From My Garden: An eBook

 My eBook From My Garden is available here ‎From My Garden on Apple Books

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Books

 Over the past few months I have had the opportunity to take a close look at my library. There are a few gems there. Such as Water for Every Farm and The Children's Food Forest.

I will over the next few weeks write about each one. Stsy connected.

We Are What We Eat

 We are what we eat. Food is our medicine. These two sayings are oft repeated by people who understand that food and health are intimately related. I do not plan to argue the truth of either, I leave that up to the individual.

What I am interested in is the quality of the real food we eat. By real food, I mean vegetables, fruit, meat, fish and chicken. Personally, when it comes to what I either buy or grow, my main concern is the item contains the minerals, vitamins and micronutrients my body demands.

When it comes to growing my own, there are three reasons why I select the plants I do.  The first, I like to experiment. Grow something I have never grown, just to see what happens. Second, I enjoy certain food. Third, I want to add foods that have a high nutrient density.

Nutrient density is a measure of the nutrients provided per calorie of food, or the ratio of nutrients to calories (energy). The salad or cut-and-come-again garden is ideal for some high nutrient plants.

Cut-and-come-again refers to the plants’ abilities to grow new leaves after they have been harvested. In hot weather, lettuces and other green leafy plants have a tendency to bolt, in other words, go to seed, rather quickly and the crop is lost.

Now what to grow in the cut-and-come-again garden or salad garden? There are many options. I like spinach, romaine lettuce, kale and arugula, for example, but there are a number of others, that are ideal in a salad garden.

My five top crops for the home salad garden are and this is not in order of importance: leaf lettuces, radishes, snow peas, tomatoes and cucumbers.

The snow peas, cucumbers and tomatoes can all be grown vertically in containers if your space is limited or if you simply do not want to bend over to tend them.

Leaf lettuce is a lettuce with an open growth habit, which forms loose clusters of leaves rather than a tight head of lettuce.There are a few leaf lettuces on the marker, a favourite is red leaf lettuce.

Leaf lettuces reach maturity before other lettuces and are ideal for the short season garden. I like growing several plants that are early producers because winter is long and the growing season quite short.

Growing something that provides a yield early provides fresh food early in the gardening season. This is why I also grow radishes. Some radishes can reach maturity in 28 days. We enjoy the mild heat and flavour in salads and sandwiches.

Cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce make a fine sandwich. Cucumbers are one of the foods that remind me of my youth and a garden just would not be complete without them.

Snow peas are great in a stir fry served with rice or noodles. They also make a great addition to a salad. In fact, all these vegetables can be combined in a number of ways to produce healthy and delicious salads.

Sugar Free Apple Pie Recipe

 When we lived in New Brunswick, there was an apple tree in the yard. The fallen apples provide extra food.

Apple Pie (Sugar Free) & Apple Sauce Recipes | HubPages

Wild Bird Feeding

 Why feed wild birds? If we consider wild birds to be any bird that is not being kept in a cage, then the birds humans feed most often are sea gulls, crows and pigeons. The birds that eat our refuse and I for one would rather not fed them.

I do not have anything against any of them, well sea gulls can be very tenacious, loud and will swoop down on humans if they feel the human is trespassing. But that is what happens when humans move into bird territory or humans toss away so much food related items that our towns and cities become feeding ground for many wild beings from cockroaches to rate and beyond. source

The Organic Lawn

 People still devote hours and dollars to maintain a lawn that may look good but requires constant attention and far too many rely on toxic chemicals to keep the green, green.  from

The Organic Lawn | HubPages

Garden Planning: Attracting Butterflies

 T

here are two things that butterflies are seeking: one is nectar, the food that adult butterflies need, and the other, host plants, the place where the female will lay her eggs and the food that caterpillars need. Both are necessary to create a successful butterfly garden.

It does take some thought and a bit of planning but then so does any successful garden. You need to know which butterflies are native to your region. You need to know what they like to eat and where they sleep, in short, you need to know butterfly habitats and habits.

Your public library or nature society can be a very useful source of this information.

Let's start with a look at the butterfly.

Adult butterflies and moths have mouthparts that are shaped into a long, coiled tube. Butterflies feed on liquids (nectar) and they get all their food through this tube.

Their offspring or larvae, on the other hand, have chewing mouthparts, which they use to devour leaves.

The eyes of the butterfly are large, rounded compound eyes. This allows them to see in all directions without turning their heads. Butterflies are nearsighted, like most insects, and are more attracted to large stands of a particular flower than those planted singly.

Butterflies do not see the colour red as well as we do, however, they are able to see polarized light (which tells the direction the sun is pointing) as well as ultraviolet light, which is present on many flowers. This helps guide them to nectar sources.

Butterflies use their antennae to smell and their sense of smell is well developed. All butterflies' antennae are club-shaped, as opposed to moths, which can be many shapes but often are feathery.

Nectar Preferences (food)

Different species of butterflies have different preferences of nectar, in both colors and tastes. If you want to encourage different butterflies to visit your yard then your best bet is to supply them with a wide range of nectar source or plants.

Diversity is the key word here, ecosystems thrive on biodiversity. This is an opportunity to explore and have some fun and a chance to engage your imagination.

Consider a circular garden bed that is just off of centre in your front or back yard. You can use twine or even a garden hose to lay out the circle. It does not have to be a perfect circle. A diameter of 4 to 5 feet is sufficient to add beauty and function to the yard.

If you combine wild and cultivated plants, and use plants with different blooming times of the day and year you will encourage a wider range of butterflies to stop by.

When you plant you flowers in groups of the same plants this will make it easier for butterflies to see the flowers than singly planted flowers would.

