You Grow Girl

February 18, 2010

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Frangipani Tree (Barbados)

I thought I’d post a sunny photo today since we’ve been living under grey skies all week and I’m about to collapse into a no-sun, low-energy coma. Although, scrolling through folders of photos of us frolicking in the Caribbean a few months ago is kind of miserable in its own way.

I took this photo on the first of a short four-day stay in Barbados, where I saw lots of wonderfully fragrant fragipani (Plumeria) trees in bloom. If you have never smelled a real frangipani bloom I hope you get the chance someday. They are extremely sweet, soft and rich. For many they epitomize tropical floral fragrance.

We walked for miles through the countryside on that first day trying to see as much as we could. It’s a good thing I soaked it all in while I had the chance because I don’t believe I saw a single frangipani through the following three weeks. Frangipani plants do not like their roots to be waterlogged. Barbados has a MUCH drier climate than Dominica so I figure that has got to be the reason.

Here’s a link to the photo and story of the very first frangipani plant I had a chance to see and smell, ten years ago.

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February 17, 2010

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Repurposed for the Garden: Forceps

The other day, while shopping in the plant section of the Montreal Botanical Garden’s gift store I came upon a long pair of forceps that a staff member must have forgotten, left sitting among the cacti.

In that moment it occurred to me, aha, yes, THIS is just the tool I need to help wrangle those spiny cactus creatures from one pot to another. No more evil, impossible to locate tiny daggers stuck in my fingers. The forceps could also be used to remove fluff and other debris from impossible to reach nooks and crannies in among the spines. I currently use a stiff bristle paintbrush but sometimes that only makes matters worse.

Yesterday afternoon I went to a surgical supply store to pick up boxes of tongue depressors for my forthcoming book launch party. No, we will not be checking your throat for swollen glands or your scalp for lice before allowing entry to the party! Although that does sound like fun.

I use the large tongue depressors as plant tags when I require a vast quantity for an event. They’re cheap at about $.03 each and can go into the compost bin at the end of the season.

While there, I perused the cabinet of surgical steel tools and low and behold, for 10 bucks they had the same type of 10″ forceps I was admiring at the garden shop.

It wasn’t my idea and I’m probably the last known gardener to come around to this, yet scoring the forceps somehow makes me feel like a bit of a genius and slightly more readied for a minor medical emergency.

If you’re looking online, I found this pair for half the price I paid.

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February 17, 2010

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Caladium ‘Thai Beauty’

Now that I have a new appreciation for caladium….

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February 16, 2010

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Blushing

This is the flower of the peacock plant (Calathea makoyana).

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February 16, 2010

5 Comments

February at the Community Garden

We popped over to the community garden yesterday afternoon with a frozen pail of compost. I thought I would take some pictures so you can see what it looks like in the middle of winter.

As you can see, not much is happening. Drab and dull. We stop using our plots between October/November and March/April depending on the season.

If I wanted to really maximize the space, I could construct some cold frames within my plot and grow cold hardy greens like kale, mache, and spinach. And I would, but unfortunately the lane-way that leads to the garden is typically treacherous terrain through the winter months. We haven’t had much in the way of snow and ice this winter — it’s the first year since joining the garden around seven years ago that I’ve been able to get to the garden gate with relative ease.

Instead, I grow edible perennials as a strategy for extending the season. Cold hardy, perennial herbs such as garden sage, oregano, marjoram, chives, garlic chives, mint, and ‘Egyptian Walking’ onion function as the bones of the garden, holding in the soil and offering up a harvest that starts in the early spring and lasts straight through to the late fall.

Here’s what it looks like in April.

There are also a few self-seeders including calendula, chervil, bloody dock, lovage, shiso, lemon balm, and chamomile that pretty much grow themselves. They can be a curse or a blessing of plenty depending on how you look at it.

Over the years I’ve also added a few small fruit bushes including gooseberries and American black currant, and several strawberries (wild and alpine types) as a way to get garner yearly crops that don’t require seasonal planting.

This is a wild geranium that showed up one day. I always let a few survive since they’re not too invasive and I like their pretty little pink flowers. As you can see, it is also proof that plants don’t necessarily “die” during the winter, but stay alive in a dormant stage underneath the snow.