My horticultural haven is unfinished and imperfect. If it was otherwise then my life’s work would be done and I wouldn’t know what to do. Come along with me as I work toward perfection, we’ll be together for a long time. I currently grow a rather crazy mix of vegetables a variety of perennial flowers and a smattering of annual flowers in the gaps and in a variety of containers. Oh! The vegetables are often found growing in containers as well.

Where’s my garden? All of these things compete for space in a modestly large city lot in a small town east of Toronto ON that hovers between Canadian zone 5&6 or a U.S.D.A Zone 4&5. I continue to develop new techniques for producing as many vegetables as possible in a rather confined space, a technique that I refer to as Vertical Vegetables. This allows myself and the “Assistant Gardener” (aka. my long suffering spouse,) to eat our own fresh vegetables for about 7-8 months of the year.

Let’s eat! To really enjoy all of these vegetables you need to prepare them in delicious and interesting recipes. I also love to cook and experiment and you will find the things that wind up tasting delicious on my recipes pages.

Trials and tribulations! I like to try new things and report back to my readers what works and what might not be the best value in town. I have recently tested a variety of trowels and last summer applied a variety of mulches to my many beds. Some looked better, some cost more some did neither but may have been effective mulches. Frequent readers can keep up to date on products and plants that I’m trying. I visit other gardens as often as possible and report back to my readers just what they might find interesting there.

Come and spend time with me in my garden. I find it the most delightful, sometimes frustrating, usually therapeutic, pastime and the physical effort exerted produces much better results than any treadmill. I have been trying to convince mother nature to do her landscape my way, for many years and her responses are usually very humbling, occasionally encouraging, frequently amusing but always quite gratifying. We continue to discuss, (argue about,) our separate definitions of a weed. These successes and failures also make up the content of my seminars. Readers of my ezine “Dallying In The Dirt” get to ask me questions and sometimes that allows both us to learn something new.

What’s New and What’s Topical for Summer 2009.