Wake up Garden (but not too fast)

I"m an avid weather watcher this time of year, hedging bets on when to sow carrot seeds - just before a rain - and when to transplant cabbage babies - if only the flea beetles would stay away. We are getting closer and closer to the Last Frost Date too so tender plants are making their daily migration in and out.

All this and much more activity has been keeping me away from my blog recently. I've been telling people that it feels like I"m running to catch up with myself. But I've taken a bunch of thematic photos so I have high hopes for this Monday.

In the meantime, I hope you're enjoying pondering the weather.

Forging wild edibles link

Just a quick post to give you this potentially interesting link from Northern Bushcraft on wild edibles by province.

Love this site, talk about adventurous: Eat the Weeds

Where are you?

I'm overcoming a minor ailment combined with a lot of volunteering work.

P.S. Organic Week is October 15-22 this year. There should be lots of events showing up on their website for Ottawa soon if not already. However, I have the skinny on Canadian Organic Grower if anyone is dying to know now. Also, I'm hoping some of you guys will have your own organic celebrations! How about bake a citron day? I have lots of extras... please come get them.

Back soon promise!

Will Work For Food - Art Project

Thought some of you might find this interesting:

http://willworkforfood-oag.tumblr.com/

Finally Got Electricity Back!

Oh internet, how I missed you. I"m back to the land of the connected. A wind storm knocked out our power and several trees. I have so much to post about! Wintersown seedlings are almost all sprouted, fall sown seedlings in the ground have sprouted including turnip rooted chevril, sweet cicely, orach, magenta spreen, and so on... Onions, brassicas, and more are in the ground. It's beginning to look a lot like spring!

New Urban Garden Blog

Just a quick note to let you know that regular contributor and Ottawa city gardener Steve has a blog: I soiled myself. He's busy turning his yard into an edible oasis in the concrete desert.

Winner Is... No Snow Day

This was tricky. I was using my old yard as a gage as it's in town. Some of you *might* have had a complete melt beforehand but I think my old yard was a good middling estimate. Anyhow, looks like Roman's bet of April 6th has it. Please contact me so I can send your choice of book! Oh and happy birthday Roman!

Can't hold in the excitement!

Spring, sweet spring!

Sugary post to follow.

Your series is not finished!!and my pepper plant has awesome karma

It has occurred to me that some of my serial posts have left people hanging so I am going to correct that. I am referring to things like Part III of the No-Dig Gardening 'specific veggies and no dig' never being written. For shame! Speaking of which, I am currently finishing background research for the next post on composting. After this series, I'll be going back in the mists of time (while I wait impatiently for spring) to correct my dangling posts.


Remember the Scotch Bonnet, I've been overwintering? It got aphids again but besides tasting heavenly, it must also be saintly because it is now covered in baby ladybugs. I guess not all those adults I transplanted on were ladies... Bye, bye aphids.

P.S. Some very nice readers have contacted me to say nice things. Thanks guys! It keeps me motivated to realize that my hours of obsessively synthesizing plant related information does not go to waste.

P.S.S. Yes, I have been slow on the posts this month. Another writing project has been gluttonously consuming my time. That and life.

In Loving Memory

To our baby boy that lived for 20 weeks in the womb and forever after in our hearts.

Don't miss this update

If you can drop everything and haven't heard of this before, then go get chicken and meet with Cluck Ottawa to talk urban poultry.

More Don't Miss This

Eco Stewardship Fair and Can't Take a Pic

This Saturday I was volunteering as a booth person at the Eco Stewardship Fair for the Canadian Organic Growers of which I am a proud member. Membership, by the way, not only gives you a good feeling because you are supporting a worthy cause but if you pay more than 35 dollars, you get a quality newsletter filled with articles about gardening and growing and access to their lending library.



Not their lending library, but the Nature Lover's Book store in Lanark.

Anyhow, I would show you more pictures such as of the Almonte Herb Garden's baby plants for sale, various conservation authorities and vendors of eco friendly products but I just didn't have my photographic game on. So instead here are some people facing the other way.

For what it's worth, I enjoyed strolling between the displays, of this free fair and invite you next year to come out, have a free cookie and maybe even find some kindred spirits.

Harvest Monday - truancy...

I could have taken a picture of some of my snowed over greens, or the sage bravely sticking branches out of our unusually light snow load or a root but instead I wrote about cabbage - see below. If you are hankering for a harvest monday installment, see Daphne's Dandelion (who writes about soil blocking - guess it's that truancy time of year) for links to garden bloggers in attendance.

In other exciting news, my interview with Greg from Mapple Farms, supplier of short season sweet potatoes, rare tubers and seeds will be posted soon!

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My old blog posting on growing Sweet Potatoes in Ottawa.

Horticulture Magazine's top 20 blogsMe? Say What??

In November, we experienced a family tragedy. I wasn't really paying attention to the outside world.

