Emily The Accidental Hybrid: Discovering New Tomatoes
From NPR's All Things Considered:
Julie Zickefoose is a writer and watercolor painter who lives on an 80-acre wildlife sanctuary in the Appalachian foothills of Ohio. Her latest book is Letters from Eden, a collection of illuminated essays that move through the seasons.
Every time I plod out to the garden, jaw set, to pull up the nasty old green bean plants that have collapsed on the straw, their yellowed leaves riddled by bean beetles, they surprise me. They’ve set the table with new white blossoms, and they’ve made dinner for me again. And so I stay their execution and decide not to replant — why start over with a puppy when the old dog still has spring in her step?
I pick the prickly yellow beetle larvae off the leaves and toss them over the fence; I keep the plants picked clean, weeded and mulched. They look terrible, but they keep us in beans, and that’s all that matters. It’s practically free, gardening, if you don’t count the hours spent weeding and the bales of straw bought to keep the bindweed down. You plant the seed and nurture it for a while and then stand back and let the burgeoning vegetation do the rest. Come late summer, you take a big plastic tote out each time you visit, there’s that much food flooding back into your kitchen.
For the first time ever, I’ve kept the tomatoes tied up in their cages, and I can move among them without the pop and spurt of fruit under my bare feet. After running and before my morning shower, I pick, dripping with sweat, clammy tomato branches anointing my arms and back. My clothes and skin are sharp with the pungent essence of tomato. I listen to the swelling sizzle of cicadas, dodging their bomber flights through the garden; hear the steady hum of crickets and katydids in the meadow, the sputtering zzzz of bumblebees working the blazing zinnias. I kneel to extract a huge tomato — the size, shape and purplish color of a human kidney — from a jumble of fragrant stalks in its cage, working it up through the thick leaves. I heft it in my hand, marveling, then pluck a basil leaf and take a bite out of its smooth purple side.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129302564
13 days ago -
PartlySunny I pretty much kill anything that's green, inside or outside our house. My most recent victim is a pot of mini-roses that currently look like the flower from the final scene of Beauty and the Beast. Fortunately my husband can grow just about anything, so we won't starve this summer. And the kids love helping.
about 1 month ago -
Emily A Michigan Teen Farms Her Backyard
By CHRISTINE MUHLKE
Lawn mowing and baby-sitting are standard summer jobs for the enterprising teenager. Alexandra Reau, who is 14, combines a little bit of each: last year, she asked her dad to dig up a half acre of their lawn in rural Petersburg, Mich., so she could farm. Now in its second season, her Garden to Go C.S.A. (community-supported agriculture) grows for 14 members, who pay $100 to $175 for two months of just-picked vegetables and herbs. While her peers are hanging out at Molly’s Mystic Freeze and working out the moves to that Miley Cyrus video, she’s flicking potato-beetle larvae off of leaves in her V-neck T-shirt and denim capris, a barrette keeping her hair out of her demurely made-up eyes. Who says the face of American farming is a 57-year-old man with a John Deere cap?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/magazine/18food-t.html?src=me&ref=general
about 1 month ago -
Cooper Parent Hacks: Design your dream garden online
http://www.parenthacks.com/2010/06/garden-design-online.html
Fabulous tips and tricks from Asha!
3 months ago -
inkscrblr I have started gardening with my children again this year and it is always fun. We enjoy digging in the dirt and making messes and just seeing what turns up and what grows or doesn't grow. There is a strange crop of sunflowers in the middle of the garden Ainsley and I started and we didn't plant them there. I always find that a bit funny and a bit magical. This year we transferred beans from the pots that were indoors to the garden (My sixer had been doing Jack and the Beanstock at school and they grew beanstocks.) We are trying zucchini for the first time ever to see what happens and I just transplanted a birdhouse gourd we found at the dollar store as one of those tiny kid science experiments they sometimes sell. I can't wait to see what that produces. We also have the usual carrots and tomatoes (maybe this will be the year they turn red!?!). Then there are cucumbers too. I walked out the back door this morning and began watering and a baby rabbit sprang out of my hosta and hopped back behind the shed. I love that and my kids last night spied a mole scurrying across the yard. I could live in our backyard some days. In the spring and summer it is magic.
