An over-ambitious BBQ feast

How to Overwinter Foxgloves

7 Reasons Why Garlic Leaves Fall Over

Want the best of both worlds? Here are the Best Edible Ground Cover Plants that you can grow to add stunning appeal to your landscape with a fresh supply in your kitchen!

How to Overwinter Nemesia Flowers

After summer, as the weather begins to cool, it can be a good time to review and assess your garden. What worked well over the current season, and what did not exactly go according to plan?

How to Overwinter Hosta Plants

When I clear the next bed it will be time to plant the overwintering onions. I choose to plant my onions in the autumn for two reasons; the first is that I like having the beds filled overwinter. It’s nicer than having a bare garden to look at. The second is that they are harvestable about a month earlier in the summer, which means their bed is available for replanting a month earlier, and that works for me.

Header image: The greenhouse at McMurdo Station in Antarctica is the only source of fresh food during winter. Eli Duke/Flickr, CC BY-SA

We’ve had the Hydroponicum for over a year now. It has kept us supplied with salads and stir-fry veg, and I’ve grown one or two more experimental crops as well. Not everything I have tried has been successful. My spinach bolted (I’m not sure why, and I haven’t tried again yet). Alliums don’t seem to like germinating in the hydroponic seedling tray, and coriander downright refused. Coriander seedlings will grow hydroponically, though, so I may try allium transplants at some point.

Pancake day (AKA Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras) has got to be the one holiday of the year that’s devoted to avoiding food waste. In keeping with grand tradition, Ryan and I whipped up a batch of pancakes, using the last egg in the fridge and about half of the remaining apple & cinnamon bread flour, and they were delicious. For most people this is probably a token effort (especially as it’s no longer common to avoid rich foods such as eggs, milk and sugar during Lent, with people preferring to give up booze, excessive screen time or being rude to people), but we’re doing very well at avoiding food waste.

I’m a firm believer in composting. In the years in which I haven’t really had a garden, I have mourned the loss of valuable resources as I sent my compostables off in the municipal collections.

The original plant crew for the AeroGarden: Cuttings mission was garden mint, sage and rosemary. As I expected, the garden mint was the first to root, and is growing well – to the point of crowding the others out! Sage rooted second, and is putting on new growth. Rosemary was slow to root, but has now done so and is starting to show some new leaves!