A noun. A verb. A blog.
As gardeners during two world wars knew, even during a major crisis you can do your bit to make things better. Victory gardens were designed to boost food productivity during the wars, one little garden plot after another. The benefits spread far beyond individual garden gates. And gardens need pollinators. Their work, done mostly by insects, is behind one […]
I’m never ruthless enough when taking cuttings of geranium (Pelargonium). For one thing, I can never bear to remove the flowers, the blooming of which distracts the cutting from root production. But when they look like this, who can blame me. The truth is, though, there’s no real mystery around the process of propagation for […]
It all started with a basement pillar that had been removed, years ago, by a previous owner. The shoring-up they’d done might have once been code. According to the structural engineer we consulted, just in case, it wouldn’t be code now. And our basement project escalated from there. For me, the worst of it wasn’t […]
Author Steven Biggs is the gardener who convinced us that we could grow figs in our Canadian climate. Now his new book, Grow Lemons Where You Think You Can’t gives us the good news that we can grow lemons too, even in Canada. Steven’s serious interest in growing lemons began when friends gifted him with […]
Did you do this in grade school? You should do it again. Watching beans grow inside a jar is like Jack and the Beanstalk meets x-ray vision. I did it recently to get pictures for a Gardening with Children Master Gardener presentation I was writing. But with the beans growing right beside me on my desk, I could not stop obsessing over roots and shoots […]
It made me want to be a kid again to read Gardening with Emma: A kid-to-kid guide by Emma Biggs (with help from her dad, Steven Biggs). Who wouldn’t want to reconnect with the authentic, childlike wonder and excitement of discovery in the garden? The book arrived at the right time. As I’m now writing a […]
Any beginning gardener would happy to find either – or both – these books under the giving tree. But you don’t have to be a beginner to appreciate them. In the spirit of “the more you know, the more you know you don’t know,” this experienced gardener filled many gaps in her knowledge in reading them. For […]
This summer, I’ve been battling tree-of-heaven (Ailanthus altissima) like never before. We’ve written before about this struggle, but I’ve never seen it keep coming back so aggressively from the root – till now. Ailanthus is an alien species (read more about it in our previous post), that has become a regular citizen of Toronto’s unguarded laneways and unclaimed […]
[Editor, Nov. 22, 2018: Unfortunately, HortusTV is off the air due to lack of subscribers. What a pity!] I’ve given up watching the late-night news. No need to be reminded that the world is going through a bit of a bad patch. Not right before bedtime. And I can’t always be in the garden – the gardener’s happy […]
When I first saw the Corona Flex-Dial adjustable pruners I wasn’t sure what to make of the dial on the side. But now having tried it out on some of my first pruning jobs of the year I can say that I love these pruners. I tackled a few shrubs, and old yew, a prickly […]
It doesn’t always happen, but when my review copy of Veggie Garden Remix arrived – the latest garden book by Niki Jabbour – I sat right down and read it. Cover to cover! Jabbour began with a garden best-seller in her Year-Round Vegetable Gardener, which is in something like its eighth or ninth printing now. Her newest is on its way […]
Yes, we publish our own gardener’s journal, but we think there’s room for all of us. Read on and find out how you can win a copy of the new one from B.C. garden writer Donna Balzer and her daughter Chelsie Anderson, The Three-Year Gardener’s Gratitude Journal. Balzer’s journal announces its attitude right from the cover, with fun […]