Iris reticulata, though not in bloom, is several inches tall already. Chromocolor daffodils are pushing through the soil. Things like alyssum that are supposed to die off in the fall are still flowering. And this is January? I hope it doesn’t snow now, because snow would squish this stuff.
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For those who enjoyed the green curtain, what about a green wall? We spent a mini-vacation in Vancouver on the August long weekend, and visited the Vancouver Aquarium for the first time in far too long. The green wall outside the Aquarium entrance is not new, so perhaps some of you have already seen it, [...]
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Think you have no room for a garden? Read about Suzanne Forsling, who lives in Alaska and grows salad in rain gutters. Would this work for you?
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I thought raspberries were supposed to be a summer fruit, but apparently not. Our raspberries ripen in September and October, and we’ve picked raspberries here during snowstorms. I’ve no idea what kind of raspberries these are. A generous Gabriola gardener gave the plants to us years ago, and they’re now trying to take over the [...]
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You know how sometimes on this blog we get into discussions about identifying various fauna and flora, often something Gabriolan has discovered on jaunts through the woods, or something from the garden? Well, if that ‘something’ happens to be a plant pest, here’s a neat website resource that I just found out about. ID Source [...]
You can eat these curtains, Anon E Mouse blogged back in January. I was taken with the idea, and decided to grow some curtains on Gabriola this summer. The One Who Builds made frames, got netting arranged and affixed just so upon those frames, and mounted the frames outside two of our windows. (One frame [...]
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These are blooming right now in my Gabriola garden. Now, daffodils are usually deer-proof, right? I wonder if these daffs would be.
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Last year we, like many of our Gabriola friends, tried growing potatoes in potato boxes. That didn’t work very well, so now we’re trying another approach. It all looks great so far, but who knows what we’ll see when we dig up the potatoes at the end of the season. Anyway, here are two things [...]
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Hey, Gabriola gardeners and farmers. Do you grow corn? If so, you might be interested in this Science Daily article: Corn Yields With Perennial Cover Crop Are Equal to Traditional Farming. Soil quality, water quality, and possibly even farm profits will all benefit by using a perennial cover crop on corn fields that allows for [...]
The problem Gabriola gardeners have with deer eating up garden produce could be worse, I suppose. In Kenya elephants raid crops, and how do you argue with an elephant? Turns out that elephants are afraid of bees, so farmers are using beehive fences to protect crops. Do you suppose deer are afraid of bees, too?
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When Gabriola’s foxgloves set seeds in late summer, I collect some, bring them home, and scatter them all over the place. Now we have lots and lots of foxgloves, which suits me fine. Foxglove flowers usually hang down. But here we have an aberrant foxglove, with flowers facing upward. I like aberrations. This is not [...]
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The Gabriola Home and Garden Tour is today, so these signs are up all over the island. Did you (or will you) go on the tour? Is your house or garden featured on the tour list this year? I did get a tour of a lovely under-construction house today, and saw an interesting garden, too. [...]
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Have you noticed the new greenhouse at the Gabriola Commons? It’s in the upper community garden – the one nearest North Road.
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File this one under grow yer own: sprout a couch.
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Look what’s appeared at the Gabriola Commons, in the garden nearest the house! Looks like a greenhouse to me, and I imagine the allotment gardeners will be extremely pleased about this.
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Shipping food to Gabriola seems silly when you consider that we could grow much of our food right here on the island. And what if growing food could be way easier than we think? With that in mind, I followed a recommendation and bought a copy of a book called Perennial Vegetables. Here’s part of [...]
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Did you go to Seedy Saturday at the Gabriola Commons yesterday? We did, and we came away with packages of free bean seeds. The deal is this: we grow the beans, and return ten percent of the beans we grow to the Commons in the fall. Brilliant scheme. There was a Seeds of Diversity display, [...]
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I’ve found a treasure on the internet: a site called journeytoforever.org has a small farms library with the full texts of hundreds of fascinating, mostly vintage, books about organic farming, homemade alternative energy, and all kinds of related subjects. So much interesting material! Be warned, I’ll probably use this collection as the basis of a [...]
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