I thought it seemed appropriate that I would use an image of my globe thistle for this post. Two years ago I started this plant from seed. Last year, as most perennials do, didn’t flower but gave out lots of lovely green, spiky, and slightly-ominous looking foliage.

This year, it grew to a height of five feet, and sent out five heads that would take an eye out if I didn’t watch where I was going poking around in the garden. The flowers unopened look more like a medieval torture device than a flower, but after a few weeks of those scary looking heads imposing over the garden, each spike produces a delicate little pale lavender flower. They’re beautiful plants, a mixture of thorn-like buds that would put even the most gnarly rose bush to shame, and soft small blooms that the bees and butterflies damned near fight over to get to.

I watched this plant very closely as it grew, knowing that it’d take two years to get to the point where I would see the fruits of my labour (so to speak). Caring, fertilizing, weeding, and taking general care of this flower just to see it produce five flower heads. I thought about taking it with me when I leave my place (as I’m doing with several other plants) but the thing about globe thistle is that it doesn’t like to be moved, there’s a good chance of killing it no matter how careful you are. Globe thistle likes to be left alone.

So, I’d rather leave it to the next occupant of this house so they can (hopefully) enjoy it as much as I did. And hey, as it turns out I’ll have lots of garden room and new adventures ahead, and I’m sure more globe thistle will be started in a few months.

I’d rather know it’s living happily, than risk bringing it with me. I hope its new caretaker will appreciate it as much as I did.

The garden is slow this year. Very, very slow. A cool and wet spring saw to that. Just now things are really starting to take off, hell, I’ve only just harvested the pods I was saving for seeds from my Slocan Snow Peas this morning! Granted these snow peas actually do quite well in heat, so they had an extended life over most snow peas, but still, they are in fact snow peas.

This time last year I was harvesting tomatoes already. This year my first tomato (a ‘Tiny Tim’) is just on the verge of finally ripening.

You know what? I’m really, really glad to be getting back to a climate where things don’t only start ripening in August.

But back to the Slocan Snow Peas.

Generally I like to let pods go fully dry on the vine before I harvest for seeds (goes for beans, radishes, etc. as well), but there’s a mountain of rain and storms coming our way this weekend, and I want to avoid these guys going all mildewy. Most of them are almost there, some of them still have a good amount of moisture in them, but they’re all past the point of being fully ripened, so germination won’t suffer next year.

I wrote some more on the history of these seeds here at the Populuxe Seed Bank’s website. These will be available (not in huge quantity, but available) through the seed bank later this year or early 2011.

Who doesn’t love daisies? Almost anything with a daisy-like flower I will fall head over heels for, but the classic white shasta daisy will always have a home in my garden, wherever that garden may be (and in a few months it’ll be located somewhere in Victoria, BC).

Unlike most pretty flowers people have in their gardens, shasta daisies stink to high heaven. Have you ever taken a really good sniff of a flower? Cat pee. That’s what they smell like to me. Maybe that’s the reason that the plot I planted these in never have neighbourhood cats come and dig in it (but that’s just my theory).

Shasta daisies are a favourite plant in almost any garden because they’re extremely hardy, are very attractive to bees, hoverflies, and other pollinators, and are about as easy-care as you can get. Drop them in the ground and walk away, and they’ll continue to double in size every year. Hell, I don’t even fertilize mine.

The classic shasta makes me smile every time I see it. No matter what my mood, it could be a no good, very bad day, but when I see those big white flowers, I smile. The stink is well worth it.

These are one of my absolute, hands down, favourite potato varieties of all time to grow.

Sure, Warba isn’t the fanciest or freakiest variety of potato I’ve ever grown, they’re of small size, they’re a regular old white colour.

But they are amazing.

They are a very early variety, usually ready buy about mid-August (or sooner, if you have a longer growing season then I do), and baby potatoes can be harvested, well, now as indicated by the photo (by the way, they were delicious).

Warba was bred in Minnesota in 1927, and it is an amazing grower. These guys will give you more harvest, earlier then any other variety out there. And they seriously produce. They store really well, they’re excellent for baking and boiling. During the drought of 1936 they were the only crop of potatoes that readily produced any kind of harvest, which is a godsend in a climate like mine that frequently has water rationing and extremely hot, dry summers.

Every time somebody asks me “what kind of potatoes do you think I should grow?” I immediately tell them Warba.

I am a sucker for an heirloom. I’m more of a sucker for an heirloom with a good story. But I’m at my most suckering (yes, I said it) when it’s a local heirloom with a good story.

So when I came upon the seeds at my town’s yearly Seedy Saturday I jumped on them.

