14 April 2011 by pat.

Back at the end of January, I was yearning for spring, knowing there were still months of winter ahead.

I went online to Pickering Nurseries, and browsed through the hundreds of different types of roses they have.

I wanted one to replace Scentimental, which died when it got too shady in the back garden.

They didn’t have a Scentimental, but they do stock George Burns, which looks a lot like it, white with red streaks (or sometimes red with white streaks).

I’m a big fan of old-rose smell, so I hunted through the David Austin-bred roses in search of some with big perfume. I found two: St. Cecilia, and The Pilgrim. I asked for them to be delivered around April 15th, so we’ll see when they arrive, and what bare-root roses look like when they’re shipped.

I look forward to showing you pictures of their blooms this summer!

Posted in Home gardens, Gardening | 2 Comments »

15 February 2011 by pat.

As I wrote last week, I attended the ceremony for the Yves Rocher Foundation’s Women of the Earth awards last Thursday. I recorded Laura Reinsborough’s speech, and interviewed her afterward at Allen Gardens. My edited interview is now up on YouTube.

Shot with my iPod Touch, edited in iMovie.

Posted in Urban nature, Networking, Home gardens, Gardening, Food, SOLE food | No Comments »

12 October 2010 by pat.

As you may have read, we bought food at the Sansepulcro market on Tuesday morning, while we were staying in Anghiari. I seem to have been a bit timid in photographing vendors and their produce, so I don’t have as many photos of this market as I do of the others.

Nonetheless, here they are.It was late in the morning, so the light is very contrasty. All of the market stalls were on one long narrow street. The farmers and vendors must have the setup down to a science for who gets there when, and who sets up first, and how they’re organizing their stalls. Most of the food stalls were all at one end of the market, although the occasional one was dotted here and there in the rest of it.

The next vendor was fruit, fruit, fruit, of all kinds, very fresh.

I found the wares of the fellow selling meat and cheese very tantalizing.

Next to the anchovies, which are to the right of the cheeses, you’ll see a huge pile of sliced dried porcini mushrooms. This was a great time to be in Italy for mushrooms: we had some early season white truffles at a couple of restaurant, and fresh porcini were everywhere.

The next vendor had some of the most rainbow-colored tomatoes I’ve seen. Oops. On second look, they’re cherry peppers.

The markets in Italian villages aren’t just food markets: they’re markets with all kind of things that one might want, and not have a local store that provides. Clothing stalls with men’s, women’s, or children’s clothing; electronics (Sandy got an iPod car-plug-in recharger); kitchen gadgets, dinnerware, linens; seedlings; shoes!

I thought I took a picture of the young plants that were being sold at the market, but I don’t see it here in my downloads. The season is long enough in Tuscany that seedlings of cruciferous vegetables, lettuce, and onion sets were being sold for people to plant in their back vegetable gardens, so there must be time for another harvest of cool weather crops.The market started to peter out at one point where two roads intersected. There were a few vendors on the side arms of the second road, and it was spacious enough that I could stand back and take a picture of the vendors.

After getting our purchases, it was time to drive again across the plain where the Battle of Anghiari was fought in the 1400s.

Posted in Home gardens, Food - farmers' market, Food | 1 Comment »

27 August 2010 by pat.

How’s that for a subject line to push all the buttons?I attended a seminar by Lorraine Johnson at the Brick Works, back in July, on just that subject. Lots of food for thought, and lots of books to consider getting, including:

• Identifying and harvesting edible and medicinal plants  - Steve Brill
• City Farmer - Lorraine Johnson
• Peterson Field guide to edible wild plants

It was a fact-filled morning, discussed fruit, veggies, and mushrooms, and included some things I hadn’t even considered. We’re at the northern edge of the Paw-paw’s range (Carolingian forest), and it seems they were never commercially grown because there wasn’t much of a way to save them — they don’t transport well, they don’t stay fresh long — so they never caught on big with the population. I’d only heard of them in a southern play that got used a lot in scene study classes (can’t even remember what it was called! about 3 sisters).

She described it as very tropical looking… like a small mango, and with an interesting taste, like banana and pineapple and custard all together. To me, it sounds like it should be ice cream at the very least, and probably would make a good cream pie flavour.