Housing:

If you want the butterflies to stay in your garden and raise a family then you need to provide them with food plants where the females can lay their eggs. Some females are pickier about which host to lay their eggs on than others.

The butterfly larvae are also distinctive. Some caterpillars have hairs or forked spines, which may be or may not sting (often the hairs are just for show).

Certain swallowtail caterpillars imitate snakes or bird droppings. Other caterpillars, like sulphers, blend into their surroundings very well.

If caterpillars are eating excessive foliage from a prominent or desirable part of a plant and you want to palce them elsewhere then use gloves to move them if they're hairy to the backside or another less noticeable portion of the plant.

All insects are cold-blooded and cannot internally regulate their body temperature. Butterflies will readily bask in the sun when it is warm out, but few are seen on cloudy days.

It is a good idea to leave open areas in a yard for butterflies to sun themselves, as well as partly shady areas like trees or shrubs, so they can hide when it's cloudy or cool off if it is very hot.

A flat rock placed in full sun will provide the spot that butterflies need to bask. Butterflies like puddles. Males of several species congregate at small rain pools, forming puddle clubs.

Permanent puddles are very easy to make by burying a bucket to the rim, filling it with gravel or sand, and then pouring in liquids such as stale beer, sweet drinks or water. Butterflies love overripe fruit,that has been allowed to sit for a few days.

Native Plants Help the Garden Grow

 If

 you are planning to create a native plant garden, you will need to know what plants are native to your region. I always recommend that people visit their local public library as the library can be a source of much information. If you have a native plant society or a naturalist society in town, then contact them.

There are some very sound reasons for selecting native plants for your garden, for me the environmental reasons carry the most weight but ease of care follows as a close second.

Environmental reasons:

The environmental reasons are strong motivators for selecting native plants, with a native plant garden you will:

·         increase biodiversity;

·         provide habitat for a wide variety of creatures such as birds and butterflies;

·         provide a home for many native plants that are becoming increasingly rare in the wild;

·         conserve water;

·         and eliminate the need for chemical inputs such as pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers.

The other important reasons for using native plants are the practical and aesthetic benefits of native plant gardening: less work and lots of beauty!

Once you get started you will soon discover that native plant gardens almost look after themselves. Remember the plants look after themselves in Nature and do not have a gardener to feed and water them.

However, the best guarantee of gardening success is taking time to stroll through your garden. Enjoying the sights, sounds and smells, with an eye open to spotting the unusual, unexpected or unanticipated. This investment of time can head off possible plant catastrophes.

Genocide

 originally published on my blog Enough is Enough. The Inquisitive Gardener sees gardening about growing community as much as we do growing as much as we so plants

Genocide and Canada

June 09, 2019

There has been considerable discussion about using the term genocide in direct reference to Canada's historical relationship with Indigenous people.

The term genocide was created: In 1944, a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959) sought to describe Nazi policies of systematic murder, including the destruction of European Jews. He formed the word genocide by combining geno-, from the Greek word for race or tribe, with -cide, from the Latin word for killing. In proposing this new word, Lemkin had in mind “a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.”  https://www.ushmm.org/confront-genocide/defining-genocide

The debate was recently sparked by the final report of the national inquiry "Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls" (MMIWG) You can read the report here.  
https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/

"In response to calls for action from Indigenous families, communities and organizations, as well as non-governmental and international organizations, the Government of Canada launched an entirely independent National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in September 2016."

Some have said Canada's treatment of Indigenous people was not genocide. I disagree. Over the next few months, I will explore this topic in greater detail. I am not a historian or an academic simply a concerned Canadian.

Gardening for Beauty and Food

 

Over the years I have designed and grown a wide range of gardens from a one pot with tomatoes and basil on my balcony to a 1 acre commercial operation. One reoccurring question raised through all these various gardens’ projects over a 17 year period is whether to grow flowers or not.

I am not talking about edible flowers but flowers that are grown purely for ornamental or ascetic purposes either as cut flowers for the table or bouquets or dried flowers for various craft purposes.

To clarify the discussion further, I am not discussing commercial growing of cut flowers or flowers for drying, both of which could be solid business opportunities, but rather flowers grown purely for personal use and ascetic qualities.

There are gardeners and then there are gardeners; some will only grow food and scoff at those who grow, for example, gladiolas. Te glad has no edible value but it perhaps one of the most beautiful flowers that I have seen.

I have grown glads in containers on my balcony and in the backyard just so I could have them to cut and bring inside to admire.

I remember on evening some years back I was sitting on my balcony looking up at the sky when I noticed a small bird hover near the deep red glads growing in the container. It was a hummingbird. It paused in its flight and gave me a look that said hey what you are doing here this my space.

The hummingbird bird came back at approximately the same time every night for a week. Now that is what I call a good reason to grow flowers; to attract these winged jewels.

The group of gardeners who want to grow only food; or plant trees will argue that growing flowers for purely aesthetic purposes is a waste of time and resources (soil, water) but I simply cannot agree.

Beauty is a function and one that deserves our respect an

d attention. Spend, even20 minutes, in a backyard near the flower garden, feel the sun warming your face, hear the hum of the bees and watch the butterflies float from plant to plant and you will see the value that beauty brings. The dance of life is taking place before your eyes.

Besides a cut flower garden can attract the beneficial friends, (bees and other insects) to you garden that will help you do the work.

My perspective is this; if you have enough space for a garden then take a diverse approach, grow the vegetables that you want for your table but add a few herbs and a few cut flowers into the mix so that your garden will not only provide a greater bounty for your table but so that you set out a portion for your garden helpers.

The successful gardener does not work alone. Another saying that is worth remembering here is that we do not live by bread alone; vegetables will feed your hunger but flowers will feed your heart.