If you haven’t done it already, now’s the time to cut back your tomato plants.* Why? To focus the plant’s energy on ripening its existing fruit, rather than on producing new flowers and starting new fruit, which won’t have time to grow and ripen before the first frost. Now you know. *Technically you’re supposed to […]
Veggies & Edibles
Farm it now
Ever fantasize about going “back to the land”? Growing your salad and side dishes, making your own goat cheese: that kind of thing. But, you tell yourself, it can’t be done. Not until you own that idyllic farm. Bollocks, argues 26-year old Jenna Woginrich in her Mother Earth News blog post titled “A Renter’s Homestead.” […]
‘Garden Babies’ Butterhead lettuce
How much do I love ‘Garden Babies Butterhead’ container lettuce from Renee’s Garden? To put it in Grade 3 terms – I would marry it. I’ve never grown lettuce so… perfect looking. It’s like a Whole Foods produce manager sneaks onto my balcony every morning, mists it gently, picks off any errant flecks of dirt […]
Growing shiitake mushrooms
Me, the day before Lila’s birth, preparing to drill holes for shiitake mushroom plugs. (I also lifted rocks and pushed a car that was out of gas that day; I figured that at 12 days overdue, it couldn’t hurt). I’ve been wanting to grow my own mushrooms for a long time now, even listing them […]
Tomato seed starting
As I wrote earlier, for me, tomato growing is a family affair. Thank goodness! Without my mom’s greenhouse, my grandma’s saved seeds and all of our hands, the job would be nearly impossible. We grow enough for ourselves, our friends and neighbours, and this year, we’ll even have a few for the plant sales. A […]
Growing Challenge: First planting of 2008
The Growing Challenge pushes us to grow a little more food than we have before: a minimum of one additional type of fruit or vegetable than we did last year, and to grow it from seed. This here is an update on my progress. After attending Seedy Saturday this past weekend and walking away with more […]
Things you shouldn’t be finding in your garden
This is from an email forward… Childish, but it made me giggle. Warning: not for the prudish. Happy hump day!
The Growing Challenge: expanding my vegetable-growing horizons
I’ve decided to join The Growing Challenge, started by Melinda of Elements in Time’s Creating Edible Landscapes blog. I’m not very good at these types of things, normally. Let’s blame it on my fear of commitment. Never could quite manage to do Green Thumb Sunday or Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day (although I have ordered the […]