Grow

June 7, 2006

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Audible Flavor to Savor

Guest post by Renee Garner

I must admit, rather proudly actually, that I am hooked on National Public Radio. I am rarely impressed with top 40 radio, less impressed with the hip hop of late, and classic rock bores me to tears the moment Stairway to Heaven starts up. So I switch on over to NPR and catch up on the news, pop culture, and some of the silliest, smartest musings the human brain can muster.

Check out Bonny Wolf’s article on edible flowers, with recipes that make the vegetarian in me chomp at the bit for more, regardless of any included meat substances. And, well, anything that suggests drinking wine at the breakfast table sounds a-okay by me.

Or check out the listings for listening to Lynne Rossetto Kasper host The Splendid Table, and call in and ask her what to do with the prolific mounds of pineapple mint obscuring the dill in your garden this year. Chances are, she’ll have the most creatively tempting in-depth answer a gardener could ever dream of.

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June 6, 2006

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Healing with Dandelions

Guest post by Emira Mears

There are a few things I have an abundance of in my garden without trying. They may be familiar to you: dandelions, chickweed and horsetail. And while I curse a blue streak as I remove the horsetail, I can’t help but think of my amazing friend Signy each time I get to pulling chickweed and dandelions out of my flowerbeds. Signy is an amazing person on many fronts, but one of the pieces in her arsenal of things that rock, is the approach she took in battling (and beating) breast cancer five years ago. While she underwent the standard chemo et. al. she also turned to food as her medicine, and among some of the cancer-fighting winners: chickweed and dandelion.

You don’t need to be in a crisis with your body state to enjoy the healthy benefits of these glorious weeds, and with the way they’re coming up in my garden right now, in concert with an imminent bounty of lettuce, I think I’ll be enjoying some of Signy’s “Pure Medicine Salad” chock full of weedy goodness all summer. (NB: this recipe was also published in the Staying Alive Cookbook).

Salad Recipe:

1 (4-to-6 cup or 1-L) package mixed salad greens
Healing herbs such as chickweed, dandelion greens, or wild violet leaves (Violata odorata) – this last one being especially good for breast cancer prevention
1/2 cup (125 mL) chopped parsley
1/2 cup (125 mL) sunflower seeds
1/2 cup (125 mL) sprouted lentils or bean sprouts
1 or 2 ripe avocados, sliced or cubed

Dressing

2 Tbsp (30 mL) flaxseed oil
1 Tbsp (15 mL) extra-virgin olive oil
2 tsp (10 mL) Bragg’s
2 tsp (10 mL) freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 clove garlic, minced
5 tsp (25 mL) ground flaxseeds

In the bottom of a salad bowl, whisk together flaxseed oil, olive oil, Bragg’s, lemon juice, and garlic until dressing is thick and opaque. Add more lemon juice to taste. Immediately before serving, whisk in ground flaxseeds. Add salad greens, healing herbs, parsley, sunflower seeds, and sprouted lentils or bean sprouts. Toss until well coated with dressing. Gently stir in avocado, being careful it does not get mushy.

If you’re keen on more ways to use food (backyard garden derived and beyond) as medicine check out Signy’s site.

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June 1, 2006

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The Herb Fair is Coming, The Herb Fair is Coming

My favourite local plant-related event is back!

What: Ontario Herbalist Society Annual Herb Fair
Where: Harbourfront Centre, Toronto
When: Sunday June 4, 2006. 11am-5:30pm

If you’d like to meet for plant shopping, exchanging (bring your extra transplants and seeds), fellow herb loving geekery, and more myself and other YGGers will be waiting in front of the outdoor bathrooms at 1pm.

Plants I Will Have for Exchange:

a few heirloom, determinant tomato seedlings
Anise-hyssop seedlings
Wormwood seedlings
Scented Geranium cuttings

Check out last year’s event.

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May 30, 2006

10 Comments

Square Foot Gardening Review

Guest post by Emira Mears

This year, as I was faced with the task of starting up our veggie garden relatively from scratch, I did a bunch of research into garden design, veggie growing, etc and settled on trying the Square Foot method. I did this for two reasons really. The first being that it gave me a pretty straightforward plan that was easy to follow and had decided boundaries. That made the project of starting a veggie garden from scratch seem manageable what with the working full time and such. Second, that kind of regimented, planned gardening kind of runs counter to my entire gardening nature and I was sort of curious, in an admittedly twisted way, to see what I could learn from trying something kind of outside of my normal pattern.

I picked up the first edition of Square Foot Gardening from the library and surprised myself by reading it pretty much cover to cover. And, I continued to be compelled by all the talk of how easy it was to maintain such a systematically planned garden, once you’ve put the initial work into setting it up. And so, I pressed on. Martin (my partner) helped me build two 4×4 ft squares, I made a plan (with a schedule!) for what would go where and when I would plant it, and eventually replant as squares became available. And off I went.

As of this weekend I have four squares left to plant and have already moved onto replanting one of the radish squares that has been harvested, and so I figured the time was right to share my thoughts on this process so far.

