Fun Fact: the secret about Avocados

My best friend Tati makes the best avocado omelettes. One day when I was over at her house she only had a shrivelled up avocado in the fridge. To our surprise... it was perfectly ripe!

Since, I've been experimenting with keeping avocados in the fridge... And... found that once avocados are ripe, if you put them in the fridge and they will keep at the perfect ripeness for at least 2.5 weeks.

Enjoy this tip, it will save you from eating 2-3 ripe avocados in a day so they don't go bad ;)

Patience is Your Best Tool

Over the last couple of years the best thing I've learned about gardening is patience.

Once upon a time...

There was a girl who purchased an Azalea tree. She knew that it was an evergreen, but as fall approached the leaves started to turn brown. Soon, all the leaves fell off and the once beautiful tree looked dead.

In the next growing season, her love for flowers over powered her fear of killing another tree and she purchased a white and a pink Azalea tree. During the season the pink tree thrived and kept it's leaves all through winter. The white tree exhibited similar symptoms as her past Azalea tree. However, she was so busy with her vegetable garden that year, she forgot to clean out the dead plants on her balcony at the end of the season.

Winter came and went. The girl went into her balcony at the beginning of the next spring and was pleasantly surprised. The white tree was starting to grow leaves again. Flowers did not grow during this season, but as the years pass more and more leaves grew and eventually flowers bloomed once again.

Patience, my friends, is your best tool. Sometimes what seems like death is actually natures test to show you her resilience.

P.S. As vines age they look like they're dead, but it's just their secret trick :)

 first year Azalea trees

Azalea trees year three (if you look super close you can see tiny buds)

the one in the foreground is the pink healthy one, the one in the back is the one that looked dead :)

Rory Lately...

Rory wants to hang in the garden 

p.s. in the corning is a cup of rice to help condensation in the winter

Container Gardening: Magnolias

The best way to have a garden in a small space is to have all your plants in pots. This is also known as container gardening. I always thought that certain plants (like trees) needed to be in the ground. This is my experiment with the success and failures. 

First up is Magnolia Trees. I'm currently on season 3 of Magnolia trees and these guys have not died. Success! 

I have two different kinds and the thing I've learned is that the white ones bloom weeks before purple ones. This is also why I only have pictures of the white one. Patience got the best of me in previous years and I trimmed the buds off the purples ones before they even got a chance to bloom. Last year I was too busy and just left the trees to their own and was pleasantly surprised when ba-bing, blooms!

 I'm pretty sure this one is a star magnolia tree. The one beside it is Magnolia Liliiflora (not bloomed). 

Lately Loving... Big Ben Full of Tea

Currently I'm in love with this mason jar tea mug from David's Tea. I love him so much he shall now be known as Big Ben Full of Tea.

This is the song I wrote for him set to the tune of twinkle twinkle little stars

Big Ben Big Ben Full of Tea
You make me so happy

You make my favourite cuppa
I just want to drink you upppa

Big Ben Big Ben Full of Tea
You make me so happy

Dear Strawberries...

Dear Strawberries,

I used to hate you, until i grew you. Then I discovered I only hated non organic strawberries.
So sorry for the confusion.

Your friend,

Bee

In the past I've found store bought strawberries to be watery and sour. Berries from your own garden are sweeter because they're usually (if you're patient) allowed to ripen more before you pick them.

Later in the summer I'll post a strawberry post about all the different kinds of strawberries I have, stay tuned :)

For now, this is a friendly reminder to pick some up. If you can, pick up a couple of different varieties because as the season progresses they're harder to find in the stores.

Fun Fact: The most common strawberries on the market are the Everbearing Strawberry. However are they the most fun? I'll leave it up to you.

i repeat... honeyberries are not blueberries

Upon reading the plant label and feeling a sense of adventure, I purchased a honeyberry plant. Thinking that it was going to be a sweet berry similar to blueberries with a hint of honey, I waited patiently for the fruit to ripen.

