February 25, 2008
24 Comments
Bulbs Gardening 101 Houseplants Seeds Winter

Turning Towards Spring

Photo by Gayla Trail

I’m writing this post today for all of you out there, who like me, have hit the cold, hard wall of Winter head-first. If success is measured by achieving an intentional purpose then this has been one of the most successful winters in years. There has been snow, and lots of it. It has been cold. Very cold. The winter dull drums started to creep in under my skin about a week ago and now I’m at that can’t-take-another-minute phase. So I’ve been thinking, What can gardeners like myself do to lift ourselves out of a Winter funk and turn our eyes towards a Spring that is still so far out of reach and buried under a dirty, blackened with exhaust and dog feces snow pile?

  • Reflections – The first thing I did was turn to my own book. I wrote about this very topic once. Of course, it was during the summer months when I was blissed out on sunshine and fresh produce. What did I know about winter hardship then? Huh? The first suggestion I gave was to enjoy the time away from the garden to reflect on last year’s experiences and dream about what is to come. Great idea except I’ve been riding that horse for a couple of months now. I like quiet time in a comfy chair with a warm beverage but to be honest I’m kind of over it right already. Take the snow away! Give me green!
  • Visit a Greenhouse – The urge to get inside a greenhouse comes on me like clockwork at this time every year. Go on the first sunny day that comes up (if you get one). Bring a camera, or in my case four. I find that taking pictures helps me to focus on the smaller details, get wrapped up in the plants, and forget about winter. A couple of hours with living things in even the lousiest greenhouse and you’ll be a little bit more prepared to face it. Most largish cities have a public greenhouse. I’d lived in Toronto for many years before I discovered that Allan Gardens Conservatory is open to the public and free. When in doubt ask around.
  • Force Winter Blooms – You need colour! Forcing colourful blooms indoors is literally as simple as cutting a few branches and sticking them in water. If you don’t have trees you can always ask around or try your local floral shop. Some stores have caught on and sell locally-supplied branches at this time of year. You can also try forcing bulbs like hyacinth and paperwhites if branches aren’t an option.
  • Get Fussy with Your House Plants – Most of us probably have a house plant or two or fifty brightening up our living spaces. I’ll admit that at this time of year the general day-to-day maintenance of my indoor garden becomes a robotic routine. My time with these plants just doesn’t seem to cut it anymore. This is the perfect time to spend a couple of hours doing a big overhaul. Your indoor plants have probably been to hell and back over the course of the winter. With spring on the horizon it’s the perfect time to do a little repotting, pruning, and showering. The extra attention does wonders for the plants but always seems to give my own spirits a huge boost too.
  • Focus on Seeds – To begin, look through catalogues, look online, make lists, talk to others about what they are growing this year. Wait, you’ve already done that? Yeah, me too. The next step is to get some seeds. We are fortunate in this day and age to have so many options available whether we’re seeking to purchase or trade. You can buy some online, buy some from a local garden shop, trade with friends, trade online, trade through a local community group. Find out if there is a Seedy Saturday in your area. Join a larger seed exchange organization like Seeds of Diversity, Seed Savers, or Kokopelli.

Photo by Davin Risk

Perhaps you’ve already acquired your seeds for this year’s crop. Pull them out. Look at them. Take some out of the package — I like the beauty and variety of beans for this best. Just looking at seeds makes for a minute or two of happy thoughts.

Now grow some. Tending to tiny seedlings as they emerge from the soil is a hopeful and optimistic activity that looks to the future. Someday spring will come and those little plants will turn into bigger plants and then they will go outside and suddenly it will be spring. We’re just on the cusp of seed-starting season in my area. However, it is not too early to get started with hot peppers, especially the habaneros which require a longer season than most. If you’re in a warmer region than your choices are likely greater than mine. Filling out a seed starting chart will put your options into perspective. You can also try growing a window box of greens. I like the Micro Greens ‘Spicy Mix’ from Botanical Interests because you can start harvesting them when they are not much more than sprouts.

Leave a comment
February 22, 2008
3 Comments
Art/Craft Deep Thoughts Seeds Stuff

Acquired in Vancouver

Photo by Gayla Trail

I didn’t buy much in Vancouver — I’m not really a shopper but am more of a walker and picture-taker. In fact everything I acquired in Vancouver was collected within a single block. Upon arriving in the neighbourhood of my scheduled two-hour coffee I happened upon a thrift store that I could not pass by without a quick peek inside. Like most urban thrift stores it was overflowing with banal junk but I did make a small score of four seventies era women’s magazines for 25 cents each. The magazines all appear to be very informal and naive in tone, suggesting that they were produced in someone’s living room. When you think about it they are not at all unlike the blogs of their time — first person musings and experiences as told by your average Jane packaged according to the popular media of the time.

The best of the bunch is “Women’s Household” from 1977. The cover seems rather progressive, depicting a bride and another woman who appears to be presenting the bride with a ring. Given the “a woman’s place is in the home” and religious content inside the magazine my bet is that the second woman was meant to be a bridesmaid. But with a man suspiciously absent from the scene and the title “Women’s Household” (as-in a household of women) I prefer to imagine it as a covertly disguised message to the closeted second-wave woman’s libers of middle America.

womens.jpg

But I digress. Let’s get to the gardening portion.

