Poo powered.
Posted by Amy on 24 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: YGG
Today Nate’s modelling Gayla Trail’s Poo Powered onesie. Thanks, Gayla! It’s one of our favourites.
(This kid has no idea how many hours of weeding he has ahead of him in life.)
Annual YGG Round Robin Seed Exchange
Posted by Amy on 20 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Propagation, Seeds
It’s that time of year again! Time to start thinking about growing plants from seed. I had hoped to have the time/space/energy to grow some tomatoes in the basement this year but it just isn’t going to happen. I will probably take a couple of trips to some different growers to find some cool heirloom seedlings later in May or June, instead.
The whole shebang. Most of the seeds were either heirloom tomatoes (the trend continues!) or flowers.
I received the seed package on Friday afternoon, and today I sorted through and chose a couple of packets to keep:
Malabar Edible Climbing Spinach
Nasturtiums
Tithonia Mexican Torch Sunflower
Broccoli Romanesco
The source for all of these is unknown, but I can start them all either directly in the ground or outside when the weather warms up.
What I put in (pile on the left) and what I took out (pile on the right).
I think I put some pretty nice packets (all brand new) back into the envelope for the next person:
From Thompson & Morgan:
Morning Glory “Carnevale di Venezia”
Tomato “Vilma”
Pepper “Chili Pyramid”
Pepper “Mohawk F1 Hybrid”
From McKenzie: (You can follow McKenzie on Twitter now.)
Strawberry “Patio Temptation”
From Burpee:
Money Garden Pepper “Home Run”
Money Garden Tomato “Steak Sandwich” (The name of that one makes my mouth water.)
From Richters:
Poppy Opium Blue Seeded
From Heritage Harvest Seed:
Early Blood Turnip Beet
And from Mr. Fothergill’s:
Lettuce “Romaine”
I hope whomever ends up with these has good success with them!
Previous years’ exchange posts:
Gardens in the Movies: It’s Complicated
Posted by Amy on 11 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Gardens in the Movies
A couple of nights ago my husband and I had a chance to get out of the house together for one of the first times since having our baby boy, Nate. Nate’s Gramma came over to babysit while we went to a movie.
Have you seen “It’s Complicated” yet? If you haven’t, and you’re a gardener, this is a movie you won’t want to miss.
On the way home from the movie I was telling Graham about how during the scenes that take place in the gardens, I was barely paying attention to the film’s dialogue, everything was so lush and green and growing in those scenes.
“You should write about it for your gardening website,” he told me.
When I came home and Googled the film title in conjunction with the word garden I found that I’m late to this party. Other garden bloggers have already written all kinds of things about this make believe movie garden which was supposed to be situated in Santa Barbara.
A Los Angeles Times’ L.A. at Home blogger, Deborah Netburn, did an interview piece on the utopian garden in “It’s Complicated” with Jon Hutman, the movie’s production designer. She writes,
While there are no CGI cabbages or rhubarb special effects in the film, this is still not a garden that is humanly possible, even for Martha Stewart. The vegetables were grown in a greenhouse for two months before the garden scene was shot, and any plant that looked a little scrubby was not used.
So that’s the key to having a beautiful kitchen garden! All you need is a greenhouse and a set designer to keep everything looking good.
Do you think Alec Baldwin is the type of man who pulls weeds?
And as Andrea Bellamy of Heavy Petal put it so correctly in her post, “Sneak peak at It’s Complicated kitchen garden,”
It’s all very idyllic in a potager-meets-Spanish-Colonial kind of way, and I want it desperately.
So yes, even though the garden isn’t actually possible for the average vegetable gardener to attain, it was still really fun and beautiful to look at, especially this time of year in Ontario when the ground is partially covered with snow and everything is freezing and gray. Inspiration often appears in the unlikeliest of places, doesn’t it?
(Photo credit: Melinda Sue Gordon / Universal Studios)
Love Apple Farm’s Tomato Seed Contest
Posted by Amy on 01 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Contest, Tomatoes
Another gardening-related contest arrived in my inbox today!
5 people will win tomato seeds by leaving a “nice” comment on one of the posts on Cynthia Sandberg’s beautiful blog, Grow Better Veggies. Five people will be chosen at random to with a three-pack of rare tomato seeds from TomatoFest.com.
As Cynthia says in her latest e-mail newsletter, TomatoFest.com is
a fabulous on-line resource for over 600 different types of heirloom tomato seeds.
Sounds like a great contest to enter!
