Happy holidays, from our backyard to yours
May your new year be full of new discoveries, grand experiences and small triumphs.
xox
Andrea
December 22nd, 2008December 17th, 2008Pilfering my archives: Christmas gifts you can make now!It’s snowing like mad right now (a rare treat here on the Wet Coast), which has nudged me, grudgingly, into thinking about the holidays (I know, I’m a little late to the party). I’m thinking, specifically, about crafting and decorating, and about the different ideas I’ve covered here over the years. Here’s a roundup of garden-related gifts you can DIY:
It’s not too late to make an evergreen wreath. This step-by-step guide shows you how.
I would still love to make this gourd birdhouse. If only the gourds were easier to come by. Next year I might have to grow my own.
Alice from NoussNouss gave me this idea. Seedballs as Christmas gifts! One afternoon cranking them out and you’d have all your gifts covered. Here’s the low down on how to make them.
Finally, Martha’s stone plant markers would also make fabulous stocking stuffers. What are you making for the holidays? December 16th, 2008December 15th, 2008Get yourself some culture, son Culture by Nicole Dextras, at Van Dusen Botanical Gardens. It’s the last day to enter to win your choice of two prints by Renee Garner. You have ’til 12:00 midnight, PST, so enter now. A winner, chosen randomly, will be announced here tomorrow. December 9th, 2008Garden Tour: Owen and Cait’s designer test garden
The Basics Names of gardeners: Owen and Cait Black (aka Aloe Designs Test Garden) Heavy Petal says: Ever wonder what garden designers do in their own gardens? Do they maintain an exquisitely dramatic display garden meant to showcase their talents, or are they their own worst clients? Today we’ll peek into the backyard of garden designers Cait and Owen Black, the husband-and-wife team behind Vancouver-based garden design group Aloe Designs. Since I’m lucky enough to count Cait and Owen as friends, I can tell you that this is a couple that really loves what they do. Their enthusiasm for gardens, fresh food, and finding creative, beautiful and sustainable design solutions is truly infectious. Enjoy!
The Details Style: West Coast Contemporary
Before: Providing just a hint of the tightly-organized garden that is to come, Owen builds the raised beds that will define the patio area and produce a bounty of food.
After: The resulting garden manages to be geometric yet informal, restrained yet risk-taking: what Cait calls thinking “big, bold and soothing.” This is a hard-working plot of land; it serves as a comfortable hangout for friends and family, produces a mighty amount of food, and is a testing ground for trialling plants and design concepts before they are implemented in clients’ gardens.
Check out their custom-made, sunken barbecue fire pit: a creative approach to the space crunch and a novel way to disguise those (let’s face it) unsightly barbecues.
Growing fresh fruits and vegetables is the garden’s raison d’etre. And it does it beautifully! Thanks Cait and Owen for sharing your garden with us. You’ve inspired me to start planning my veggie garden for next spring. Like this garden tour? See more. And better yet, why not join the fun? Find out how. December 4th, 2008Would you grow your own grains?Quinoa flowering, originally uploaded by net_efekt. Saltspring Seeds is one of my favourite local sources for vegetable seeds, so when I heard about their Zero Mile Diet seed kit, I was immediately intrigued. What would go into a Zero Mile Diet seed kit? What would I want to grow if I were aiming to provide the bulk of my produce? I imagined my can’t-live-without-them veggies: tomatoes, zucchini, broccoli, cucumbers, green beans, lettuce, kale, potatoes. Instead, when I checked it out, I found that the twelve seed packets that make up the kit don’t include a whole lot of veg. Grains such as quinoa, amaranth, wheat, barley and flax – as well as dry beans like pinto and kidney – represent most of the seeds. As the introduction in the growing guide included with the kit explains, “by combining [the foods in the kit] with locally grown vegetables, fruits and nuts, you could become close to 100 per cent self-sufficient in food.” Ah. I’ve been growing about this all wrong. In my small space, I can’t realistically become completely food self-sufficient (baker and organic food campaigner Andrew Whitley estimates, for example, that I’d need to devote 297 square metres [3196 square feet] to wheat production in order to provide my family with bread for a year). So I focus on things that I love to eat, are fairly easy to grow, and provide a good yield in little space. But as the Zero Mile Diet kit (and the experiment-turned-lifestyle that likely inspired that name) make clear, finding local organic produce when it’s in season isn’t really the problem. It’s the grains and beans and storage crops – the things that get you through the winter months – that I should be growing if I really want to eat local, year round. amaranth, originally uploaded by angela7dreams.
But what if, like most of us city dwellers, you simply don’t have the space to devote to grain production? Would a few rows of wheat or a pot of quinoa be completely ineffective?
Amaranth and quinoa are “awesomely productive,” according to Salt Spring Seeds owner Dan Jason. If you don’t have the space for 50′ (15m) rows (about the minimum length you’d want to sow to get a decent yield) but want to try your hand at growing grains, one plant will produce enough grain for one fantastic meal (just make sure you savour it!). No, it’s not going to get you through the winter, but the greens of amaranth and quinoa are also edible, and the plants are attractive enough to tuck into ornamental beds. And compared to wheat, they don’t need to be ground down into flour for good eating.
Still, I think it makes more sense for small-space gardeners to focus on growing fresh vegetables in season. If you’re serious about eating local, find an alternative way to grow your own grains or source them from a local supplier. The Zero Mile Diet kit suggests that:
If you’re not growing them yourself or within your community, grains can be hard to source locally when you don’t live in a wheat belt. Your best bet, besides going right to the source, is to become a shareholder in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm that grows grains. In Vancouver, Urban Grains is in the early stages of development and hopes to be the first CSA to provide BC-grown grains to Vancouverites.They’re not accepting applications yet, but sign up for their mailing list to stay informed. In Canada, search for a CSA here; in the US, click here and in the UK click here.
Would you grow your own grains? Tried it and ready to report back? Let us know in the comments.
December 2nd, 2008Contest: Win a print by Renee Garner! Pods, by Renee Garner You may know Renee Garner, AKA Wolfie and the Sneak, through her weekly column, Petals and Pedals, at Modish. You may have seen her art for sale on the interweb, or read about her here on Heavy Petal. Or maybe you’ve been in Lila’s nursery and noticed the prints hanging on her wall (in that case, hopefully I know you). If you don’t know Renee, you should. She is an artist, crafty chick, gardener and all-round swell person.  Air plants, by Renee Garner As of December 31, Renee is retiring Fungi and Pods from her series of posters, and she’s sending them out with a bang. One lucky reader will win his or her choice of two prints from the series, a quirky and colourful take on old school botanical prints.  Fungi, by Renee Garner The prints are 13″x19″ on heavyweight matte photo paper and include the aforementioned Fungi and Pods, as well as the newest additions, Air Plants and Gastropods. Click here for a closer look at all four.  Gastropods, by Renee Garner To win, just comment below, letting us know which two are your favourites. Who knows? You might win yourself a little holiday cheer! Thanks Renee for sharing your lovely prints with us! Contest closes December 15, 2008. |
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