Popping a couple in my mouth... I discovered honeyberries are NOT blueberries.

Don't be fooled by their dark plum like skin, and their innocent berry shape. They are not, I repeat not blueberries.

Once I let them ripen more on the plant (until the end of the summer) they were okay... not the best fruit, but once you mix 'em in with other berries are bearable...

Silver lining: The leaves are velvety soft and oh so puuuurty

Tea Poem for the Tea Lovers

There once was a girl who loved tea

with a passion that anyone could see

Because she was so crafty

and felt her house so drafty

she started a growing spree 

Jasmine scented mint tea

Jasmine flower tea

Chamomile tea (not so great fresh)

Jasmine plant with flowers you can use for tea (Not all jasmine plants are edible, most are toxic)

Fun Fact: as these Jasmine flowers age, they turn pink then purple 

Growing...Growing... SPRING is here

I partially only grow these bulbs for their fragrant flowers. Once there here, I slice 'em up and bring in the flowers. Downside to reaping them from the ground, they only hold their scent for a couple of days... then they smell pungent!

I've found that the white ones are the ones with the most bell like flowers. Purple ones are the most temperamental.

I am currently patiently awaiting these, robot is lonely without his flower friends.

Succulent Graveyard

Sometimes I find that succulents live too long, and other times I find that I'm the worst at taking care of them. Over the years I've added the succulents I haven't killed to this pot. If they're hardy they will propagate themselves, otherwise the next year I pick out the dead ones to make room for new ones I've recently killed. 

It's extremely entertaining to see who will survive this graveyard of doom. 

There's always new inmates because I have this huge addition to buying succulents. Sometimes it's because I'm at Ikea and feel I need to free the cute plants from their constraining corporate lives. I also blame Martha (Martha Stewart). When she has them in her magazine I forget that I'm terrible with succulents and rush out to create what she creates... 

Planning Out My Garden

I am a huge planner in life, school, work, and.... in the garden. I find a well laid plan will help utilize my budget and hard work.

Every year I take what worked and didn't work and use it to plan the layout.  It can be difficult to predict how sunlight and soil quality will affect the kinds of plants you want to grow. So, sometimes it can take a couple of years to get the feel for your garden plot.

I have found that my garden plot likes tomatoes, peas, and carrots carrots carrots! I also like to add new things to experiment for future years. This year I'm adding cucumber, zucchini, and egg plant.

To ward off weeds and pests, I'm experimenting with lining the non-growing parts with black plastic or burlap.

I'm also trying a new double netting technique for peas. (more to come later...)

Shamrock

March is a great time for Shamrock. 

This little plant grows from a bulb. If you want to keep it inside, the leaves stay year round. I've seen this little guy come in purple, green and even a mix of the two. At night the leaves droop a little and they look like little triangle butterflies waiting to spread their wings. I love how reactive this plant is to day and night. 

The cutest thing is that the leaves look like flowers. In the summer, when there is more light, there are cute little white trumpet like flowers that come out. Indoors these flowers only last a day or two, but outside they can last weeks. 

You don't have to keep it in a pot with a hole at the bottom. I love using little cups so I can place them all over the house. Be careful not to over water if you're using a pot without a hole. If it starts to look droopy, give it more water and watch it perk up :)

This is one that i've had for 4 years. As the bulbs mature, they start to create new bulbs in the same pot. After a couple of years you can start to divide mature plants and create new pots of shamrock.

 This is a little cup I found at an antiques fair. It's too small to hold the large amounts of tea I drink, but perfect to hold Shamrock.

Natural Air Fresheners

One of my favourite things about herbs is how abundantly they grow. If you find you have excess, cut some like you would flowers and put them in a cup around your house. I usually use lemon balm to make my home smell lemony fresh.

If you plant anything from the Mint family, plant it in a pot, not the ground. They will become weeds if you plant them in the ground. However,  you can plant mint around your property to ward of unwanted critters. I also use a mixture of mint essential oils and water to spray around as preventative care.

