Northern Gardeners Almanac What's growing in northern gardens

Green Is The New Coffee

2013-05-10T17:54:00.002-07:00

In one day we went from minus 5C to plus 20C the snow melted, the ground dried up and I started planting seeds. OK maybe not that fast but it sure feels like it. We’re having a heat wave and I love it. There’s Narcissus, Crocus, Chionodoxa , Puschkinia, Scilla and snowdrops in bloom. I’m eating chives and succulent baby sorrel leaves for every meal. I spent hours rehydrating the soil in the

UBC Botanical Garden

2013-05-04T18:32:00.001-07:00

So last week I was in Vancouver avoiding spring snow storms, revelling in green grass, and leaves and the tail end of the cherry blossoms. I rode the bus out to UBC to visit the botanical gardens. I was there once before too many years ago to count. I remembered the over abundance of rhododendrons, there were still lots only they had grown a lot bigger and were more floweriferous. The best part

Seizing Opportunity From The Reluctant Jaws Of Winter

2013-04-19T10:08:00.000-07:00

I’m thinking about microclimates and deciding that this patch of lawn where the snow has melted would be an ideal place to plant some perennials. Things like the Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus), I got from Gayla or maybe one of my many rhubarb crowns or some of those asparagus plants I grew from seed, last year. I’m thinking this area became exposed first because the litter of black

Easter Lily

2013-03-28T06:45:00.000-07:00

The other day I bought home a Lilium longiflorum commonly known as The Easter lily. It's a trumpet lily brought into bloom for Easter long before it would naturally bloom outside in mid summer. Trumpet lilies are my favourite type of lilly. I love their slender elegant flowers and their sweet fragrance. I’ve grown 'Regale', 'Pink Perfection' and 'Golden Splendour' in my garden. They are not

Winter Gardening In Vancouver

2013-03-19T09:29:00.000-07:00

I’d never seen Hamamelis, Helleborus or Cyclamen growing outside until a few weeks ago. I’ve seen them in photos of course and I have a potted Cyclamen growing on my kitchen windowsill, as a houseplant. I'd been looking forward to visiting Vandusan Botanical Garden in Vancouver for months, the last time I was there was late summer. I wanted to see the garden in the spring. I was thinking April,

Get Exclusive Access To Secret Knowledge : learn to identify plants by their botanical name

2013-03-08T08:30:00.000-08:00

I was in a restaurant with my family. Someone got a yellow orange fruit with their dessert. It was slightly bigger than a cherry, it had a papery leaf and no stem. The consensus was that it was a gooseberry. I said it was a ground cherry. After a lot of argument we used our cell phones to look for it on the internet, we found out we were all right, sort off. The fruit, Physalis turns out to

Late February In Abkhazi Garden

2013-03-04T13:38:00.000-08:00

The rain had stopped and there was a crack of blue in the sky so I knew it was a good day to visit Abkhazi Garden in Victoria BC. I put on my walking shoes and set out, taking a meandering route from my downtown hotel. Every garden of every house was crammed with early spring colour and the trees on some of the boulevards were putting forth tiny, pink blossoms. I think they were some type of

Indoor Garden Update

2013-02-14T14:58:00.000-08:00

My aloe plant is is going to flower again. Look closely at the photo. There are two flower spikes. I knew Aloe plants flowered because I saw them flowering in gardens when I was in California. What surprised me is that an aloe plant, growing in a pot, indoors in my house, would flower. I have another, bigger Aloe plant, Aloe vera. It has never flowered. It may need more sunshine and it may need

One Decade

2013-02-06T09:30:00.000-08:00

It was ten years ago today I wrote my first blog post. Before that, back in 1999, I read about this new thing called blogging in one of those magazines, Macworld, Macaddict or Wired, I even started a blog called, In The Garden, but quickly abandoned it. It wasn’t until I moved to Prince George that I decided to continue blogging but with a different blog. Since then I’ve learned basic XHTML

Seedy Saturday In Prince George BC 2013

2013-02-05T18:20:00.000-08:00

Mark the date, Seedy Saturday is February 23 2013. It will be held, as always, at the Exploration Place from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM. The presentation list includes: 10:30 a.m. Herbs to Know, Sow and Grow with Jackie Pement 11:30 a.m. Growing for Seed Saving 12:30 p.m. Plants for Pollinators with Jane LeFleur 1:30 p.m. Friend or Foe: What's the Fuss about Introduced Species? with Barbara Rayment 2

Using technology To Harness The Sun And Make The Growing Season Longer

2013-01-30T05:53:00.000-08:00

Summer up here is too short to ripen the hot peppers and indeterminate tomatoes I like to eat so I grow them in my passive solar greenhouse. I put plastic milk jugs, full of water, by each plant. The water absorbs the suns heat during the day, at night the heat in the water radiates out keeping the plants warm. I might get a few extra frost free weeks on either side of the growing season with

Green My Walls

2013-01-24T19:21:00.001-08:00

I built my house from barley rice Green pepper walls and water ice Tables of paper wood, windows of light And everything emptying into white. A simple garden, with acres of sky... Cat Stevens I’m intrigued with green living walls and roofs, even the walls growing inside. I want to build one for my garden. I'll probably start simply by making a succulent wreath with Sedum and Sempervivum.