I love it. Much more than I thought I would. And primarily my reason for loving it is that it is exactly as easy as promised. On the weeks when I’ve thought that I didn’t possibly have time to go out and fuss planting vegetables that won’t really give me much return for months to come (so why not wait a few more days… weeks… oops too late), I’ve remembered that to go out and plant two squares of lettuce will take me about 5 minutes including washing up afterwards. Weeding is a breeze in the raised beds, and watering has also been pretty low maintenance (though here in Vancouver the rain has done much of that for me so far). And I have, somewhat to my surprise, stayed pretty close to my original plans. I’ve made a few shifts here and there, ditching a scallion square for extra radishes to meet the in-house radish demand, or deciding that one of the kale squares could instead be planted amongst some of my flower beds to free up a square for example. But, overall, I’ve stayed pretty close to my original plan. And that’s the other great bit: going into it with a plan has been wonderful in that I don’t have to really think about anything, I just need to remember to check my book each week (which I do every Saturday morning) and make sure I’m on track. If I don’t have time to daydream and do web research, or pour over seed catalogues I don’t need to worry. Typically any one week’s tasks (exclusive of watering) can be done in a few 10 or 20 minute stints, leaving me time to worry and fuss in the flower beds.

In fact, my only complaint so far is that I didn’t plan for enough. I should have done three boxes, and I’m regretting that now. In the planning stage I thought that 32 squares (each 4×4 ft box contains 16 squares) would be enough for our family, but I’m not sure that it really is. I had wanted to replace most of my farmer’s market produce shopping for the summer, but I’m not sure how realistic that is going to be. I may need to try growing some regularly consumed extras (like those radishes) in pots or in other beds. And now that summer is coming, I’m already regretting the fact that I definitely won’t be getting quite enough of some of the staples (tomatoes, cukes, beets) for much in the way of canning or pickling, so would need to go to the market for those which seems a bit of a shame. But really, that’s a minor complaint. And I’m already looking forward to setting up a third box next year and may even see if I can maneuver a fourth box for “production” growing of items for canning etc.

I know it is typically a method lauded for small space gardening, and I can certainly see it working well in community gardens. At this point, though I’d recommend it for many folks. It really has allowed me to be pretty utilitarian about my food growing, freeing up much needed time for more creative thoughts about the rest of the garden.

Lettuce and Radishe Squares

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May 29, 2006

7 Comments

Roses are Fussy!

Guest post by Emira Mears

Who knew!?! But seriously. Our house came with a number of lovely roses of different varieties. Some traditional pink, very fragrant lovely ones in the front, two of what I believe are dog roses also in front beds and a very prolific climbing rose on the back fence.

rose Last summer all of these plants kind of took me by surprise in terms of how very much I fell in love with them. Not that I’ve been harbouring a life long hate-on for roses or anything, but they had just never really caught my eye in gardens in the past. I think it was that each of these different roses (and I’ve already reserved a book at the library to help me identify them, and figure out just what they need in the way of care) brought back childhood garden memories. Their various scents reminded me of the hot summer days that my best friend Kate and I used to try making “perfume” from flower petals mixed with water from the garden hose in 4L ice cream pails that were then set in the sun to cure. The look of the different flowers from each bush was of such a simple, but iconic beauty that I was pretty much charmed from the get go. I also really loved how old each bush clearly was (you could see the gnarled past branches trimmed down to allow for new growth), and imagined how many years they had been tended and loved by their previous owner (I’m such a sucker for things with history, whether its a history I embellish or one that has some actual legs, give me a “heritage” seed variety any day).

Anyway, aside from needing to learn the basics of rose pruning last year me and the roses got on famously. No real problems. No real fuss. In exchange I enjoyed beautiful cut blooms and scent in the house for months. A perfect arrangement. And I will admit, I had a few passing thoughts about how much easier roses were to care for than people seem to think.

And then the problems started.

A few weeks ago, one of the dog roses in the front became infested with black spot and aphids (common companion problems). I quickly ran to the internet (of course) and the Forums here for advice, and soon found myself spraying a baking soda, castile soap mixture on the beloved but beleagured plant, but not until I had brutalized it pruning off the blackspot and cleaning up infected leaves. The evening that I did that emergency pruning I ended up out in the garden until nightfall carefully saving every part of the plant that I could, while sacrificing what felt like way too much to the garden waste bin. And as I cut off a number of yet to open buds, I actually found myself pretty upset by the process. Over the few weeks that plant has bounced back a bit, but certainly has a ways to come before it is back to its full glory.

A few weeks later I determined that the other dog rose in the front was really suffering from its position (which I think used to get much more light in past years, but is now heavily shaded by a large japonica). So I carefully dug it out, dug a new hole, followed all directions I could find for transplanting roses and moved it to a new sunnier home. It is reacting much as I would have expected and really it wasn’t doing at all well in its previous spot, but inspite of frequent waters and plenty of measured attention it certainly hasn’t yet re-established itself as the jewel in the garden or anything. I’m trying to give it time.

Then we come to yesterday and what I thought would be a fairly easily, though somewhat prickly task to prune the suckers and some of the very prolific growth off the climbing rose on the back fence. Until I notice the mildew. That’s right: powerdery mildew seems to be taking over on this plant now. And so, I ended up pruning off a lot more than planned and am really not yet done with removing everything.

Argh.

There are two things about all this rose drama that really get me. The first, is that I can’t quite believe that these roses made it this far if they’re such fussy critters. Our house was previously owned by a 99 year old woman and from what I’ve heard for the last year at least she wasn’t out pruning the rose bushes. So how did they survive all the pitfalls that seem to plague them? Second, I can’t quite get over how emotionally attached to these plants I’ve become in such a short while. Each time I have to do this it causes me such distress, distress arguably disproportionate to the task at hand.

Anyway, as I say, I’m trying to amass rose resources, and if anyone has some good ones please pass them on. From what I’ve learned so far one of my biggest mistakes in each of these cases has been not pruning and tending them earlier in the season, but other information and tips would be wonderful.

me pruning the climbing rose