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…
I briefly considered writing a “How to Get Started with Chickens” post, but I don’t like writing about something until I’ve actually done it. Once my chickens arrive this May I’ll talk about my personal experiences with it — until then I thought I’d write about some chicken products I’ve encountered while begging for advice from people who have personal…
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…
It’s another Real Things Thursday! As my goal with these installments is to think about the way we consume rather than to encourage consumerism, I decided that today I’d focus on getting things for free. We all love freebies, but it is also a great way to minimize our impact on the environment! Recycling has a long way to go…
I lead a homeschool hiking group that meets in nearby state parks and natural areas at least once a month. We’re working on nature journals this year and I decided to turn the student tutorial I was writing for next Friday’s hike into a blog post. When beginning a nature journal, you don’t need much. Prior to setting out, we…
I’m not a big fan of shopping or owning huge quantities of stuff. When I do put on my modern hunter/gatherer hat, I think of my purchase as a vote. Do I spend my voting dollar on artisan-made or an overseas sweatshop? Am I going to vote for something that will last generations or for built-in-obsolesce? Will I purchase biodegradable…
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…
Let’s talk about snow. You’d think the American city famous for distributing the poinsettia wouldn’t have to wait 47 years for a white Christmas! But we did, and since I grew up here it was my very first one. My Vermont-native boyfriend finds it laughable that southerners get so excited about white stuff on the 25th (especially since it was…
I live in Greenville, SC — as did Joel Roberts Poinsett (1779 – 1851) for parts of his life. His Greenville plantations near White Horse Road were equipped with hothouses for botanical study. Sometime between 1825 – 1830, these hothouses were the recipient of Euphorbia pulcherrima specimens he collected in the Taxco de Alarcón region while serving as American Minister…
Well, not really. Even if I could find any flowers for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, I think the crisp fragrance of winter would have taken precedence. Sometimes the only “How To” needed is how to relax and take it all in. Here’s what I found “blooming” out in the garden this morning.
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…
I’ve just updated to a new blogroll that tells me how recently you’ve posted on your blog. If you’d like to share reciprocal blogroll links with me, just let me know in the comments! I’d also like to thank Stuart Robinson for creating Blotanical — it helped me find a lot of my favorite blogs. I’ve seen plenty of directories…
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…
Lemon grass (Cymbopogon citratus) deserves a more prominent place in our herb gardens, kitchens, and even the ornamental landscape. I think it is one of the prettiest plants in the garden! Lemon grass looks just as nice in the flower border as it does in the kitchen garden. You can put a grouping of it in your rose beds or…
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…