Garden Wisdom Blog — seeds
Gardening for Birds
birds category: Flower Talk conservation seeds
Gardening for birds is another way to build biodiversity in garden spaces. Like pollinators and other insects, wild birds are under pressure due to habitat loss, pollution, and ever expanding human settlement. By including certain plants and building certain habitats, gardeners can ease this pressure, and even benefit from the presence of some bird species.
About Brussels Sprouts
category: Garden Wisdom category: Vegetable Talk seeds
The precursor to the modern Brussels sprout were likely grown in ancient Rome, and today’s vegetable was perfected and popularized as early as the 13th century, in Belgium, which explains their common name. By the mid-16th century, they were being cultivated in the Netherlands and other parts of Europe.
Flower Arrangement Inspiration
category: Articles and Instructions category: Flower Talk category: Garden Resources flowers garden-wisdom seeds
One day this past summer several of us got together to photograph some of the flowers and produce from the trial fields in a more studio setting. Jill, who normally works in customer service, has some professional experience as a florist, and her arrangements were amazing. Several of our team would cut the flowers and herbs (and vegetables!) and bring them into the farm house where Jill would set them up, and I would light and photograph them. We have tagged the most traditional of our cut flowers on this website so they can be filtered as a group. These...
Overwintering
category: Articles and Instructions category: Garden Resources category: Winter Gardening harvest how-to-grow overwintering seeds transplant winter-gardening
Some types of crops take an awfully long time to mature. To harvest leeks in the summer, the seeds have to be started indoors way back in late winter — leeks just take that long to grow. With preparation and planning, home gardeners can grow excellent leeks for summer use. There are some crops that take even longer to mature. Gardeners in relatively mild climates can take advantage of the long winter months with a kind of gardening called overwintering. This involves the same degree of planning for summer leeks. These crops are planted in the summer and fall and...
About the Summer Solstice
category: Articles and Instructions category: Garden Resources category: Organic Growing seasons seeds solstice summer
The arrival of third week in June brings us the last day of spring and the first day of summer. This year, it will occur at 3:07am (PST on the west coast, or 10:07am GMT) on Thursday, June 21, but only in the Earth’s northern hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere, it’s the winter solstice. But how can we be so precise? How can we know that it occurs at 3:07am? The trick is in understanding a bit more about the summer solstice in terms of our planet’s orbit around the sun. As we travel around the sun, Earth is spinning...
