2010 February | You Grow Girl

February 2, 2010

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Grow Great Grub Book Giveaway

I did a quick and easy giveaway of my new book “Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces” on The Twitter last week and as promised I’m doing one here too. It’s still winter and most of us are hibernating and reserving energy for the spring, so let’s keep this simple.

To Enter:

Simply post a comment via the box below. Please be sure to use a valid email address as I will be using that to contact the winners.
Include a link to a photo or post online of something that is inspiring your edible garden this year. It can be a picture or post about your garden from the last season, your garden as it is right now, or a garden grown by someone else. Let’s inspire each other and get excited about the forthcoming growing season!

I will choose 2 winners at random on Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 6pm EST.
Please note that this contest is only open to addresses in Canada and the Continental USA. (Sorry.)

Update: Since so many of you have asked: You don’t have to link to anything if you don’t want to. Simply stating what is inspiring you is great! The point is really about getting us all fired up for spring through our collective enthusiasm.

Update: Please note that this giveaway is over and the winners have been announced.

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February 2, 2010

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Kohleria ‘Brazil Gem’

This kohleria was another Gesneriad (African violet family) that I was completely taken with at Erica’s house. You can see a photo of the entire plant at the top of this post.

The flowers are pretty, but it’s really the rusty red leaves that got me. I imagine this would be gorgeous backlit by natural light streaming in through the window. Just the thing to brighten a crisp winter day.

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February 2, 2010

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First Sighting in the Wild & Ten Years!

It’s a big week over here as my new book, “Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces” (I’m already an expert at saying the title super fast) hits bookstores TODAY!

Except that we spotted it at a Chapters/Indigo here in Toronto last night.

If you pre-ordered a copy, it should be arriving any day now. Yay!

Books are available through a variety of bookstores across North America. I will also be selling signed copies via my online store. Details on that are forthcoming but I will post here once my shipment arrives.

Meanwhile, some very excellent reviews of the book have appeared online and in print media. Check those out over here if you’re so inclined.

I wanted to make a much larger book and was sad to have to leave out chapters on seed harvesting (luckily you can find that here & here), extending the growing season (you can also find THAT here), more recipes, and so many plants that I just love, love, love. Over the coming weeks I will be rolling out some of the extra content that I had to edit out.

To support the book we are furiously organizing media appearances and events to begin this month and continue right through the spring season. A full list of events as they are confirmed can be found on the Grow Great Grub website or the “Upcoming Events” sidebar on the right side of the YouGrowGirl.com homepage. If you’d like to have me speak at your event, garden shop, or bookstore please get in touch.

In the meantime, here’s what’s confirmed for the month of February so far:

TODAY! Tuesday February 2, 2010
Martha Stewart Living Radio Show
Morning Living
8 am EST

Saturday, February 13 & Sunday, February 14, 2010
Montreal Seedy Saturday & Sunday
MontrÃƒÂ©al Botanical Garden / Jardin botanique de MontrÃƒÂ©al
Montreal, Canada
10am-4pm

Sunday, February 21, 2010
Toronto Seedy Saturday (on a Sunday)
12:30-6pm
Artscape Wychwood Barns (Barn #2)
601 Christie St., Toronto, Canada
I’ll be here as always selling copies of the book along with some of my other gardening goodies.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Grow Great Grub Book Launch Party
Lula Lounge
1585 Dundas Street West
Toronto, Canada
6:30-10:30pm
FREE Admission!
Come out and help celebrate the launch of the book! Door prizes, book giveaways, seed starting station, nibbles, and music by DJ General Eclectic (Footprints, Uma Nota).

TEN YEARS!

And if that wasn’t enough, February also marks the 10th year that this here internet website has been online. Ten years! All last week I pondered something profound to say to mark the occasion but all I’ve managed to come up with is, ten years. TEN YEARS. Ten [insert expletive here] years.

When I look back on ten years it kind of blows my mind. When I started the site I was practically a baby, you know, comparatively. I worried about being blasted for starting an online magazine about gardening (that’s what it was then) without being a horticulturalist (in conclusion: irrelevant). I worried I didn’t know enough botanical names, like there was going to be some kind of test. As if I were applying to be on a game show. Name 300 plants, common name followed by Latin. GO! Over the last ten years I have worried about all sorts of things that I can now say with authority were kind of dumb and not worth the anxiety.

Ten years ago I was a graphic designer and that’s what I planned to continue to be when I grew up. Ten years later I still do some graphic design but it’s no longer my full time job. Not by a long shot.

Having spent a decade writing about gardening, speaking about gardening, teaching others how to garden and doing a heck of a lot of gardening myself, I find that I am even more enthusiastic, more challenged, and more excited about plants then I was back then. Ten years ago I would not have thought that possible. A big part of what fuels that excitement is YOU. Your enthusiasm is infectious as is seeing what you are doing in your gardens, and hearing about your trials and triumphs. I think of it like I am a part of a giant international classroom devoted entirely to gardening Show & Tell and I hope to bring more of that to the next ten years.

THANKS!

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February 1, 2010

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Fresh Coffee Bean

On our last day of the trip, our friend David in St. Lucia picked some red, ripe coffee beans (aka cherries) off of the Arabica bush, one for each of us, and instructed us to bite through the thick skin with our teeth.

Next, he said, remove the beans and put them in your mouth, but don’t bite them.

We were all surprised to discover that the thin layer of pulp covering the bean had a sweet, citrus taste, not unlike the delicious fruit that covers the fresh cacao beans! Who knew? My mind was blown.

This is one of the things I cherish most about that trip. We experienced new tastes and delightful discoveries nearly everyday. And some days were bursting with more than my brain could take in.

I think I’ll go make myself a cappuccino now.

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February 1, 2010

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Garden Tour: Erika’s Small Apartment of Small Plants

Yesterday afternoon I was invited into the apartment of a fellow Parkdale resident to check out her collection of fascinating and unusual plants. The visit brought the plant junky in me out in full force. I went home conspiring to get my hands on a few of those amazing plants myself and then spent the remainder of the afternoon rearranging and caring for the gazillions of houseplants I do have. Visits to other peoples’ gardens never fail to motivate me to do better by my own plants.

Mesembs in the front window.

Erika collects alpines, Mesembs (conophytum & lithops aka living stones are examples), Gesneriads (not African violets), orchids, and euphorbias. Looking back on our conversation, I’m not completely certain that she is exclusive to those plant families. Most of her collection just seems to fall within those categories. When I asked her what inspired her collection, she replied that she has always loved diminutive plants. The perfect-sized plants for an apartment dweller.

Conophytums are a South African plant that consist of two fused leaves. That’s pretty much it. They’re some of the most simplified and reduced plants I have ever seen.

They kind of look like doughy buns. Or really cute anatomical models of the cervix. Apologies for putting that image into your head, but frankly, that’s what I see when I look at one.

Conophytum bergerii (red) and Conophytum ratum (green).

Say what? These freakish things remind me of jelly candies or those stinky jelly air fresheners everyone had in their bathrooms in the late 70s. When I was a kid, I could never help opening up the plastic cover and poking them. I REALLY wanted to poke these too but that would have been very rude. The flower (yes they do flower) comes up between the two “leaves.” I can barely distinguish where that is on the red one.

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