Gardening is booming, and for many, caring for plants is not just a hobby, but a passion. To help you find welcome gifts for the green thumbs in your life, I’ve put together a list of many locally sourced product ideas.
For food lovers
Germinating seeds indoors is a fun and tasty way to add a nutritious touch to salads, sandwiches, stir fries, and more. You’ll find all the equipment and seeds you need to grow sprouts, as well as micro-greens, at stores like Halifax Seed.
That said, the equipment is pretty basic. For the sprouts, I use a sprout jar with a lid (about $ 4.99), although you can also buy a liter sprout glass jar that has a wide mouth to make it easier to harvest the sprouts (about $ 4.99). 9.99). Complete your gift with a packet of sprouted seeds. My favorites are broccoli, arugula, and alfalfa, but there are many different types to try.
For the reader
Books are always at the top of my wish list and in 2021 several dozen new gardening titles hit bookstores. The Nature of Oaks by Douglas W. Tallamy was one of the most important novelties. Tallamy is a professor of wildlife entomology and ecology and dives deep into the fascinating and complex web of wildlife sustained in and on oak trees. You will never see our native red oak the same way again.
Other highlights include Grow Hope: A Simple Guide to Growing Your Own Home Garden by Elizabeth Peirce of Halifax, which is the perfect book for anyone interested in growing vegetables. Another excellent book is Growing Figs in Cold Climates: 150 of your questions answered by Toronto horticulturist and fig lover Steven Biggs (FoodGardenLife.com).
I also enjoyed Tropical Plants and How to Love Them by Marianne Willburn. This may not sound like the ideal book for Atlantic Canadians, but this book is about growing the tropics when you don’t live in the tropics. Willburn writes about a summer romance with the tropics that ends with the first frost, but also about how to enjoy a long-term commitment to them by turning them into houseplants.
Lastly, I’ve also written four books focused on food gardening, including my latest, Growing Under Cover, which details the many ways I use simple garden covers for year-round harvesting in my Halifax garden.
For the indoor plant enthusiast
The houseplant enthusiast at home is my teenage daughter, but I admit that my own collection of houseplants has grown dramatically in recent years. I added an LED grow light under my kitchen counter for herbs and succulents, but I also have several light stands built into our home décor to provide additional light for my ‘babies’.
Grow lights make a great gift for houseplant lovers and there are many types, sizes, and styles to choose from. Another welcome gift is a new flowerpot. Stores like Halifax Seed, My Mother’s Bloomers, and Biscuit General Store, as well as Dots and Loops (in Lunenburg) have plenty of fancy flower pots, as well as fun and original supplies for houseplants.
Seeds
The seeds have been a hot item for the past few years and can be used to fill stockings or premium gifts. Be sure to customize your seed options according to the recipient. Do you love growing your own veggies or do you prefer to plant a rainbow of cut flowers for bouquets?
Halifax Seed just added more than 65 ‘New for 2022’ varieties to its line of high-harvest organic seeds. The selection includes vegetables, flowers and herbs such as Dragon Langeire bean, Bangle Blend pepper and Planéte Rouge du Jura poppy.
Other ideas for gardeners include tools like a pair of high-quality Felco # 2 hand pruners (Halifax Seed) or a garden knife (Lee Valley Tools). Or supplies like an automatic watering seed starter (Lee Valley Tools) or a 50-pack of wood plant markers (Lee Valley Tools).
Niki Jabbour is the best-selling author of four gardening books and a two-time winner of the prestigious American Horticultural Society Book Award. His latest book, Growing Under Cover, is out now. Find it at SavvyGardening.com