What gardeners are doing in other parts of the world
Every week, Diggin' It pokes around the Web to see what's growing on in flower beds and vegetable gardens in various parts of the globe. Today we mouse-click our way to Norway, Australia, Sweden, and India.
Britt-Arnhild Lindland lives in Trondheim, Norway, loves to cook, is a member of the Slow Food movement, and a supporter of Slower Life. She invites us into Britt-Arnhild Blue Garden to admire the first Blue Sister poppies to bloom, to enjoy the progression of spring bloom (it's fun to enjoy a second spring when you garden is already in summer), and to learn about her grandmother's "circle of lilacs," so much fun to play in when she was a child.
Britt-Arnhild is a very busy lady -- she also maintains several other blogs, including The Blue Cafe and House in the Woods.
In Australia, July is the middle of winter, Yesterday Today and Tomorrow in My Garden reminds us. Still, in January I'd love to have daffodils blooming, be able to pick even odd fruit from a tree, and plant cannas. Titania gardens in a subtropical climate in the Currumbin Valley, the Aussie Gold Coast, where she maintains ornamental, vegetable, and wild gardens, as well as an orchard.
Stockholm has a climate more like mine in Boston. That's where Pia writes The World According to Pia. Her subject matter often veers from plants to other topics, but usually starts with a plant photo and goes from there. It reminds us that, say, the color of a favorite tulip might be just what we need in a new handbag, too.
Sometimes I wish that the plants in the photos were identified. Wouldn't I love to grow this flower that she has, or that? But in a way it's a refreshing change from garden blogs so filled with Latin that you think you've visited someone who speaks another language.
India Garden is subtitled the "online diary of an avid gardener in India." It's maintained by a female doctor with a 3-year-old daughter. They live in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh. It's fun to read about mangoes ripening in their native habitat.
Since any mangoes I eat are likely to come from Whole Foods, I didn't realize what happens when they're picked: "The Mango which comes off the tree requires a storage period of 3-4 days in slightly warm and humid surroundings; it is only after that that it develops the sweet flavor and an appealing yellow color – depending on the cultivar," she writes.
As an alternative to the three to four-day ripening period, some mangoes sold commercially are artifically ripened with acetylene gas, she notes, so growing your own gives you the advantage of knowing that no chemicals were used on them.
And that's exactly why many of gardeners in other parts of the the globe grow their own fruits and vegetables. Small world.
