Blackberries and greenberries aka Morelle verte (Solanum opacum) The harvest is so bountiful this year. It’s no surprise really, considering the weather we’ve had. Dry and hot, then wet, followed again by heat. The plants love it. I collected enough herbs from our community garden plot yesterday to cover the kitchen floor. Literally. I then …
I love this pot I photographed at Paul and Uli’s garden in Etobicoke a few month back. It uses a tender Kalanchoe as the centre feature and is stuffed full of tender echeveria (the frilled varieties are always my favourite), and pencil cactus (lower right). This is a pot anyone can grow as long as …
“But people are always speculating — why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from birth, must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient.” – Malcolm X. I believe I’ve published that quote before, but it’s …
Earlier this year I discovered that the fruit from the Kousa Dogwood tree (Cornus kousa) are edible and I’ve been waiting until the end of summer to get a taste. The first fruit on my friend Barry’s tree are starting to ripen and I managed, over the weekend, to collect a few from out of …
Or, I should say, someone claiming to be Bryan Adams. hey there cool site! i came across your page while researching pineapple cultivation. keep smiling bryan I wrote him back, because, COME ON, how could I not reply? I mean, I’m laughing at myself now, because you’d think I’d be cool about it, but instead …
Click on the image to see full-size. The other day I showed a few stitched panoramas taken of the Yardshare Garden using an iphone and an app called AutoStitch. Today’s photo was taken in mt friend Barry’s backyard. One of my favourite features in his garden this summer are the ‘Mahogany’ nasturtiums that have been …
I’m not even sure how a whole sweet potato got in there in the first place, but this one really wanted to grow. That giant pile of wood chips in the background is the result of a large weed tree that fell down and flattened a portion of our community garden, including our ramshackle compost …
I’m way behind on posting past articles from my Globe & Mail column. This profile of thyme was published on July 19, 2010. I thought I’d go with it first since the article set to be published this coming Saturday is a profile of another favourite garden herb: sage. —————– Most of the country, including …
Click on the images to see full-size. Davin took these photos of the Yardshare Garden the other day, using his iphone and an app called AutoStitch. The first image is a somewhat inaccurate representation of the garden as I believe what you are seeing is approximately 360 degrees in a straight line. What is a …
We’ve finally had all of the film from our Caribbean trip developed and I now have the arduous task of scanning it all before the end of September (27th), when I will be giving a presentation, here in Toronto, of some of the botanical images. I took this photo while on a tour of an …
Over the last few days I’ve been slowly working my way through thousands of posts, tagging them and fixing problems as I go along. I’ve rediscovered several interesting and forgotten posts through this exercise, and I thought I would share some of them here with you. Forcing and Growing Colchicums: Freaky Bulbs That Are Actually …
It’s about as hot as the Caribbean out there this week, if not hotter, so I thought I’d dip back into the pool of photos I took on the first real day of our month long journey through the Caribbean this past December. I still remember the giddiness we felt knowing that we had over …