As the Garden Grows

What's blooming today?


You are here: Home / Archives for In The Garden

My favorite gardening tools

by

Name your favorite gardening tools?

Some of my favorite, don’t go into the garden without them, tools are my Felco pruners. If I walk outside my back or front door you can be sure the pruners are in my hand or at least resting on the steps easily ready for me when I need them. I always need them BTW.

I often also have a pair of scissors handy – left handed ones of course, and some plastic green garden ribbon / tape, or velcro ties.

I like a tidy garden, so snipping and pruning are chores that often take place even when I only mean to go outside and wander through the garden for a quick peek at what’s blooming that day. Therefore my bamboo stakes are in a handy area of my “under the back porch” storage area.

One other tool that is almost always nearby when step into the garden is my hand trowel. I don’t use it so much to dig up plants as to pat down holes that squirrels or cats have dug etc. Of course in the spring and early summer I usually do use it for digging and planting.

Oh yes my camera almost always makes the trip to the garden too – you never know what you might find that’s photo worthy.

So which tools do you use most often in the garden and why are they your favorites?






Biggest snow storm of the year

by

Well, if this is the biggest snow storm of the year – it is so far- it hasn’t been too bad.

I think we got about a foot of snow here in Toronto. I haven’t been listening to the weather reports so I could be off one way or another by an inch or two, but looking outside I’d say a foot is a good estimate.

Perhaps the fact that it’s so cold here kept some of the snow from falling? It’s -13 Celsius at this moment and I believe that that’s close to 1 F. Pretty cold!

I’m not complaining. We’ve had very nice weather this winter if you exclude this month. However I do hope that Spring hurries up and arrives. I want to get outside for walks and with the weather this cold I just can’t convince myself as to how good for me a walk would be. Brrrrr!

Elephant Ear plant reacting to light

by

It’s interesting to see how plants react to light isn’t it?

I’m sure you’ve looked at your house plants or various plants in your garden and saw that they were facing the sun, or that the flowers were open fully in full sun. However, at night or when not in full sun you might have also noticed flowers closing or plants leaves turning to try to capture whatever small bit of sunlight they could reach.

Here’s a time lapse video of an Elephant Ear houseplant reacting to the sun. It’s facing into the plant owners home in the beginning but watch what happens as the window that the plant is near becomes brighter and brighter as the sun comes through it.

Meta