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I know I’m not the first person to write about composting here on the RCR blog, but I figure you just can’t talk enough about turning your kitchen scraps into that lovely black gold. I’ve composted in one form or another for a long, long time now. The first compost I knew of was not in a bin or a black plastic Darth Vader container, it was just a heap, known imaginatively as the “compost pile.” That was in the 1980s. Composting was pretty [...] 
A little while ago, I wrote about my new love of herbed fruit jams. Before that, I told you about the Japanese knotweed jelly I was enjoying. If you hadn’t figured it out, I really love making jellies and jams. I’ve said before that preserves make me feel rich. All lined up in my pantry, they’re like luminous jewels, ensuring that, no matter what goes wrong in this world, I have something tasty to spread on my toast. There was a time when [...] 
Well, friends, I had planned to offer you a delightful round-up of what worked and what didn’t in my little downtown garden this year, but unfortunately the cable for my computer has vanished, and the extra cable I keep on hand for such emergencies has had both of its ends filled with play-dough. (Hey, guess what! I found the cord! We have photos!) I have an angry, teething toddler trying to get into my lap, so you’ll have to settle for a photo-less post in list [...] 
When you garden in the city, you take your sunshine where you can find it. I have a tiny postage-stamp of a front yard, and a decent-sized back yard (for downtown). Neither one of them gets full sunlight, but from mid-June on the front yard gets blazing, baking afternoon light that vegetables seem to love. I had forgotten this when I started my garden this summer. Slowly but surely, though, I’ve been migrating pots and containers to the front of the yard, where they flourish, and scratching [...] 
I managed to get over to my favourite u-pick here in St. John’s last week. I picked and picked and picked and came home with far more strawberries than I could possibly eat. Which was just fine, because these berries were destined for the jam pot. My husband and daughter both love strawberry jam. I, on the other hand, am not entirely crazy about it. Since I had such a huge load of berries, I decided to make some plain jam (to please the family) and some [...] 
White cosmos, nowhere near the worm tree Hello, friends! I had wanted to do a lovely pictorial of all the things growing happily in my garden today, but unfortunately almost everything in the back yard is completely covered in specks of black poo from the millions of tiny worms rolled up in the leaves of my neighbours’ enormously large maple tree, the branches of which now reach almost 2/3 of the way across my back yard. It’s to the north of my garden, [...] 
Chocolate mint for tea I am delighted to say that we have officially come to that point in the summer when I eat something I have grown or gathered every single day. Every day! Sometimes it’s part of a main dish, like my grilled rapini pizza from a few weeks back, or like the turnip top quiche I made from my very own home-grown greens last week, or like the tasty pasta I whipped up with my first ever [...] 
Well, after complaining about the weather for the entire month of June, I’m here to complain about all the warmth and sunshine we’ve had so far in July. Kidding, kidding! The last week has been nothing short of glorious. My tomatoes are stretching toward the sun, my broad beans are blooming like crazy, and my snow peas are scrambling over one another to climb their repurposed-wicker-bookshelf trellis. The sudden heat has had one adverse effect, though. I have bolting brassicas! Bolted brassica bouquet: [...] 
The weirdest thing happened in my mom’s back yard this year. Garlic revenge. You see, two autumns ago, my mom planted a whack of garlic in a raised bed. When it came up in the spring, it looked pretty sickly and unhappy. Mom ripped it out and went on with other things, but she didn’t get around to planting anything else in that bed. Fast forward to this spring, and guess what? The garlic came back! Multiplied by ten! Aaaaagh! Before the garlic attack, [...] 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dMPoPRfad8&NR=1″
Now is the time, my friends, when giant, balloon-sized bags of local greens appear in the grocery shops. I love them so much! They arrive in late spring, and they are just beautiful steamed and dripping with butter on the side of your plate. These greens are often labeled “fresh greens,” or “field greens,” but many people call them “turnip greens” or “turnip tops.” They’re inexpensive, and they’re wonderfully nutritious. The only flaw with them is that the bags they come in are [...] |
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