These days, we can refrigerate or freeze fruit, which wasn’t available back when.

So it was interesting to hear Lorraine talk about them, and what’s needed to actually get harvestable fruit in the fall.

The tree, which under the most optimal conditions, can grow up to 30 feet tall, is more likely to max out at about 10-15 in our climate, so a medium-height shrub. And they grow slowly. It needs filtered light in its early years, and then full sun when it is established. It doesn’t like wind; it does like high humidity (sounds like Toronto summers!)

The one problem? Lorraine said 3 trees are needed for cross-pollination.

Hey, who says they all have to be in one yard? Given the size of downtown backyards — about 17 feet across, maybe 20-30 feet deep, if three neighbours got together and each planted one, there’d be plenty of paw-paws to go around. Sounds like fertilization is mostly through insects (but not bees). So they can’t be too far apart. Most insects aren’t known for long-term memory.

It’s hard to find them in garden centers now, because there isn’t demand. And there isn’t demand, because people don’t know about them. So it’s kind of a vicious circle. But just as the whole 100-mile diet thing really got started with two writers reporting for the Tyee, maybe Lorraine can start things up here… she told a bunch of us, and if we each tell a bunch of people, and can collectively get people to plant them, then we’d bring back a tree that’s almost been completely extirpated from our ecosystem. And who knows what else that might help?  Definitely the zebra-swallowtail butterfly!

More info about Paw-paws here.

I think it sounds like an interesting project… some garden centres may carry them: Lorraine mentioned Grimo, in Niagara.

What do you think?

Posted in Urban nature, Home gardens, Food, grown, Food, SOLE food | No Comments »

14 July 2010 by pat.

From a link on Facebook, I discovered that the Brick Works, through Green City Workshops, is running a number of gardening workshops this year, for only $15 each (sign up by emailing ebw@evergreen.ca! limited space available!)

 The workshops are:

• Edible Native Landscapes (July 17)
• Harvesting & Preserving Toronto’s Urban Orchard (Aug 15)
• The Natural Beauty of Native Plants: Great Plant Pairings (Sept 11)
• A Drought-Tolerant Toronto Garden (Sept 18)
• Gardening for Songbird Conservation (Oct 2)
• Food Cycles Urban Farm Project (Nov 6)

I’m planning to attend three of them (first and last two). Maybe I’ll see you there?

Posted in Home gardens, Gardening, Food, grown, Food | 1 Comment »

21 June 2010 by pat.

Before and after pictures of my back garden today.

I removed weeds from all three beds, whacked the weeds between the flagstones, and pruned both the sandcherry (purple leaves) and elderberry (pale green leaves). I got started at a reasonable time this morning, and was done shortly after noon. I think I took this photo around 1:30.

The photo also demonstrates why early morning or late evening light is kinder to photographing growing things: the colors aren’t as blue, and places where the sun hits aren’t as contrasty.

I now have a huge pile of branches that I need to break down into sizes that the city will accept in the garden waste category.

Posted in Home gardens, Gardening, Photography - documentary, Photography | 4 Comments »

24 May 2010 by pat.

I’ve got

• 3 blue sea holly, which I’m going to plant in among my roses in the front garden for contrast,
• 2 bleeding hearts for the back garden,

and the following ferns:

• Hay scented - can grow up to 24 or 36″ high, and will take any amount of light. They recommend putting it near a pathway so its fronds can be bruised and crushed, releasing the scent.
• Ostrich hardy - 24-60″. Might be aggressive. Might be what I already have in the back yard!
• Christmas - 24-36″ high, does well in full to partial shade.
• Maidenhair - 12-24″, black stems, medium shade
• Sensitive - 12-18″, sunshine or shade.
• Lady — 24-36″, partial shade
• Cinnamon - 24-36″, can go from wet, swampy to dry shade.
• Toothed wood - 12-24″, really lacy, semi evergreen!
• Leatherwood - 24-36″ semi evergreen, often used by florists, they say.
• Royal fern - 36-48″ — this is a tall one! I will probably place it between some of the hostas to add some height.

