Artful Cat Birdbath
Spotted at Modern Artisans, just look at this whimsical cat theme birdbath! It's a Don Drumm design, handcrafted in North Carolina. Although it is a true attention-getter as a birdbath,…
Spotted at Modern Artisans, just look at this whimsical cat theme birdbath! It's a Don Drumm design, handcrafted in North Carolina. Although it is a true attention-getter as a birdbath,…
They're back! Garden gnomes have been on the roller-coaster of popularity since they first popped up in the shade of a backyard birdbath, it would seem. Originally called der Gartenzwerg…
Forget the traditional parterre Herb Garden, if you can’t keep herbs alive! Goths, ghouls, and any gardeners with a sense of humour about their plant-growing failures will enjoy a decorative Herb Graveyard instead. (more…)
So my veggie garden is still under four feet of snow — does that stop a keen gardener from planning for a new planting season? Heck, no!
One of the first plantings that will go in (when Spring eventually arrives in Atlantic Canada) will be the salad garden of mixed mesclun greens and spinach and lettuce, not to mention some tasty lovely snow peas. These are all vegetable crops that prefer cooler air and soil temperatures, and will quickly fade when summer sun grows warm.
Did you know that you can grow salad greens in containers, if you don’t have a patch of earth for a garden? They look quite lush and lovely growing in pots, too.
Keep the harvest going by snipping off just the outside leaves, rather than the entire head of your lettuce plants. The plants will keep producing from the centre, and you get super-fresh salad for days and days on end!
Lettuce and spinach and other greens are easy to grow from seed. So easy, in fact, that I never seem to learn to scatter the seeds thinly enough — I’m always making allowances for seeds that might not germinate, and I end up with a crowded planting of tiny plants struggling against each other for light. Not so good for the air circulation, either, and some of my lettuce can end up composting itself if we get a few days of rain.
No big deal, though: just get in there with the scissors and thin it out. Cut off some of those tiny lettuce plants right at soil level when they’re just a few inches high, and start the salad season early. Thinning out will let the remaining plants grow better and avoid those nasty damp-related problems.
Slugs and snails are the biggest threat to a nice salad garden, and you’ll have to be on your toes to keep ahead of them — they sneak out at dusk and can eat their way through a great deal of salad in one night, leaving silvery slimy trails all over the ragged green leaves, while you’re sleeping peacefully and all unawares… Unpleasant!
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You can't go wrong with the classic turkey (or a cocky classic rooster, for that matter), but here's a fun new twist on the rustic Autumn yard art. No carving. No mess. Reusable for years to come...
Yes, you guessed it — there's a new shop on the block, garden fans! Goods for the Garden hits my list of sources for garden art and accessories, partly for…
photo by amberdc. Want to grow a variety of herbs, but only have a small space for a garden? Stuart Robinson, one of our favourite Aussie gardeners, offers the Herb…