Tag: plants

Fertilizer

Just so I’m not operating under false pretenses, let’s get one thing straight: I don’t garden. I don’t seed, I don’t weed, I don’t plant, I don’t compost, and I don’t spread manure (this column excepted). My one connection with the plant world is mowing the grass, and I wouldn’t do that if I had …

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Coffee

Ask the average coffee drinker where coffee comes from and he’ll probably say “South America.”  Coffee actually originated in Ethiopia, where the coffee plant grows naturally.  Coffee has been drunk in Arabian countries for centuries, but was only introduced to Europe in the mid1600s.  Plantations established in European colonies in Indonesia, the West Indies and …

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Tea

  I think my first experience with culture shock came as a small boy when, shortly after we moved here from Texas, a woman we were visiting for supper asked me what I wanted to drink and I said, “Tea.” To my horror, she brought me steaming-hot tea in a small china cup, a beverage …

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Biological control of leafy spurge

In 1987, when I was news editor of the Weyburn Review, I journeyed to a small lake near Maxim to photograph beetles infesting the pretty yellow-flowered plants growing on its steep banks (hey, the news business isn’t all politicians and other disasters!). Today, I’m told (though I haven’t had the opportunity to go see for myself), …

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Space tomatoes

In 1984 NASA put into orbit a schoolbus-sized vehicle called the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF), which exposed various materials to space for six years. NASA should have asked Heinz to sponsor it, because not only were there 57 kinds of materials on board, one of those materials was 12.5 million tomato seeds. Those seeds …

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How Does Your Garden Grow?

Part of the Saskatchewan Science Centre’s mandate is to demonstrate that it is possible to excel in the world of science “even” in Saskatchewan. The quotation marks are intentional: it’s the attitude embodied in the use of that word we would like to dispel. The fact is, top-notch, world-class science and Saskatchewan are not mutually …

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