Tonight I’ll use my indelible marker on popsicle sticks so I know what is planted where, and tomorrow I will plant and water. Have only had about a millimeter of water in the last week.

Posted in Home gardens, Gardening | 1 Comment »

19 May 2010 by pat.

I used to have a number of these parrot tulips — oh, gosh, probably 10 years ago. This is the last one that blooms. I love the streaks, I love the colors, I love the edges.

I may have to buy some more, even though it’s difficult to keep them safe from the squirrels.

The forget-me-nots in the background are gone now. They’re seeding into my garden from another garden in the neighbourhood, and not something I planted.

Posted in Home gardens, Gardening | No Comments »

19 May 2010 by pat.

While I was weeding my front garden on Sunday, I noticed what seemed to be a patch of pollen caught in a spider web at the front corner of the porch. I looked closer.

Look at it full size. It’s baby spiders! I left them there. I hope they’ll migrate to the garden, not the house!

Posted in Urban nature, Home gardens, Gardening | No Comments »

19 May 2010 by pat.

Along with sunny days come migratory birds! My backyard is certainly attracting them.They like to have places to perch. In addition to the fence, they’ve got the sand cherry standard and the elderberry.They like to scratch the soil for insects. They’ve got a garden free of pesticides for that. They like to have baths and drinks of water. My water cascade definitely provides that! I had three species of warblers at the same time in it on the weekend: it looked like a bird convention (hmm… a parliament of fowls?).I was very glad to have the long lens to take their pictures. I did have to raise the ISO to 800, which resulted in somewhat grainy images, due to the shade in my yard from surrounding trees and the speed at which these birds move. If they were slower seed eaters, I could have gotten by with an ISO of 200; as it was, 800 wasn’t enough to stop the motion of the black-throated blue warbler, who is rather blurry in my shots.Lots of pictures over in my Backyard Birds folder on Flickr.

Posted in Urban nature, Home gardens, Gardening, Photography - documentary, Photography | No Comments »

14 May 2010 by pat.

So into the ground went the 10 hostas (oooh, some of them were looking long and white: I hope they’ll be OK) and the 10 astilbe roots. All of them labelled, sprinkled with blood & bone meal, and watered. I did that work in the afternoon, when birds usually make themselves scarce. It means that, with my recharged battery on my camera, I’m good to go again. It was a very birdy morning. I’ll be updating my Flickr account tonight with the results.

Posted in Home gardens, Gardening | No Comments »

9 May 2010 by pat.

Ugh! Didn’t get the hostas in the ground, and that may be a good thing. It rained Thursday afternoon, Friday, and yesterday, and there’s a frost warning for tonight. I hope the roots will be OK in their little plastic bags in the dark. Maybe tomorrow will be a planting day: it’s supposed to be sunny and 13. 

The one good thing is that all this rain should have pushed some of the nutrients from the compost down into the soil.

Posted in Home gardens, Gardening | No Comments »

7 May 2010 by pat.

Today started with a trip to Home Depot to get some hardware cloth. 1/4 inch square galvanized hardware cloth, to be exact.

I needed the hardware cloth to sift the compost that has been sitting at the bottom of my composter for a few years. It had lots of time to decompose, and it did it quite well. There were still some pieces of eggshell, some big hunks of bark, a few pebbles (must have come from previous garden waste, or the detritus at the bottom of flower pots) and the like. So in order to have just the good stuff, I needed to sift it through the hardware cloth.

Dump a few trowels’ worth on the hardware cloth (positioned above a bucket), and move it around with my gloved hands or the edge of the trowel until only the big bits are left on top. Discard big bits; repeat. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. I would have worn my iPod, except I wanted to be listening for migrators while I was doing it. Didn’t see any new birds.

Have a nice even layer of compost over everything in the big north bed in the back yard. Need to sift some more for the south bed, the triangle bed, and the front garden.

The north and south beds are the priorities, because I need to get the hostas in the ground tomorrow, so I’ve been doing prepwork. Yesterday I pulled daffodils and bluebells. I would have raked them out, but discovered that the elderberry has very shallow roots! I’m afraid I broke a couple of them. So I’ve got a few daffodil bulbs left in the ground, but I pulled their leaves off and I’m not sure if they’ll even sprout next year.