Dreaming Of Gardening (Alys Fowler's Edible Garden)

2013-01-12T09:01:00.001-08:00

The ground is frozen and covered in a thick blanket of white, it's minus 25C outside so pour yourself a hot drink and curl up with Alys Fowler. She wants to avoid buying food from the shops and live off her own home grown fruit and vegetables.In the six movies below, put out by the BBC, she talks about growing peas and beans, salads, roots and leafy greens, juicy fruits, flowers and herbs and the

Choosing Vegetables That Grow Easily In Short Season Zone Two And Three Gardens

2013-01-07T09:25:00.000-08:00

Apart from taste choose vegetable cultivars with the least number of days to maturity. (most seed catalogues have this information) You want to pick things that require little to no input, vegetables that will grow by themselves. There is no sense worrying about deadly frosts that will kill your plants before they have ripened. You don't want to be fussing with grow lights and worrying about

My Garden Is Still Feeding Me

2013-01-02T15:48:00.000-08:00

I’m not actually harvesting anything from the garden because its dormant. It's covered in a thick, 3 foot layer, of snow that won’t melt until May. Instead I’m eating my way through the vegetables and fruit I’ve frozen, fermented, dried, canned or put in the root cellar. Garden grown food I have left- In The Freezer- tomatoes, peas, beet greens, broccoli, parsley, dill, cilantro, 3 types of

A Black And White Time Of Year

2012-12-20T08:42:00.001-08:00

I have to laugh when the authors of well meaning gardening articles encourage us to design our gardens for winter interest. I wrote about this a couple years ago saying - “In northern, rural Canada the landscape is under so much snow and ice for so long, nobody cares or even remembers what the garden may or may not look like, or even where it was.” At this time of year the sun barely crests

Indoor flowers for long dark winters

2012-12-14T08:09:00.001-08:00

I love poinsettias, Euphorbia pulcherrima, but I hate having one in my house. Unless the plant actually dies I can’t just throw it away. In a few weeks, when the poinsettia starts losing its lower leaves, and as the days get longer, its colourful bracts, the plant looks increasingly bedraggled and boring. I continue watering it and think maybe I can help it get back into shape, regain its

Some Like It It Hot

2012-12-12T09:37:00.000-08:00

I was inspired by Sandor Katz book, The Art Of Fermentation, that I wrote about in my last post, to continue by foray into fermented food with vegetables. My love of hot peppers coupled with the fact that the cayenne peppers in my greenhouse were ripe, and a friend had given me some of her bumper crop of jalapenos, made them the ideal vegetable to start with. Sandor suggests fermenting hot

How To Make The Tastiest Sourdough Bread

2012-12-07T12:48:00.000-08:00

I’ve been trying to make sourdough bread for years. For the most part my attempts have been unsuccessful. It wasn’t until I read *Sandor Katz book, The Art Of Fermentation, that I understood the process and was able to make a sourdough culture that has consistently produced fabulous bread. Sourdough is a live culture swarming with bacteria. To keep the good bacteria growing you have to stir it

Blog Layout Changes

2012-12-06T17:07:00.001-08:00

The landing page of my blog was looking too cluttered so I moved all the links to the other pages up to the top left. The Blog Archive page is the most important because it is the place you will go to read other parts of the site. From this page you can search the entire site, access the RSS feed or browse the blog in chronological order from when I wrote the first post back in November 2009

The Garden At Government House

2012-12-03T08:20:00.000-08:00

My favourite garden at Government House, in Victoria BC, is the rock and alpine garden. Many of the plants were started from seed and obtained from the Alpine Garden Society in London, The Scottish Rock Garden Club in Edinburgh, and the Alpine Garden Club of BC, in Vancouver. There are 27 unique, individual gardens at Government House. I was there in early November, a time when most plants have

Cyclamen Craving

2012-11-29T09:22:00.000-08:00

I’m not sure what gardening zones Cyclamen are hardy in but I do know they are not hardy, where I live, in zone 3. Every fall when I go to the grocery store I’m tempted by their delicate white, pink, red and purple flowers, they make me think of ballerinas standing on their toes. The Cyclamen available in stores in the fall, are hybrids of C. persicum. Other species flower in late winter or

Follow In Her Footsteps: to reduce the environmental impact of my own garden.

2012-11-23T17:14:00.003-08:00

Cornelia Hahn Oberlander is a Canadian landscape architect. Her love of nature and respect for the environment informs her sensitive landscape design. Using local plants and natural settings she has designed gardens and green spaces in the US, Europe, and in Canada. In Vancouver she designed the rooftop garden for the iconic Robson square, landscaped the new green, eco living, visitors centre

Houseplant Sabbatical

2012-11-19T08:31:00.000-08:00

Even though I watered all the house plants well, before I left. I still came home to five that were suffering. I expected the Hypoestes phyllostachya (it loves waterlogged soil) to dry out so I left its saucer full of water. Despite its spot in front of a south facing window there is not enough sunlight at this time of year for it to grow properly, its lower leaves turn brown and crunchy, it

Hardy Greens Experiment, part three

2012-11-09T09:23:00.000-08:00

A recent thaw caused the snow to lose its fluffiness making it difficult to push it aside, dig below the crunchy crust, to see how the kale in the garden was doing. It turned out it was still edible. That was two days ago. Today the temperature has dropped, the snow has hardened, digging up kale is no longer possible. And the mustard, that was green and edible last week, is now dead. Winter