Now, I am not a pea person. I actually don’t like peas. I do like snow peas on the rare occasion, but I don’t grow them every year, nor do I go out of my way to purchase them when they are in season. But the story of these suckered me in. I have more information up on the Populuxe Seed Bank’s site here.

The quick and dirty version of their history is that they were brought to the area in the 1940′s by, what the lady who sold them to me called, “Japanese immigrants”. My suspicion is, however, considering it was the 40′s, and considering there was a large Japanese Internment Camp in the area, that these were actually brought by prisoners when they were rounded up and taken from their homes.

I’m very excited about these peas, mostly because, like I said, I’m a sucker for a story, but mostly because I do like snow peas on the rare occasion, and anything you grow yourself always tastes better then something that you bought.

These peas were slow to get going. We had a tough spring, quite chilly, with weird spurts of high heat. I was positive my peas would be doomed, especially considering a few weeks ago the temperatures started going up and my peas were still just tiny. I mean, snow peas are, in theory, a cool weather crop.

But, much to my surprise, the second it got hot, these “snow” peas absolutely took off. When we started hitting the 30C mark, they (finally) started flowering these big, beautiful white blooms you see in the picture above. The plants have got to be growing at least an inch a day now. I was told when I bought them as well that these monster vines grow up to 7ft.

These peas seem insanely heat-tolerant, which isn’t too surprising since they are a local heirloom, and we have hot, hot temperatures here in the Kootenays. But, then again, the whole idea of a snow pea is that they do best in cool weather. These snow peas seem to be a contradiction in and of themselves.

Not that I’m complaining mind you, I’m very excited to see what these peas will do. If they’ll keep producing through a hot, dry summer, and if they will actually get up to that 7 ft mark.

While I know I will enjoy eating these when the pods are finally ready to be devoured, what I am most excited about is, however, spreading them around to anybody else interested in growing them. Especially because I seem to have hit the jack pot with the snow pea that is highly heat tolerant.

Last year in April I purchased two blackcurrant plants, of which I was elated about.

I love blackcurrants so much, but they are somewhat rare (relatively speaking to other berry bushes) in North America. They’re delicious: tart, with a hint of sweetness. Last year when I purchased them they were root stock, they didn’t even have any leaves yet. Over the coarse of the season however they grew quickly. I got a tiny little bit of fruit last year since they were two-year-old plants when I bought them, but what I have already harvested this year has surpassed what my two bushes produced last year. And there’s still lots left on the plants that aren’t ripe yet. The photo above illustrates about one-fifth of what is still ripening on the plant.

While my dream of making batches and batches of my own blackcurrant jam might still be a year or two away in the future, I’m more then happy to go outside and pick some every day for fresh eating until that time comes.

What I’m finding most difficult about blackcurrants, however, is the absolute lack of leeway when it comes to ripening time. The fact that I live in a hot climate doesn’t help, since blackcurrants don’t mind cooler temperatures (which is why I put them in a part-shady spot to avoid having them baking in 30C temperatures all day every day in the summer). One day a berry is still half green, and then the next day, a mere 24 hours later, it’s overripe and has cracked, spreading it’s yummy goodness that should be in my mouth, all over the ground.

Diligence is what I’ve learnt growing blackcurrants.

I am not a rose person.

There are two large, old, climbing roses that grow up against my house that I am constantly cursing and threatening to rip up (even though I never would – I respect a plant that is at least 50 years old). I have absolutely no interest in taking care of roses, or of even cutting them and bringing them in my home.

But wild roses are a different story.

I love wild roses because they seem untameable, with there legions of thorns bidding you away. I also love them because they’re simple; devoid of the big showy blooms that most most people have growing in their yards. If I had it my way I’d rip up those two climbing roses I have, and instead plant some wild roses.

Wild roses hold a special place in my heart. They’re my home-province’s official flower, and as one may expect, they grow everywhere there. In the house I grew up at we had a big old wild rose with a swath of lily of the valley that grew underneath it, right up against an old white fence. Wild roses make me think of home, and of family, and of old memories.

When I was a teenager I couldn’t wait to get out of Alberta, and move to the seemingly-so-exciting west coast of BC. I don’t regret the move, BC is nice (and a lot less colder, which is my main problem with Alberta), but what I do miss are the sights and sounds of Alberta. Big open sky, huge fields of mustard and wheat and canola. Bison and muskegs and pigeon hawks. The way Alberta seems to radiate yellow and orange and gold. The night sky that is so big, it can feel oppressive to somebody who didn’t grow up there. Northern lights of pink and green and white.

