The dirty hoe gardening show

Well, I have been very busy lately with the garden, but I think now that things are slowing down that I will be posting more regularly. Here is a link to Alex Bolivar's show on CJSR featuring our garden. Well done everyone who contributed!

http://www.cjsr.ualberta.ca/news/news.php?s=dirtyhoe&ep=1314&

I encourage you to listen to other episodes of Alex's show. It is on CJSR on Fridays between noon and one, and on Mondays at 2pm. Or, of course, you can listen to it as a podcast.

Guerrilla Gardening

It is the newest thing. They were on the radio in Edmonton this year, and there is a picture of them in Calgary on the wikipedia site . There is the Guerrilla Gardening: A manualfesto (2007) by David Tracey that you can purchase at Earth's General Store,and you can even get it on Amazon, along with Richard Reynolds' On Guerrilla Gardening: A handbook for gardening without boundaries (2008)--here. Reynolds even seems to have global forum (it is a movement, man!).

My fav so far is from a blog my friend Jen in Vancouver sent me called heavy petal (a kickass name, to boot!). Yup, that is a seed-bombing baby! See, even the cool kids are doin' it. VIVE LA RESISTANCE!

I am not sure how many of our gardeners are aware that ECOS has also has a Naturalization Garden Project. The guru of native plants in Edmonton is the glorious Cherry Dodd of the the Edmonton Naturalization Group. We have Ms. Dodd's book Go Wild! in the ECOS library, something that I will talk about in greater depth later. Anyway, I am going to be putting in a lot of work over at the Native bed over the next couple of weeks and hopefully meeting up with Cherry, so if you are interested in the project, let me know.

Until tomorrow. And yeah, I did just discover how to link.

Too much thyme on our hands!

Yeah, I think I love the cheesy titles.


So, this year, in an attempt to put more herbs in the garden, we managed to kinda overdo it with the thyme. We actually have three types of thyme in the garden. In the burm, we have a tonne of Common thyme (Thymus vulgaris). In the trellised area, we have creeping thyme (Thymus serpyllum) and orange thyme (Thymus fragrantissimus).

It all looks pretty much the same:


The question is: what to do with it? Here are some suggestions, none of which, I admit, I have tried!

http://www.theherbaltouch.com/iha/thymerec1.html

(the drink called the "Lemon thyme Lift" looks tantalizing.

http://homecooking.about.com/library/archive/blthyme.htm (this site has all you need to know about thyme, even an apple thyme jelly recipe!)

These explain themselves. Enjoy!

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Thyme-Rubbed-Steaks-with-Sauteed-Mushrooms/Detail.aspx

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Garlic-Herb-Grilled-Pork-Tenderloin/Detail.aspx

Peaple

The Peas are almost ready!


It is amazing how quickly one forgets the changes in a garden. Even with peas, those nitrogen fixating, super growers, it feels as if they were always as big as they are now. If you haven't been out to the garden in awhile, though, you might be surprised!

Here (right) are the peas Sugar Ann snap peas (Pisum sativum "Sugar Ann"---sativum, by the way, merely means cultivated) on the 21st of May, 2008, about ten days after they were planted
.

Here they are (above) on June 7th, 2008, nicely pea-sticked with Bob's branches. And again (below) on the 19th of June. They are now about two feet high. And we have PEAS!!! They came

almost over night! Here is the evolution:


Anyway, the juvenile peas taste pretty good, but the real thing will by tomorrow and they will all be ready by Wednesday!

Community Garden Competition 2007

Yes, we were the winners!!!! Here is our beautiful plaque, which I hope to install this week. Plans are underway for this year's competition.

Pictures from the Spring

Many of you have been anxiously awaiting pictures from this year's spring plant. Here are some that include pictures of you! As this Blog is only now just up and running, I will add all the pictures of plants so you can peruse them at your leisure, and then I will be adding more pictures regularly. Enjoy.
Tony the Tiller!

The garden extension: a mammoth job.

A well deserved break.

Watch our garden grow!

Welcome to the Campus Community Garden Blog for the UofA in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada! We are an organic garden that works on a communal platform (that is, no individual plots). If you are in the area, come out and join us! We always welcome new volunteers. Or, feel free to just watch our garden grow and get a few tips along the way.

Here is our garden on May 16th, 2008 and below on May 21st. Things are just beginning to happen, as you can see. The peas and spinach are up in the raised bed nearest to the camera, and garlic is up in the row behind. In the bottom picture, you can see the lettuce and the radishes poking their heads up.

I will be putting up some older pictures we have take over the last month on this site as well as adding other posts that will have pictures of the plants we are growing, information about them, recipes, etc.
I hope that the comments section can work as a kind of forum where others can contribute their knowledge to the site. If you want something particularly posted (like a recipe, or an event that is coming up), email me at geordan@ualberta.ca

Happy gardening!