheme, but we had our reasons. The short form would be: fossil fuels bad. For the average American meal (and we assume the average Canadian meal is similar), World Watch reports that the ingredients typically travel between 2,500 and 4,000 kilometres, a 25 percent increase from 1980 alone. This average meal uses up to 17 times more petroleum products, and increases carbon dioxide emissions by the same amount, compared to an entirely local meal.

Their ongoing account is a thought-provoking and fascinating read. Their struggles (Does locally-milled wheat made from wheat grown on the Prairies “count”? How are we going to get through the winter?) and triumphs make for inspiring reading. It’s humbling. And wish I could at least give up the evil banana.

Upon arriving at work this morning, I was incensed to see the landscapers ripping out the annuals from the beds at the main entrance. Those hapless marigolds. Those wretched salvia. Snuffed out in their (late) prime. “Totally unprovoked,” I cried. “I mean, we haven’t even had our first frost!” My carpool buddy was, at this point, looking askance and probably thinking I’d gone nuts.

But it got me to thinking. What is it about beds of “cheerful annuals” that sets off so many gardeners? (Why are annuals always “cheerful,” anyway? There’s something untrustworthy about that.)

Amy Stewart writes:

What is it that’s so offensive to serious gardeners about carpets of annual bedding flowers? I think it’s the waste. For the same money and effort, you could plant extraordinary perennial gardens, or even, for that matter, extraordinary annual gardens. Hey, if you’re going to grow annuals, let’s see a wildflower meadow. A pollinator garden. Vegetables! Herbs!

Amen.

Jane Perrone writes about her trip to the Butchart Gardens with similar feeling:

The planting in a lot of the gardens within the garden were a case of “bung in the annuals”: as soon as anything starts to wilt or die off, it’s whipped out and replaced with more temporary bedding. The result was a blaze of colour, certainly, but not particularly sustainable or likely to get a thumbs up from many organic gardeners.

Now, in (weak) defense of Butchart. First, I have to admit that even though I’m a Vancouverite and even lived in Victoria for five years, I’ve never gone to Butchart Gardens. But still I feel the need to point out that it is a tourist attraction (some might say misleadingly masquerading as a garden). At least that’s how the locals see it. As the website claims, it’s “fifty-five acres of wonderful floral display.” And I’m sure the tour groups love it in all its theme-park-like glory. It should just come with a disclaimer for “serious gardeners.”