The first article is a garden club newsletter meets Better Homes and Gardens style feature on “handicrafter” Grace Swanson, a Floridian retiree who lives in a mobile home with her husband Chester and toy poodle “Grace’s Black Beauty.” Grace and Chester are avid gardeners who love to decorate their home with Grace’s macrame and beaded fruit projects.

golden.jpg

Also within the gardening vein are features articles on balcony gardening, crafting beads from rose petals and a large column called “Garden Talk” which functions much like our forums section today. My favourite section called “Golden Age” features photos of Mrs. Albert Unger and members of her local Garden Club with a gigantic macrame plant hanger and floral wall hangings crafted from rug scraps.

oldad_tomato_tree.jpg

The above is an ad in the magazine. No exaggeration there. Hey look! It’s a “Tomatoe Tree!” Times have not changed that much. This sort of thing still resides at the back of even the most reputable gardening magazines.

shutins_sm.jpg

The “Write These Shut-ins” column is not about gardening, but I could not resist showing it to you. I just really like the idea of a “card shower.”

The “Workbasket and Home Arts” magazines (1972-1979) do not contain much in the way of gardening information but they are chock-a-block with old gardening ads. This magazine is a bit more sophisticated/professional than “Women’s Household” so the most interesting and charming ones are found in the classifieds and the “Shopping with Ellen Jordan” sections most of which are devoted to pyramid-type schemes that sell craft kits to individuals and women’s groups under the pretense of making quick cash.

I stopped at a used bookstore on my way to the coffee meet-up and picked up the book, “Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times” by Steve Solomon for $7.95. With so many books, seed catalogues, magazines, and assorted reading materials on tap I haven’t even had a chance to break the spine but it certainly sounds up my alley.

My final acquisition in Vancouver were two packs of seeds traded with long-time You Grow Girl member and contributor Janet Martin whom I finally had the pleasure to meet and chat with. I can’t recall what she took in exchange but I grabbed one pack each of ‘Tuscan’ Kale and ‘Graham’s Good Keeper’ Tomato from her. Predictably, I chose the tomato entirely because of the olde-thyme-ish name although I told myself it was because it’s a large, long-keeping disease-resistant determinant.

Leave a comment
February 15, 2008
7 Comments
Gardening 101 Seeds Spring

Seed Starting and Springing Ahead

Photo by Davin Risk

Many of us in the Northern Hemisphere are rapidly approaching that last straw part of winter, looking for a little sun and some springtime cheer to warm our hearts, minds and bodies. When you can’t take another minute of winter it’s time to start talking about seed-starting! When I’m looking toward spring I think about the seeds I will start indoors but I also like to focus on the earliest crops, seeds like peas, cilantro, lettuces, and spinach that can be started outside as soon as the ground thaws. If you’re on the west coast you can probably start planting peas very, very soon if not already. If you’re in Florida you were still eating fresh peas off the vine a month or two ago. If you’re in the northeast like me, you can start thinking about the peas you’re going to grow. Someday. In the future.

There’s years of information on this site and I know it can be hard to find, so I’ve put together a list of seed-starting articles and posts that will give your mind and spirit a jump start into spring.

Leave a comment
February 14, 2008
10 Comments
Gardening 101 Seeds Spring

Mix Up Your Own Seed Starting Mix

Photo by Gayla Trail

I posted this recipe a year ago but it is buried in a larger post and I decided it would be better-accessed if it had its own place. Making your own mix is SUPER easy and worth the small effort if you are growing a lot of seedlings.

Seed-Starting Mix

These are the ratios I prefer. If you don’t need a huge batch you can use this as a basis for choosing a store-bought seed-starting mix. Always read the label and look for an ingredients list. Most popular brands have chemical fertilizers added that are unnecessary and will defeat the purpose of growing organically.

Instead, buy a basic mix and add in your own organic materials. I suggest adding a touch of vermicompost and watering your plants with a diluted sea-kelp mix. To be clear, seeds do not require any fertilizers until they produce their first set of “true leaves“. In basic terms this means the second set of leaves you will see. The first leaves that appear are called “seed leaves” and feed the seedling until the first “true leaves”appear.

  • 1 part peat or coir (Coir is a sustainable peat substitute made from coconut husks. Peat is mined from marshland, destroying natural habitats. When you can, use coir.)
  • 1 part perlite (popped volcanic ash that creates good drainage.)
  • 1 part vermiculite (water absorbing material made from the mineral mica)
Leave a comment
January 30, 2008
5 Comments
Seeds Stuff

A Good Mail Day

Photo by Gayla Trail

Who doesn’t love a good mail day? You know, the kind with items in the mailbox that aren’t bills or the junk coupons and flyers that keep showing up despite the careful note explaining that, “Seriously. For real. We REALLY don’t want that crap delivered to our door.”

I received seed catalogues from two companies that are new to me, “Terra Edibles” and “Bountiful Gardens.” Sorry but no recommendations as-of-yet. I have already indulged in some light browsing but without the aid of a pen or highlighter I am blanking on the plants that jumped out at me.

Neither catalogue has photos which can be a bit of a pain for those like myself who are visually oriented, however newsprint catalogues are probably better for the environment. And I understand that many very good seed companies are also very small and do not have the budget to do fancy full-colour photo catalogues. As an aside, I was extra impressed by Bountiful Gardens who mailed my catalogue in a previously used envelope and included a hand signed thank you on the order form. I always try to do this on the orders I send out to customers as a way to let them know a human packed their order with care, so it was interesting to find myself on the other side and feeling impressed by it. Turns out it does make a difference.

The final and most exciting portion of my mail haul is the book, “The One Straw Revolution” by Masanobu Fukuoka. I have been trying to acquire all of his books for a while now but they all seem to be out of print and are often listed used at insane prices. When I saw this used copy reasonably priced at $10 US I jumped on it. This book is an introduction to his “do-nothing” farming philosophy and practice as well as a memoir-of-sorts describing how he formed his ideas and techniques. I can’t wait to get down to reading it.

The book I really want is The Natural Way of Farming but it often starts at $100. GAH!

Leave a comment