Meanwhile... somewhere in Horticulture Magazine land... Patty Craft named me, along with 19 others, one of their top 20 garden bloggers.

Knock me over with a feather. That's a shock. One I thought I'd share with you.

Now, back to the bowels of google.

Happy green & red holiday

For all of us caught up in the festivities: Happy holidays. Let your bellies be full of food, your heart full of family and friends and your life light.


Here is my four year old 'long red cayenne' Capsicum Annuum. It does very well in its cramped pot. Right now, it is covered in flowers and has produced several crops indoors. The peppers dry very easily, even on the plant such as last year's crop that you can partially see. It's proved an excellent plant for me. Forgive the flashed overexposure as this was a holiday pic taken after dinner and before putting some excited little girls to bed.

Overwintering peppers has proved quite fruitful for me and I hope to encourage you to dig up some of your favourites to get a jump start on the next growing season. This seems to work best on smaller fruited varieties, like habaneros - Capsicum chinense - but as you see I have good luck with hot C. annuum as well.

For more, see The Chile Man

Fun in Arnprior and a little name dropping

Yesterday I went to give a talk to the good folks of the Arnprior Garden Club and had a fantastic time. Not only were they welcoming but interspersed my droning on about the technicalities of Season Extension, Seed Saving and Permanent Vegetables (thanks Stephen for this term) with lively commentary.


BTW: I am not in this picture and it is not of the talk. It does however capture their good times. This is a picture of a recent hypertufa planter demonstration.

If you are gardening obsessed and live in or around Arnprior, why not attend one of their meetings held at the local library so you can meet this friendly group for yourself!

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And now for the Name Dropping

During the discussion, above and beyond the resource list, I rattled off various garden guru's names. For those of you that didn't have the benefit of a pencil, or the general readership (sounds gradiose doesn't it?) is interested, here goes*:

The Extreme Gardener (not to be confused with merely Extreme Gardener)- She's a permaculturelist blogger in Vermont with lots of knowledge who (unlike this blogger) appears to carefully write and edit her posts. Well worth a look if you like growing your own edibles. I mentioned her technique of heavily mulching sugarhat chicory to extend the harvest.

Tim Peters - One of the many plant breeder extraordinaires who has flag shipped and participated in many breeding projects including the effort to create perennial grain crops. I'll sneakily use this to also reintroduce you to the most excellent and political blogger, Bifucated Carrot to give you more of the scoop. Peters Seed and Research

Tom Wagner - A plant breeder who I know as the 'potato man' because of his interest in breeding disease resistant tubers as well as distributing TPS (true potato seed). Impressive picture of his disease resistant potato stock growing alongside blighted ones. Pay close attention to the pictures shown on the bottom of this page 2 thread. Right now, he's on tour giving talks in Europe with Michelle aka The Seed Man.

Dan Jason from Salt Spring Seeds - A member mentioned that he let his wilted tomatoes grow back. Beyond his Seed Site, he also has a Seed Sanctuary which is well worth the look.

Wild Gardens seeds - Just drumming up support for orach again. Here's a good listing of varieties but you are also welcome to contact me about my seed offer in the post below this one.

The Edible Hosta Project - A regular Homegrown Goodness contributor has put together a project to rate the palatibility of different hostas which are... drumroll... edible. He calls the tasty spring shoots hostons and prepares them much in the same way as spinach. He is also the origin of my use of the term 'Permanent Vegetable' which are vegetables that have annual / biennial life habits but so dependably self seed in your garden as to be considered permanent residents. I admit to extending this definition a bit to include perrenials as well on occasion. (sorry)

Frank's Cool Site - This is on the resource list but I don't think I have made mention of it yet on this blog which is a terrible oversite of mine so if you thought you could name a goodly proportion of vegetables, then cross check with his expansive list.

*Yes, I admit that was unreasonably link heavy but remember the initial buzz of the term hyperlinked when we thought we all wanted to play labryrinth with internet pages? I just thought I'd bring some of that back to you.

New blog with new idea, old blog with old idea

Just a quick post to introduce a new blog by Gen, a fellow Homegrown Goodness poster called the Green Igloo. She is in the midst of planning her Passive House on a rural oasis nearby Ottawa. It is full of interesting articles on living more sustainably.

Also, on this old (new) blog, I am going to introduce an new (old) topic and that's gardening 101. I have mostly stuck with my gardening 201 subjects because there are many sources for basic garden info but I get so many questions from local gardeners which would fall under the category of 'help, I'm new' that I thought it might be fun to make some posts about how to grow popular vegetables. However, as I'm me, I know that I will infuse it with the usual skeptical googling on alternative methods, forgetten skills and less popular but very worthy edible plants.

Meeting a gardening hero

Last Saturday's Eco Farm Day 2009 was great fun. I went to see a gardening hero of mine: Eliot Coleman, author of many books including the Four Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long , which inspired me to first experiment with season extension as well as allow me to redefine the length of our outdoor growing season from a mere 120 days to a much more exciting 210 days or more.


