Seedballs/ Seedbombs- getting into some guerilla gardening for good

I bought a bag of clay from Curry's Art Supplies last year with the intention of making seed bombs, but life, and head trauma, got in the way. Then two weeks ago I was buying groceries, and saw this bag of mixed wildflower seeds in the vegetable section, of all places. It promised being able to cover a huge area with flowers for $20, so I bought it. I mixed a handful of the seed mixture with some composted manure and a light potting soil to spread the seeds out even more, and then made little pockets of clay and filled them with this mixture. Like dirt ravioli.

Why do my houseplants die? (A tale of unnecessary woe)

Or, humans can't live on bread and water alone, and neither can plants...


I have some friends who swear up and down that they have a brown thumb. Every plant they take in dies a long, slow, horrible death. Sometimes it's because they forget to water enough (and even more rarely, too much). Usually when I ask them what happens, they say they don't know.


tl;dr- Buy a good liquid plant food and add it to your plant water as directed. Sometimes you need to re-pot your plants in new soil. Ask at your local garden centre what they suggest. Sometimes your plant has outgrown its pot and needs a slightly bigger one, but if you don't give food to your plant it will likely never get to this point.


If you actually want to learn something about it, read on...

Battening down the (garden) hatches for the winter

Here's a list of things you can do this month in your garden:

-Planting spring bulbs.

-Mulch up the base of tender roses to protect them from the freeze/thaw cycle- Use triple mix or clean topsoil. Rose shrubs and climbers should be fine without this.

-Dig in mulch and compost for the spring (so you don't have to do it when it's wet and partially frozen).

-Empty and put away anything that has water in it, such as hoses, and don't forget to turn off the water line in the basement that goes outside.

-Wrap up or put straw on plants that need extra winter protection.

-Plant garlic for the spring.

-Do a final and full weeding to get things ready.

More advanced topics- Soil pH

As I learned from my daughter's grade 8 science class notes pH stands for potential of Hydrogen, and it's determined by measuring the number of hydrogen ions. Water has a neutral pH with a balanced number of hydronium and hydroxide ions. This pH is measured as 7. Anything less is acidic and anything above is basic (or alkaline). Lemon juice is 2.2 pH, so it is highly acidic. The best range for plants is between 5.5 to 7.5 (so acidic is better than alkaline), although some plants have evolved to survive in soils outside of that range (like Arabian coffee and highbush blueberry).