I love a good gardening tip that saves time and effort and–big bonus–helps the environment. One of my favourites is to use gone-past-sell-by fruits and dinner leftovers cleanly and efficiently in your garden without having to compost. Sure, there are good reasons to start composting, top of the list being you reduce food waste and…
As Earth Day approaches, I can’t help thinking about how many indicators of climate change can be found simply by looking out my own back door. We’ve all seen them, from plants flowering and songbirds arriving earlier than ever to wonky weather patterns. Should we start changing the way we garden? Can what we plant…
Originally posted on The Creative Flux:
Ever since I attended an architectural product luncheon back in 1993, where a Swiss rep was showing his wares – various sizes of the plastic, egg crate-looking modules holding the planting medium used to create planted roofs – and lauding their inherent benefits, I have been wondering why green…
What I love about raised bed gardening (besides less back ache) is that it’s such an easy way to add big impact to your garden design while simplifying the whole gardening process, from starting straight off with great soil to growing bumper crops. And there are so many ways you can use a raised bed. Yes, growing…
Growing red tomatoes. Ho hum. But what if you could find seeds for tomatoes that glow orange and gold like a burning sunset? Or almost-black toms? Or a tomato that looked just like photos of a galaxy? (That would be the aptly named Cosmic Eclipse tomato.) When I first laid eyes on The Whole Seed Catalog, I…
Can a bee-friendly garden actually kill bees rather than help them? An article published last June on wired.com reported that gardeners may be accidentally poisoning bees when they purchase what they think are bee-friendly flowers at big box stores in the U.S. and Canada. Several named store brands in the article were found to be selling…
While we humans are savouring the prospects of fresh herbs plucked from our own potager garden (homemade pizza with fresh basil, potato salad with chopped chives, cucumbers tossed with dill, mmmmmmm) there are plenty of friendly flying critters, from bumblebees to lacewings, butterflies to hummingbirds, probably going through their own mental list of nom-nom-noms right…
Even if you live in a skyscraper, if you’ve got a balcony (or a flat roof), you can help save bees and other pollinators. The Home Garden Seed Association recently reported that flowers don’t have to be growing in ground-level beds to attract bees and butterflies. If you plant them, they will find you–just about…
champagnewhisky “A grove of giant redwoods or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great or beautiful cathedral.” Theodore Roosevelt Tree Cathedral, a living installation by Giuliano Mauri in Bergamo, Italy. The foundation was laid in 2001, and following Mauri’s death in 2009, the Cattedrale Vegetale has been completed as a monument to…
In Southern Ontario, long, frigid February nights may seem particularly abysmal but at this time last year, a couple of photographers in our region captured the dark sky filled with vertical streaks of coloured light. Though Science and Weather Reporter Nicole Mortillaro romantically referred to the pillars as “one of winter’s gifts, an almost apologetic gesture for the…
Composting is a great way to recycle nutrients back into the soil but for a breathtakingly efficient rotation from plant to soil and back to plants again, use wood ash. Since the ash is what’s left of burned plant material, it naturally contains many of the essential nutrients that were first provided by the soil. Burning wood loses nitrogen…
Time flies when you’re having fun. That might explain why December 5th whooshed past me without my realizing that day was the first official United Nations World Soil Day. Not that I would’ve been able to do much about it had I known. I mean, what does one do on a World Soil Day? Round up some…
Forget celebrity train wrecks or political scandals. Real dirt, the kind under everyone’s feet, can be riveting. Before your eyes start rolling into the back of your head or you make a quick flick over to Facebook, watch Symphony Of The Soil. OK, maybe it’s not the most tantalizing of titles but this documentary is…
Southern Ontario just got our first dump of snow and even though it’s only added up to a few centimetres (sorry, Buffalo), I’m already feeling nostalgic for green and growing things. So discovering a posting on David Suzuki’s website about eco-connections between urban and natural environments such as pavements and cliff faces, gutters and streams, was a…
I love a good swale. They’re so when-you’ve-got-a-lemon-make-lemonade. In garden geek terms, a swale is a shallow ditch. But it is a ditch transformed. A regular run-of-the-mill ditch catches the rain as it sheets off a gentle slope (like a lawn-covered front garden, for instance) and, in the case of suburban ditches like the one…
Love to Garden? Learn Some Helpful Tips And Tricks To Help You Get That Green Thumb
Life is an interesting journey. These are journals, stories, reflections of a traveller of this journey. (songoftheheartsite@gmail.com)
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Where observation and imagination meet nature in poetry.
A blog about life in Wellington, New Zealand
Plants, veg and chickens: a cottage garden on the edge of Brussels
This blog is about gardening in the north.
Discovering the joy of art
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