Fun Fact: Dry your mint and use it in the winter for tea. Mint tea is a natural way to calm digestion problems :) Look for my Drying tips later in the summer.

Gardening Sidekick

This is Rory (ROR, muffin, Lady Rory, Fur Paunt, and RorytonAbbey) my gardening side kick. Like most sidekicks, you don't originally intend to have one, but they force themselves on you with their persistence.

Until we installed a screen on our windows and doors last summer, I would have an unwanted and unwelcome visitor following me around outside. After the installation of the screens, I had an un-stealthy spy, peeking at me through the curtains and blinds of the sliding doors.

Her favourite things are dog sweaters, barking at everything, being the queen of the neighbourhood, cats, blankets and pillows, anything soft, belly rubs, and licking babies.

She absolutely hates cuddling and sitting on the laps of the humans she lives with, and being carried. However, if you are a visitor coming into our home, she will do anything to cuddle with you.

 One of ROR's NYResolutions was to cuddle the humans she lives with. This picture is one of the rare occasions I got her to cuddle me. She was not happy...

 We created a pillow fort for her one day and she loved it so much she spent most of the day here

 She loves loves loves sweaters! If I take it off she spends her time mopping around until I put her in it again.

My favourite thing to do is spend hours waiting around with a camera to capture Rawr faces. She's really yawning, but she looks like a lion who's going to eat you.

Lavender in the Garden

Last year my lavender plants were getting wild, so I trimmed them back and stuck the trimmings into the planters around it. I never expected them to take to the new pots because it was late in the summer. However....

I looked outside my patio door the other day and it worked! The new lavender propagated and now I have new baby lavender.

 This is one of the original lavender plants

 The mother lavender plant is in the back of this pot, and its babies are the ones in the foreground.

Paper Flowers

(photo from apartment therapy)

I just found this great paper flower tutorial from apartment therapy

FLOWERS Here

Flowers in the Garden

There is an internal debate inside me every year about flowers. I love love love flowers, however my gardening space is so small that I try and conserve space to grow fruits and veggies that are consumable.

When I do grow flowers I try to pick fragrant flowers. The best things in the world to me is walking out onto my patio in April and smelling the beautiful blooms.

My most powerful memory from when I was a child was walking home late in the summer and smelling the blackberry bushes ripening. The sweetness of the berries is a smell I will never forget.

Here are some flowers I picked a couple of years ago that I put in a milk glass vase I found at a garage sale. The robot was added to the picture to give is whimsy :)

My Second Year Garden

Because of my success in the first year, the powers that be gave me a larger garden plot in my second year.

I regret to say I didn't take pictures of my plot set up, however here are some of my garden hauls.

The carrots were the major success of this year. The best trick of the trade for carrots is to plant then right after the last frost of the year. It's amazing how the March/April rains germinated most of my seeds to produce carrots for the entire summer.

If you are planting carrots later, try germinating the seeds in a smaller pot, then transferring them once they are seedlings. I did this later in the summer because I wanted the carrot train to continue, and it worked like a charm :)

Purple carrots are my favourite. Pulling carrots is like finding your first grey hairs and pulling them out. The satisfaction you feel is almost indescribable.

My First Community Garden

Here are some pictures of my first garden plot. 

I had marigolds all around the boarder to ward off unwanted insects. This first year I had an overabundance of peas and tomatoes. 

First Post

Dear Friends,

My gardening journey started 3 years ago. The first year was mostly succulents and container gardening. But... in the 2nd and 3rd year I signed up for a community garden plot and started to grow delicious fruits and veggies.

I decided to start this blog to chronicle my yearly journey into growing organic and sustainable food in my outdoor space. 

I live in a 625 sq ft condo in Vancouver, BC. Most of my growing happens on my balcony (in containers) and my community garden plot.

This season I'll share my journey from start to finish, focusing on my tips that helped me grow an abundance of carrots, tomatoes, beets, etc.

Gardening requires an extreme amount of patience, but hopefully my progress pictures will help encourage us all.

-Bee