I’m almost all set for tomorrow. I found my permanent aluminum plant markers, and have written the names on them, and have drawn up a cheat sheet on a filing card so I remember where to plant things. I need to go to East End Gardens before I plant, though, and buy some blood meal to sprinkle around each hosta after planting, with the hopes that the squirrels won’t dig up the hostas because they smell like wet dog. Give them a chance to get established and for the squirrels to forget that the soil had been dug up.

On another note, when I was cleaning leaf and flower junk out of the water thingie, I discovered that a young European sparrow drowned today. The corners of its mouth were still quite yellow. I was surprised: I didn’t realize that sparrow families were that far along this year.

I’ll have to see if I can rig something up so a bird that falls in the pond can recover and fly off.

Posted in Home gardens, Gardening | 1 Comment »

4 May 2010 by pat.

It contains 10 hosta roots!

• Medio variegata
• Aureomarginata
• Albomarginata
• Hyacinthina
• Sieboldiana Elegans

(oooh! Had to get out my Lee Valley credit card magnifier to read the labels)

So what does this mean?

I need to come up with an arrangement and decide which ones are going in which bed.

Most of them will go in the right-handed bed, and a few in the left. The triangle I’m going to leave for herbs.

What are their colors and sizes?

Medio variegata: medium green leaf with a white flame down the centre. Can get up to 36″ around, about 18″ high.

Aureomarginata: heart-shaped glossy medium green leaves with yellow edges. Height of 18-28″, spread 36-48″.

Albomarginata: how’s your Latin? This one’s got white edges on deep green leaves, and can eventually spread to 36″ or more (about 18″ high).

Hyacinthina: Loosely grouped, heavily quilted non-lustrous bluish-green leaves. Really textural. It can grow up to 24″ tall and about 36″ in diameter.

Sieboldiana Elegans: Now this one can get big! up to 30″ tall and 48″ in diameter. Large, heart shaped thick bluish-grey leaves, heavily quilted. Slow grower. (Thank goodness. I’d hate to have to divide that every couple of years!)

I need to remove my daffodils and put down a good layer of compost, and scratch that into the soil a little. They recommend Sieboldiana Elegans as a background plant, so I’ll probably put one by the back of the water thingie, and the other near the north fence, about 4 feet from the elderberry — its chartreuse leaves should set off the blue-grey nicely.

In the north bed, I want to put two albomarginatas and one aureomarginata near the Sieboldiana, and one aureomarginata next to the one by the water thingie. I’ll combine the Medio variegata with one Hyacinthina where the scentimental rose is (dead looking), and that leaves me one Hyacinthina to put somewhere, which I’ll figure out once I get the others in the ground. I have to leave room for ferns, astilbe and bleeding hearts!

Ooooh, I’m really going to have to watch out for slugs now. I think it was Martin Galloway who called hostas a salad for slugs!

Posted in Home gardens, Gardening | No Comments »

29 April 2010 by pat.

Here we go. I spent the afternoon clearing the back yard of goutweed… it was all through the bed on the right side of the image. Required a lot of care to try to pull all the stolons without killing the daffodils (so few of them are in bloom that I’d like to enjoy them this one last time before I yank them in a couple of weeks).

When I get the astilbes, ferns, and hostas from Vesey’s, I’ll be filling things in. I’m also going to get a few plants from East End Gardens.There are three roses in this yard, and I’m not sure if they’ve really survived winter. I’ll give them a couple of weeks to prove themselves. If they’ve survived, I’ll move them to the front garden. If not… well, compost time.It looks like some of the roses in the front garden are also a bit slow or haven’t made it. I’ll have to give them some time to see how they do:

There’s a clump of grass growing in the lavender bed that I have to get rid of, and some perennials that materialized from nowhere in the raised bed that I’m not fond of and am thinking of destroying. Going to get rid of the pots of sedum (plant the sedum in the back yard). Might ditch the two half-barrels: after 14 years, they’re looking more than a little tired. The alliums should be flowering within a few weeks, by the looks of it.  What an early spring!

Posted in Home gardens, Gardening, Uncategorized | No Comments »