Green Zebra tomatoes from last year’s harvest. I put in my first seed order of the year today: eight kinds of heirloom tomatoes from Salt Spring Seeds. As usual, I’ve ordered way too much: last year I managed to squeeze five plants onto my tiny deck. And I’ve got seeds from three of those. Eleven […]
Veggies & Edibles
Food Map Design
Jon and Elizabeth of Food Map Design wrote to tell me about their newly-released Food Map container, a modern garden planter created using green design principles. As Food Map is “committed to reconnecting residential space and food cultivation,” the container was designed for growing edibles, but ornamentals probably wouldn’t complain either. Here’s what Jon and […]
Making quince jam
This is a quince fruit, in case you’re not familiar with them (as I wasn’t prior to this past weekend). They are lumpy and somewhat pear-shaped, with fuzz almost like you’d find on a peach. Generally considered inedible when raw due to their sour taste, they smell divine, however – all sweet and perfume-like – […]
Heirloom harvest
Heirloom tomatoes, clockwise from top left: Odessa, Black Brandywine, Green Zebra. It was a dismal year for tomatoes in Vancouver – mostly due to the lack of a real summer. Unlike the heat waves and droughts experienced on other parts of the continent, we had almost autumn-like weather – rain and cloud interspersed with […]
Have you heard the one about the rabbi and the zucchini?
There are a lot of dirty jokes you can make about zucchinis, to state the obvious. But somehow it escaped my attention, until very recently, that zucchini plants have male and female flowers – of which the male flowers (above) must pollinate the female flowers (below) in order to make babies. Now, I’ve grown zucchini […]
Top deck veggie patch
Seems like this is the week of Before and Afters (ie. I am finally getting my act together in my own garden). Last year, our third-floor deck was a complete embarrassment due to a lack of access to water. This year, after installing a drip-irrigation system and some raised beds, we’re in business. You can’t […]
Makeshift herb garden
ikea hacker, sea soil, coco earth, container, diy container, herbs, herb garden
Celebrity fruit
Okay, so I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be growing dragonfruit anytime soon, but in the tradition of buying plants solely for their fun names, let me briefly consider Hylocereus undatus ‘David Bowie,’ or, David Bowie Dragon fruit. Can’t you see it? It’s … uncanny. At Pine Island Nursery.