It’s funny how sometimes you don’t recognize beauty until after you’ve been away from it for so long.

I told myself I wouldn’t start going through the tomatoes on the Weekly Flora until I could see them ripening on the vine.

Then I totally went back on that promise to myself, because it was a silly thing to think I could do in the first place.

But that’s okay I forgive me.

This tomato is the first to form fruit for me this season, and thusly, will be the first eaten when it finished ripening. I am so looking forward to fresh-of-the-vine tomatoes. Soon I’ll be swimming in almost more then I can eat (since I have about 40 different plants currently growing). But for now, I have just this one, little guy, chugging along, ripening at his own rate.

I’ve never grown Tiny Tim before, but it’s always been on my “to-grow” list. I love tomatoes that are, you know, “weird”. Dwarf plants, heavily pleated fruit, bi-coloured (or tri-coloured!), white tomatoes (that one freaks people out). If it’s “weird”, I’ll have a go at it.

While ‘Tiny Tim’ might not be the weirdest one ever, it is an early dwarf variety, and it fits very nicely into a one-gallon container, letting me but my bigger tomatoes into the 5- and 10- gallon containers.

‘Tiny Tim’ is a commercial heirloom variety; it was bred for commercial purposes, but is older then 50 years (it was actually bred in 1945 by the University of New Hampshire). This year I plan to try growing it under lights during the winter. I go through serious fresh tomato withdrawal for months at a time, but I’m positive there is a tomato out there that will grow well under my fluorescent lights. I mean, it just has to work, right? RIGHT?

Lord help me I can’t eat those cardboard-tasting things the grocery store calls tomatoes that they trucked in from California.

That’s the problem with gardening – it totally makes you into a tomato snob.

Sage is one of those things it seems everybody has. I’m not talking about your crazy showy Salvia varieties that are ornamental rather then edible. I’m talking about your regular old, run of the mill, common sage.

It’s also known as Garden Sage, which I think sounds much nicer, elevating it from its “common” status. But regardless of how I prefer the sound of garden sage, I still aways refer to it as common sage.

It is one of those plants like basil, or columbine, or irises. Everybody has those in their garden somewhere and in some form. But unlike the high-heralded status of basil or the big showy flowers for irises, or even the usefulness of the near-forgotten columbine as a shade plant, sage I think is quite often overlooked.

Sage is delicious. My significant other (that’s what we’re calling them nowadays, right?) constantly says he doesn’t like the taste of it. Little does he know how often I put it in our food. It lends a wonderful earthy flavour to almost anything, and is one of the best companions to oregano. My favourite is to put it in chili. It is delicious in chili. Just a dab will give your chili a richer flavour.

Sage is also one of those things it’s easy to go overboard with, which is why I think so many people say they don’t like it. It’s not that they don’t like sage, per se, it’s that whoever was using it used way too much, causing it to choke out the other flavours in the dish. Moderation is the key when using sage with anything.

But besides the culinary uses there’s it’s usefulness as an ornamental (if you are one of the bunch who really swears they don’t like sage). Yes, even the “common” every day sage is a gorgeous ornamental. It’s big beautiful flat textured leaves, and it’s bright multitudes of purple flowers. The bees and butterflies love them, and I’ve even seen the occasional hummingbird feasting on my plant.

Common sage does extremely well in hot, dry conditions. It happily lives in my front yard garden that receives 8-12 hours of full sun a day. It survives on little water, making it excellent for xeriscaping as well. They also get huge extremely quickly. By about year two to year three, they will grow up to about one metre (that’s three feet) in diameter, and if allowed, they will get bigger.

I love basil. I’ve yet to find a gardener that doesn’t like basil. If I ever found that gardener… well, I’d eat my own hat I suppose. In fact, I’d go farther to say I’d eat my entire wardrobe, because I highly doubt that gardener exists. Basil is one of the staples in everybody’s garden. The variety, the colours, the multitude of uses, the ease with which it grows. There’s almost nothing that you can say that’s bad about it, except maybe the fact that sometimes it can be an aphid magnet.

I love Red Rubin because of it’s colour and it’s flavour, and the bonus of it is that it’s one of the easier non-green varieties to find growing in any local nursery. It’s delicious and spicy, and with more sun it seems to get more flavour.

Because of it’s stronger flavour, I love adding chopped up leaves to salads, and it makes an amazing purple (and strong) home made pesto. This year I’m really looking forward to making Gayla’s basil jelly that she included in her latest book, Grow Great Grub with it.

It also looks beautiful grown in a container with several other basils, as the purple truly catches the eye.