Oh, the difference in having proper equipment! We paid out like suckers – went to the garden shop and parted with over a hundred bucks for four feet of spring-time sanity: a Jump Start Grow Light. (Only $60 at U.S. Amazon? What the HELL, Canada). Boom time? Oh, I think so. It has a pulley system, [...]
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Can we even stand the wait for warmth? I’ve been cautioned off putting too much effort into the balcony, but moderation is short-hand for wasted enthusiasm. Despite preference for muddy boots over patent leather, and obscene, gluttonous love of rhubarb… our balcony has a big job to do. Occupy my twiddling green-ish thumbs until this: Source: The Telegraph It’s one [...]
First year I tried gardening, I saw a photo of nasturtiums & liked what I saw. Viney, wind-ey, green and happy. They’re the VW Bug of flowers, aren’t they? Just a little weird, slightly too colourful and strangely round. “Ooh, maybe not a good idea for a balcony where you’re living with them up close,” [...]
[Part 2 of 2. Previous post: revisiting last summer's balcony garden + full plant list]. I’d made wild and determined promises about growing the most gorgeous balcony garden last summer. It wasn’t. Certainly I loved it, but it wasn’t categorically Best In Show. Learned? A lot. Growing from seed: we grew 18 things on the balcony plant list [...]
Little bastards. I’d done my homework – in a big, sick, OCD-way. All winter I’d read stacks of books on gardening – making sure I’d better know my way around the garden centre come spring time. Finally I could stray from impatiens… petunias… geraniums. I’d skulk around the plant nursery on a May long weekend: [...]
Ever try to bend nature to your will? And how does that usually work out? Uh huh. Last spring, with uncharacteristic greed, we bought 2 kilos of seed potatoes – half Russet, half Yukon Gold.. That’s a lot of potatoes, far more than our little community plot could handle. To address the excess, I thought [...]
In February, I estimated we could grow $500 of food in our 75-sqft community garden plot. With the parsnips harvested (& roasted to sweet, sweet perfection), there’s only soggy kale left out there – and kale wins no one’s heart. 2011 garden harvest total? Hold back your tears, guys. It was a very beautiful, very [...]
Sad but true – in the past year we killed every single houseplant we owned*. And we’re self-described plant people. Doesn’t make sense, does it? It took a long time to accept that the amount of light coming through the windows wasn’t the amount I wanted it to be. More than any other feature, the [...]
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After a winter couped-up inside, I was dying inside for some greenery. Plants to love and care for. If we couldn’t have a green wall… then what? The previous year, while still living at The Cave, we’d bought five little ivy plants (my “fivies”). I’d had big hopes for them – but it turns out [...]
Woolly Pockets had my attention. What was it these guys had done so well? Their photos? The happy sunshine & bright, bright paint? Maybe the biggest, baddest, Jurassic Parkiest plants shouting how glad they were to be alive. Me, you, the universe… we couldn’t get enough of these things. WoollyFever! Crashing slightly back to earth [...]
