Anything on the site could potentially fall here, but these articles are specific to sustainability, and growing and living green.
I came across this “Don’t Plant a Pest” brochure put out by the California Invasive Plant Council that could be handy for those of you in the Bay Area. I like that instead of listing invasives with a stern warning against planting, they offer reasonable alternatives and solutions.
Comments OffSo. Ummmm. Who’s a little freaked out by this crazy weather? They say Canada is totally backwards especially for an El Nino year with the west coast all wet and wild and the east unseasonably warm and snow-less. I’ve heard that things are also a bit nutty in parts of the U.S and my Northern California friends are talking about super early magnolia blooms.
Just today I received a frantic phone call from my friend Sarah announcing that she had just spotted two yellow, blooming dandelions on her street. That’s exactly how she said it, “Mark this down: two blooming dandelions, January 4, 2007, Toronto, Ontario.”
Sarah also mentioned that dandelions are known as an indicator of weather patterns. Apparently there are people who record when the dandelions bloom in certain areas. While I do know that this kind of pattern study is called Phenology (as gardeners we are all amateur phenologists in some way), I have been unable to find information relating phenology specifically to dandelions. However, this article states that blooming dandelions indicate when the soil temperature is “… between 50 – 55 degrees. That is the same temperature that soil microbes become active, so dandelion flowers are a nice indicator for when the soil is waking up.”
I truly hope my soil is not waking up.
Actually I’m pretty sure it is. Here’s some photographic evidence:
I have also noticed that a lot of other early spring risers are coming up in full force. These include perennials and self-seeding annuals such as: artemisia, globe thistle, anise-hyssop, grasses, and giant red mustard. I am not particularly concerned about the long-term welfare of these hardy plants but am worried about how this will fare for the more delicate of the bunch.
Anyone with further interest on how warming has affected gardening may want to check out this cool map of the U.S (Sadly I could not find a Canadian equivalent) that shows how the hardiness zones have been changed to reflect overall climate change.
{via the You Grow Girl Forums}
Leave a commentI don’t think I’ve ever done a “Best of” gardening list* but it seems about time to get started. I have done a “Things Killed” list but this year I’m going to accentuate the positive. Picking favourites is difficult for someone like me who tends to favour several things at once. Be warned that what’s on my list today might not be on my list tomorrow… or might not have been on my list yesterday.
Favourite Plant: Ack! This was a hard one. My personal gardening practice leans heavily towards the useful. I’m not really into growing flowers unless those flowers are useful to me in some way. Most of the plants I grow can be harvested at some point and used for food, medicine, beauty products, or scent. That said, I really fell madly in love with grasses this year and my favourite is the native Switch Grass (Panicum virgatum). It’s a beautiful and tough native that grows well in a variety of soil conditions. People are also starting to use it as an alternative energy source. So you see it does fall into that usefulness category afterall.
Favourite Vegetable: This was also a tough choice but it would be hard not to say ‘Black Pear’ tomato considering the incredible fuss I made over it back in the summer when it was in season in my garden. Oh god, how I miss slices of fresh tomato served on a fried egg sandwich!
Favourite Herb: Basil has long been my favourite herb period. Of course when I say basil I don’t just mean plain ole’ sweet basil but include the myriad of varieties, flavours, and colours that are available. So we can always safely assume that basil is a perennial favourite and my number one, period.
Getting that out of the way it would seem that I really developed an appreciation for calendula this year. I’ve been gardening in an alternate plot at my community garden over the last few years and this plot is fairly over-run with calendula. Calendula grows as a hardy, self-seeding annual in these parts — once you’ve got it, it’s not hard to keep it. While I pulled lots of plants out, I also left quite a crop in and was able to harvest large handfuls throughout the summer and fall. I decorated the apartment with calendula bouquets, ate lots of fresh calendula leaves and petals, and dried loads of flowers for future use in cooking and hand salves. It’s such a simple plant but it’s usefulness and hardiness has slowly gained my devotion to keeping pockets of it in the garden.
Most Improved: RADISHES I grew successful radish crops! This is such a joke considering that I have long known how to grow radish successfully in theory, yet had failed time and time again when it came to the application of that knowledge. This year I kicked ass and it was radishes all around!
Best Lesson Learned: I finally cracked the nut that is avocado seed growing. I plan to cover this topic extensively in a future article however I will say that after lots of experimentation I have hit on a method that works well and isn’t that silly 70′s era method that involves trying to balance an avocado pit on toothpick stilts. What you end up with is a real, busy tree and not a thin, leggy stem with three leaves on top.
Favourite Garden Book: I’ll admit that Michael Pollan’s “Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education” is not a new book. I started reading it in 2005 but it was early 2006 before the ideas in it had stewed around in my brain long enough to have a real effect on my consciousness. The entire book is about “rethinking our relationship with nature” and it was the starting point for evolving my own ideas about how we can rethink our view of The City from this out-dated and extremely limiting “concrete jungle” concept into a place where we (as a part of nature) can co-exist with nature.
* Turns out that with some digging I found this old list of top 10 houseplants.
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I discovered these compostable cups made of a sugar industry derivative called “bagasse” while partaking in my weekly cup of solar-roasted cacao drink at the Farmer’s Market. That’s my used cup in the photo above.
Online environmental products store Branch carries a complete line of “bagasse” dinnerware, and at $2-4 for a pack of 50 they’re an excellent alternative to the typical woodpulp, plastic, and styrofoam disposable cups and party plates.
Leave a commentThe Recycled Garden Contest has come to a close. Myself and a team of impartial judges have voted and decided on two entires that have each won a copy of Tsia Carson’s book, Craftivity.
Just to refresh, here are the details:
This time around the contest has a theme in keeping with the spirit of the prizes. Submit a photo that shows a thoughtful and unique way that you are using recycled materials in your garden.
And now, The Winners:
Becky used cardboard boxes rather than the typical newspaper as a mulch to smother weeds and eventually compost her way into a new and imporved weed-free garden bed. We unanimously loved this idea because while it has no aesthetic value, the parts that are recycled literally break down to become a part of the garden. It’s recycling at it’s finest in that the objects being reused never make it to the garbage dump but are disintegrated and contribute to improving the soil along the way.
We couldn’t resist Renee’s simple, but brilliant birdbath idea made using an old bowl and some pieces of rusted rebar. Renee submitted a bunch of great ideas including this miniature border made of thrifted plates with a flowery pattern.
I want to add a special shout-out to Chris Chang who submitted this grow bag contraption that feeds condensation from an air-conditioner through a tube and into a plastic bag holding petunias. Okay so I’m not a big petunia fan since they’ve the Parks & Rec “flower gun” plant of choice for the last 3 decades, but the contraption is a pretty darn awesome idea that demonstrates both the concept of “self-watering” and grey water collection simultaneously.
I have a personal soft-spot for Green Wellies concrete planter made by digging a chunk of concrete out of the ground! It’s kind of like the hypertuffa containers I make although I pour the mix into the ground on purpose and have the benefit of placing all the required holes where I want them.
Don’t forget to join the mailing list (right side, top of homepage) to be notified about the next contest to be announced very soon.
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