Coleman kindly agreed to take a picture with one of his big fans: me. Check it out, I'm hanging (briefly) with the man - the Coleman.

During his entertaining and inspiring plenary speech, he mentioned many authors that were influential to his way of gardening and I wondered if he realized how to a generation of us organic growers, he is on par as an inspirational figure.

I ate lunch with two of members of the Homegrown Goodness crew who I shall call 'The Seed Man' and '100 acres.' The latter doesn't have a blog presence yet but I have an inkling she will soon. We really enjoyed listening to one of Seed Man's buddies, northern permaculture expert Ken Taylor. His experience with growing disease resistant, useful nut and fruit trees for cold climates is impressive. I recommend his nursery - Windmill Point Farm (it seems that some of the links aren't working, use top menu bar)- if you are setting up the woody backbone of your permaculture system.


HG Friends with my code names: The Seed Man and 100 Acres

I also quite enjoyed Hida Manns talk on the benefits of the weedy vegetable garden called H. Ecological equilibrium: balancing weeds, insects and economics. She uses a no-till method where instead of weeding or mulching between the rows, she manages the weeds by keeping them about six inches high but otherwise lets them grow. She finds that this improves the ecological health of the system and prevents disease and pests in her vegetable crop.

This fascinates me as I have been playing with strips of perennials and self seeding annuals in my more formal no-till vegetable patch that act to as a diverse habitat for all sorts of critters, as well as leaving some of the more useful weeds such as dandelion grow. She noted that there was a weed progression in her garden away from the kind of annuals that thrive in disturbed - tilled - settings to more perennial weeds. Her method brought up lots of interesting questions but another post would be needed to cover them properly.

I also met lots of great people like Lynda Hall of Growing Up Organic. An initiative to bring kids and food production back together, and the members of Rare Breeds Canada who I bump into on a regular basis.

Lastly, after all that fun, I thought I should remind people of another exciting event on the Ottawa Horizon:

Seedy Saturday

I love this event where local organic small seed growers get together along with other 'eco' trades people to sell there wares. There are also talks, activities for kids and a seed trade table.

My Seedy Saturday review 2008

My Seedy Saturday review 2007

Gardening Meme - from Double Danger

I've not been on this blog - Double Danger - before but I generally like humble people so here goes, my answers to the 'Lame' Gardening Meme:

1. Describe your gardening style? Fast and efficient 'cause I don't have time for anything else. Other people might describe it as half *ssed on occasion but that's because they were not there when all I had within a foot radius of me to prop up the plant was the broken fence post and a flexible twig.

2. What was the last plant you bought? It's been awhile but I guess it was a Rosemary shrub to replace the one I neglected last summer.

3. What were the last seeds you bought? I feel liberated with this one. I have became connected with several seed networks that are outrageously generous so I have received a lot seed lately that was either free or that I traded for. Next year, I am going to 'try' to grow out as much seed as I reasonably can. Ha ha ha ha! I am no longer tempted by you seed companies (though I do really like the local, organic ones).

4. When was the last time you had to pick dirt from under your fingernails? Yesterday, I planted up some sprouted pepper seeds, which reminds me, I have more to do today.

5. Any big plans in the garden this year? Always. What are they? Not telling, you'll see. Why's it such a secret? It's not, I just have other things to do today so I can't write a loooong response. You really have other things to do? Yes, why do you ask?

6. What was your biggest gardening mistake ever? Planting Chinese Lantern because I was nostalgic for my garden in the UK. Or at least that's the one I can think of at the moment.

7. Biggest success? Growing stuff. It's fun.

8. If you could do anything right now in regards to gardeing what would it be? Garden OUTSIDE.

Thanks for letting me do your lame meme!

'The seed man' visits

My buddy from Homegrown Goodness (an edible plant, homesteading, and plant breeding forum) came round my house with his seeds.



He looks as surprised as I was as we brought in box after box of rare and interesting seeds. A great deal of them were from different genetic databases. He is trialing melons for the suitability for our northern growing conditions and one box was devoted to melon varieties alone. Not only am I heartened by his gardening enthusiasm but am a bit amazed at how much energy he must have to work his fields. We should get together a melon picking posse for him - yum.

At any rate, I felt like a kid in a Candy store as he said and I quote "My seeds are your seeds."

I do believe my response was "Oh no, don't say that."

You should see my seed cabinet. What with the tomato trades, my interest in trialing ornamental and perennial vegetables and my general impulsiveness with seeds, I have a fair number.

Not a table full like 'The Seed Man,' but more than I have room to grow.

Now I have even more as he was my source of many types of perrenial allium, some cool looking beans including Soisson - a huge bean, and so on!

Seed Man - Thank you

I promise to take a better picture of you next time.