Carol’s Pope Garden Journal: GardenWise Magazine Fall Issue

As we talk this time of year about extending the season, what we are really wanting is to prolong the sunshine.

As we talk this time of year about extending the season, what we are really wanting is to prolong the sunshine. At our house, nothing says summer more vividly than sweet basil fresh from the garden. Pizza margherita, homemade pesto sauce, and fresh tomato and mozzarella salads topped with basil – these Mediterranean tastes are what we are yearning for by the end of each long and dreary winter.
This year we challenged ourselves to see just how long we can keep gathering this fresh herb from our kitchen garden. In early spring, our family built a heated “basil bed” that now resides permanently inside our small greenhouse. Warmed by both a below-ground heating cable and overhead growing lamps through the cool seasons and then unplugged over the summer, it has our basil growing like a weed.

The question we’ll be trying to answer this fall and winter is just how far into the year we can keep it coming. Pop in for an occasional visit to my blog at www.gardenwiseonline.ca/gw/carol-pope-blog and I will keep you posted. While you’re there, check out my son’s tried-and-true recipe for his amazing pizza margharita, and click through our step-by-step guide to making your very own “basil bed.”  And don’t forget to enter our contests for dahlias, a set of gardening books from Lone Pine and much more!

Meanwhile, with this fall issue, we hope you enjoy the good work of our art department: Under the leadership of art director Susan Minton Green, this 
talented team has given GardenWise a fresh new look.