Garden Design, Garden Makeover, Garden Coach
Apparently I'm not the only blogger starting the year by focussing on design rather than various plants and techniques. These three sources were in my inbox since Jan 1: Challenge Design Your Dream Yard is a 6-day challenge with Garden Tribe and Billy Goodnick to help you identify what you want from your garden, and how to get there.... Continue Reading →
Tomatoes! North America's favourite home-grown vegetable. (Actually, it's said it is "America's" favourite home-grown vegetable, but I'm sure Canadians are as keen on home-grown toms as Americans.) Garden Tribe's final day of Boot Camp focuses on tomatoes, and what a great ending (and how great that it's ending!). And isn't this a brilliant line: Some gardeners are... Continue Reading →
Herb Gardens. Boot Camp is almost done, and growing herbs is definitely the easiest way of getting going with your edible garden. I've written often about herbs, so I won't re-hash everything here. A few quick notes: 1. Most of our popular herbs originate in the Mediterranean, so they like sunny exposures, but most, with the... Continue Reading →
The reason I've grouped Boot Camp Day 16 (Seed-Starting) and Day 17 (Seedling Transplanting) together is because I wrote about seed starting already on Day 14, and besides, they're pretty closely related. So a quick review: if you're sowing outdoors, make sure the seeds stay moist. That's pretty much it. If you're sowing indoors, you need... Continue Reading →
Vegetable Garden Day 13 Oh dear, running late again. Today's topic (GardenTribe's Boot Camp) is pretty basic--TOOLS--, so I'll skim over it quickly and get on to Day 14. So about Tools. I'm going to tell you about the tools I use most often, how I use them, and what I think about them. Shovel.... Continue Reading →
I'm running way behind on Garden Tribe's 21-Day Veggie Garden Boot Camp, so I'll try to catch up the next few days. Day 8 topic is Raised Beds--a subject dear to my heart, because I think you can make a garden look really stunning by adding different levels. Of course, beauty is not necessarily the point... Continue Reading →
Its' Garden Tribe's Day 6 of 21 Day Boot Camp, and today we're going to draw out the "what" and "where" of your 2015 successful vegetable garden. This was a "square foot" garden, raised beds 4' square, so it was easy to draw. There's no trick to this, all you have to do is 1.... Continue Reading →
Day 5 of Garden Tribe's 21-day Boot Camp is sub-titled "Right Sizing for Success". Which incidentally I've already addressed in Veggie Garden Day 3. But since if you're anything like me you haven't actually started yet, let's just do a quick 3-point lesson: 1. No garden is "no-maintenance", so be realistic about how much time you can... Continue Reading →
Garden Tribe's "Boot Camp"--mini course on veggie gardening continues. So I'm continuing with my annotations. You can benefit from my signally pitiful failures. They say the key to success is learning from our failures, so I should be really successful. Oh, unless of course I didn't actually learn... Never mind, on with Day 3--Where to Plant. My... Continue Reading →
Continuing with Garden Tribe's 21 day mini course on vegetable gardening, day 2 is all about climate and micro-climate. My editorial comments: You of course know about climate. In coastal BC it's usually rain for 10 months (this year being the exception) and sun for 2 months. Not much snow, not much frost, but also... Continue Reading →
Real Life Garden Solutions 