Plan and plant in summer for harvests all winter long.
Now harvesting: mid-August
When I got back from holidays, it was pretty clear that my potatoes were done. The leafy tops had been dying for a while, and I’d been sneaking the odd new potato here and there, but until last week, you could still pretend the tops were green. No longer. Have you ever harvested potatoes? No? […]
The best low-maintenance edibles: food growing for the time crunched
Potatoes: it doesn’t get much easier. I don’t have hours a week to spend in the garden. I wish I could say that I do daily rounds of all my garden spaces, carrying a big wicker basket and leisurely harvesting things that need picking, casually plucking the occasional weed, and generally doing a lot of […]
Some summer photos
I’ve been back from vacation for a few days now; long enough to be pining for days spent by the water and evenings with a bottle of wine and a few dozen mosquitos. I’ve got what feels like a few million posts to write, but I’m not quite ready to leave holiday mode just yet. […]
Now Harvesting: early August
I love coming home from holiday. Sleeping in my own bed. Unpacking. Airing out the house. Watering. This homecoming was even sweeter because the garden had treats waiting for me. The first tomatoes – ripe n’ ready. Cucumbers – perfect. Potatoes – SO ready (so ready, in fact, that they warrant a whole ‘nother post). […]
Fighting tomato blight
The last few years I’ve grown tomatoes, they’ve come down with the blight (kind of the tomato equivalent of bubonic plague). What to do? I had dinner with some Italian friends, and we had a rousing discussion of how to prevent/cure tomato blight, which dissolved into conflicting “true stories” involving home remedies and nylon stockings. […]
Garden to visit: Nitobe Memorial Garden
Yesterday my boyfriend Ben and I went to Nitobe Memorial Garden at UBC to check out a matcha festival. Considered to be one of the top traditional Japanese gardens in North America, Nitobe Memorial Garden honours the Japanese scholar, educator and diplomat Dr. Inazo Nitobe (1862-1933). Nitobe is meticulously designed and maintained, down to each […]
Seaside grasses
I love the simple drama of this Crescent Beach garden; there’s only, as far as I can tell, three types of plants used here. I could never be that restrained. Miscanthus sinensis ‘Gracillimus’ (Maiden grass) is in the background, Pennisetum villosum (Feathertop) is in the mid-ground, and there’s another grass in the foreground that I […]