I’ve been growing a sweet granadilla plant for a year now. It stayed in seedling stage for quite some time. Now, it is going through a growth spurt. It is 2 feet tall and still growing! In the past month alone, I have re-potted it twice. I’ve added stakes for support. Since it’s a vine, I […]
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Harvesting and Saving Tomato Seeds
So last month I taught myself how to save seeds from garden vegetables. I figure if I’m going to keep gardening, I should expand my knowledge at least a little bit each season. I chose to start with something easy: tomato seeds from the gigantic cherry tomato plant in our front garden. Of all my plants, […]
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Farewell garden plot, hello new garden, and hello sprouted mango pit!
Hello all, I have news to share! I’ve moved out of my downtown apartment and into a house in a quiet neighbourhood. This has been both sad and exciting. Sad, because I had to give up my garden plot. I now live too far away from it to maintain it. However, I now have a garden […]
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Hardening off seedlings: preparing for transplant!
It’s time to transplant the seedlings! For the past couple of weeks I’ve been hardening them off. This means gradually exposing the seedlings to outdoor weather to help them adjust to it. This way, when they are planted outside, they will be more likely to grow well rather than go into shock and possibly die. The hardening off process involves a bit […]
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Seedlings growing, garlic bulbs sprouting, and preparing the garden plot
Hi all, In my last post, I had planted seeds. Let’s see how they’re doing! Here are the seedlings as of three and a half weeks ago, April 3rd. A week later I removed the humidity dome and placed the tray in the patch of sunlight near the patio door. I don’t do this every day, but […]
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Spring gardening 2015: getting started with indoor seeds!
Hello all, As my fellow Northern Hemispherians must have noticed, the days are getting longer already. We’ve sprung ahead by one hour this weekend and soon enough the snow will be melting and gardening season will be upon us again. Have you started your indoor seeds yet? I just did mine. I kept it to a […]
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Back to grocery store plants: Sweet Granadilla and Rambutan
After a long break, I am growing grocery store fruits again! Over the past couple of years, most of my indoor growing experiments – pomegranate, peanut, and avocado, to name a few – have died of neglect. I’ve been so focused on vegetable gardening in my community garden plot that I didn’t make time for much else, which is a shame […]
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Planting Garlic Before Winter + Peppermint Tea
It is past time to plant bulbs for the spring. I’ve planted garlic before without success, probably because I put the bulbs in containers outside, which doesn’t work. This year I planted cloves in the ground, following instructions from a Harrowsmith article. I feel much more confident about my chances of success this year. According to the […]
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Carrot and swiss chard harvest, drying the garden herbs, and learning to blanch vegetables.
I haven’t updated in a while, so I’ve got a few things to share. As my fellow Canadians are fully aware, the weather has grown much colder and that means wrapping things up in the garden. My goals were to harvest the carrots before the cold killed them, preserve the herbs, and do something with […]
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The Garden in September
September is a funny time of year for gardening in Ottawa. August is usually full of rain, cool weather and cloudy skies. In September, the weather warms up and feels more like summer than fall. Then it’s cold. Then it’s hot. Cold. Hot. Cold. Hot. This month is flip-flopping between beautiful warm evenings and bloody […]
