Our city’s Urban Farm Tour is over for this year and by all accounts was a great success — GOFO sold out of tickets early in the day and had to scramble to print even more of them! I hope everyone who toured came away feeling inspired, I was so impressed by all the enthusiastic visitors we met at our…
Urban Farm Tours (a collection of sites featuring intensive city gardening) are becoming more common these days. You may have a great one near you (if so, post the link in the comments!) Those of you in the upstate South Carolina area can check out the brand new Urban Farm Tour hosted by GOFO (Greenville Organic Foods Organization). If you’ve…
In all likelihood there are wonderful, inexpensive plant sales happening near you this spring. Good places to check are your Native Plant Society, Master Gardeners Association, local botanical garden, farmers market, nurseries, and local farms. If you live in the Greenville, SC area, here are some of the great places you can get plants this season (apologies that the Upstate…
I’m not sure how the unspoken morel hunter’s etiquette spreads, but seasoned foragers can spot a violation of the “code” faster than an elusive morel mushroom. With luck, a morel newbie has already started to absorb the “rules” by the time they’ve learned how to find morels and what they look like. If not, they’re bound to stumble into a…
So… did anyone see my giant spring todo list? I’m not going to be writing as often for a bit, but when I do it will include lots of garden transformation photos (and probably some mushrooms since morel season is coming up). Many thanks to those of you who were on top of your entries for How to Find Great…
Here is issue #3 of How to Find Great Plants (apologies for the one-day delay, my weekend was spent moving boxes and furniture). I finally managed to choose 8 of the 36 entries to feature this month… so difficult! Be sure to read them all or you’ll miss some delightful plants! FOOD: Little Green Bees: Pumpkin on a Stick Don’t…
So I just posted about trading for seeds over at GardenWeb. Here’s the link if you’d like to trade! If you aren’t familiar with GardenWeb there is a tutorial on exchanging seeds and one on using the forums. I’ll also be happy to answer questions about it. Since I don’t have a lot of seeds to exchange this year, I’ve…
So… half of us are buried in snow but I know you have wonderful food and ornamental plant posts you wrote last season! Why not submit one to this month’s issue of How to Find Great Plants to help fuel our garden fever? The deadline for this issue is midnight eastern time tomorrow (January 28, 2011). It’s easy to participate,…
I have a request! I’d be so delighted if you’d help me locate any seed strain of the OSU P20 blue tomato. (Scroll to the bottom for photos & more details). Next, the deadline to submit a post about a food or ornamental plant that you’d recommend for How to Find Great Plants is this Friday, January 28th. I’ve noticed…
Fer is hosting a garden goals blog carnival at My Little Garden in Japan and oh my gosh, do I ever have a lot to do this year! I’ve included info about the Organic Growers School in March since it always heralds my spring planning. For the last three seasons I’ve jumped from garden to garden, so I haven’t been…
Aka “How to Write a Blog Post Title that You Can’t Say 10 Times Fast”. Am I ever lonely for some real homegrown produce… the glossy-photo winter catalogs just aren’t helping! Veggies aren’t all that relevant to the rest of this post. However, garden photos help me avert a rampant snow-induced garden fever with symptoms like an emptied bank account…
Here it is! For issue #2 of How to Find Great Plants I decided to highlight four each in the food and ornamental categories. It was such a hard choice to choose only eight of this month’s 32 submissions! Don’t miss out on the complete list of entries located at the end of the post, they were all a pleasure…
Organic gardening often produces healthier, more easily grown vegetables and fruits than the same crops grown with “conventional” methods. There are, however, a few crops that have a pouty reputation for organic growers. The cucurbit family claims most of these weak-kneed plants. I count on summer squash and cucumbers to be riddled with squash vine borer, cucumber worms, and fungal…
Even though it’s getting late in the edible mushroom season, we found a nice little haul of sweet tooth hedgehog mushrooms after the rain last weekend: Daytime temperatures were reaching the upper 40’s to 50 F when we found them under oaks in a South Carolina forest. The entire slope seemed to be covered with them but we only picked…
We took my daughter to the Riverbanks Zoo & Botanical Garden in Columbia, SC last week. By that, I mean we spent 90% of our time at the zoo before running around the Botanical Garden for the last 10% like our pants were on fire. This is what happens to a gardener when the people with her are more interested…
Now that my feet are wet from hosting How to Find Great Plants, Issue #1, I have a better idea of what I’d like this collection to look like. I want to include everyone’s qualifying submissions and also highlight the best ones with a photo link and review. I’ll be selecting an equal number of “Food” vs. “Ornamental” posts from…
The best plants I’ve ever grown were recommended to me by other gardeners, and this blog carnival seeks to collect posts about exemplary food and ornamental plants. *Edit: I’m still experimenting with the best format for this carnival. Expect improvements in future issues. CLICK ON THE PHOTOS to visit the blog article on each plant! Photo Caption: FOOD, Onion ‘Rouge…
It’s officially “Armchair Gardening Season.” In its honor, I’ve updated my Food Catalog Directory for the 2010 – 2011 growing season. I hope you can find what you need! If you really want to get the most out of your perfect spring daydreaming, I also recommend these articles from the old Kitchen Gardener magazines. Don’t you just love late fall…
Conundrum: I don’t want a giant agri-business to be able to sell my family the spinach they grew downstream from factory-farmed cattle (mmm, E. coli!) but I also don’t want much (or any) regulations placed on small-scale farms, CSAs, farmer’s markets, online farmer’s markets, small dairies, or backyard growers. Citizens are capable of inspecting their own local food — because…
We may have overdone it this year with the hot peppers. We don’t feel the least bit repentant, though. Spicing up a meal is quick when using small peppers, and they look great in vinegar-based hot sauces or simply as fiery pickles. I try to find peppers that produce a large spectrum of beautifully colored fruits on a single plant….