Garden Wisdom Blog

With just eight more days left to Earth Day, we thought it would be good to list some of the many Earth Day events planned for next weekend. There are some big events in the city, and lots of local events planned for smaller communities. We’re going to post this list to Facebook, so if you know of an event we missed, leave a comment, and we’ll add them to this list. Don’t be shy. These events provide an excellent chance to show solidarity for the planet, so we’re asking you to be sure to attend your local event. This...

One of the amazing opportunities facing all gardeners and farmers is planting for wildlife — or, at least, growing food with biodiversity in mind. Organic gardeners understand that soil health is inherently dependent on robust biodiversity in the soil. Earthworms, invertebrates, fungi, bacteria, and many other organisms play different roles in the breaking down of organic matter into forms that are available to plants. But this concept carries on above the soil, too. The most obvious wildlife in most gardens are the legions of pollinators and other beneficial insects, not to mention the pest species many of them prey upon....

Back on Day 2 of our Twenty-one Days of Green, we talked about planting chives. We chose chives because they have to be among the very simplest of all herbs to grow from seed. They are extremely useful in the kitchen and compact in the patio (or windowsill) herb garden. And every time we don’t drive to the grocery store to buy a plastic clamshell box of fresh chives flown in from Mexico, we can reasonably claim that we have reduced our carbon footprint. So following that thinking, what are the other things we can grow easily to achieve the...

Grass is used to fill in an awful lot of public spaces. We think of it as the automatic response to revitalizing just about any building or construction site, and since grasses are so darn tough, they seem to thrive just about anywhere. Grass seeds are cheap to produce, and the plants are durable, so it stands to reason that we have come to depend on it this way. But it isn’t much more than that. We like the idea of supplementing unused grassy spaces with wildflowers, but there are some basic principles to understand for the best success. First...

Okay – now for the fun stuff. Seed balls (sometimes called seed bombs), are simple balls of clay and soil that contain seeds. They can be placed or tossed into their growing spot, and the clay/soil mix provides the seeds within just enough medium to get started. In most cases this will be more successful than simply throwing or dropping raw seeds. Some mischief-minded people might choose to throw seed balls into vacant lots, traffic meridians, or other under-used urban areas. We would never condone such behaviour, of course. But here’s how to make them! Step one: The Materials Seed...