3 months ago -
Deborah grow little growing things
My most recent post about skills I wished I had....and who I wished was around to help me with these skills.
http://indigojonesstudio.blogspot.com/2010/06/grow-little-growing-things.html
3 months ago -
gottalovemom My first strawberries..
(And they're sweet!)
3 months ago -
gottalovemom My little vegetable garden is growing....
3 months ago -
Holland http://lifesimplifiedforyou.com/2010/05/15/my-secret-garden/
The Secret Garden is one of my favorite plays & books, and while I wish I had my own secret garden, I don't. What I do have are some gardening secrets and suggestions that get me through the season and make me look better than I really am.
EasyBloom.com is one of my favorite sites for all things garden. They have great "Plant Doctor Advice" but their shining star is the EasyBloom Plant Sensor Plus. As their site states, "Put the EasyBloom Plant Sensor Plus anywhere, inside or outside, where you want to grow a plant or have a plant you want advice on. The Plant Sensor will measure sunlight, temperature, water drainage and fertilizer (with subscription). Plug the EasyBloom Plant Sensor into the USB port of your PC or Mac and from our 6,000+ plant library, they'll recommend what plants are best for your spot and how to care for them." It's amazing! I've got flowers finally growing in areas that I thought were unsalvageable, and the best part is that you can use it again and again indoors or outdoors.
Now Amber's Garden (ambersgarden.com) is supposedly geared towards helping kids in the garden, but if it makes my life easier, I'll act like a child ... no problem. Amber's Garden sells garden mats with seeds already perfectly spaced and ready to plant. Simply lay the mat, cover with soil, water and watch them grow. If you've been a hesitant gardener...
Read the rest of this article by clicking the link above.
3 months ago -
Emily Growing Vegetables Upside Down
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/garden/20tomato.html?src=me&ref=general
By KATE MURPHY
IF pests and blight are wrecking your plants, it might be time to turn your garden on its head.
Growing crops that dangle upside down from homemade or commercially available planters is growing more popular, and its adherents swear they’ll never come back down to earth.
“I’m totally converted,” said Mark McAlpine, a body piercer in Guelph, Ontario, who began growing tomatoes upside down two years ago because cutworms were ravaging the ones he planted in the ground. He made six planters out of five-gallon plastic buckets, some bought at the Home Depot and some salvaged from the trash of a local winemaker. He cut a two-inch hole in the bottom of each bucket and threaded a tomato seedling down through the opening, packing strips of newspaper around the root ball to keep it in place and to prevent dirt from falling out.
He then filled the buckets with soil mixed with compost and hung them on sturdy steel hooks bolted to the railing of his backyard deck. “Last summer was really hot so it wasn’t the best crop, but I still was able to jar enough whole tomatoes, half tomatoes, salsa and tomato sauce to last me through the winter,” said Mr. McAlpine, who plans an additional six upside-down planters this year. (keep reading by clicking above...)
3 months ago -
gottalovemom All it took was a little pepper!
Seeing that my little seedling is sprouting a few fruits here and there got me so excited!
I know it takes time....like anything else!
Click here to read the entire blog post : http://gottalovemom.blogspot.com/2010/05/it-takes-time.html
4 months ago -
Emily Top 10 gardening mistakes
http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/homestyle/05/15/rs.top10.gardening.mistakes/index.html?hpt=C2
(RealSimple.com) -- Digging up flowers instead of weeds. Drowning the tulips. Readers reveal their growing woes and garden design pros plot out the solutions.
Mistake 1: Planting a garden in the wrong spot
"Last year we built raised garden beds. They looked beautiful -- with fresh mulch all around them and even a new spot watering system. But the mulch around the beds is always soggy -- even in hot, dry Colorado."
--- Stacie Perrault Staub, Arvada, Colorado
Garden fix -- Good news: You don't have to tear out the beds entirely, says Ivette Soler, a Los Angeles-based garden designer and writer of "The Germinatrix" blog.
Empty the raised beds (dig out the plants and lay them on a tarp while you work) and spread a four-inch layer of gravel evenly over the underside of the planters to improve the drainage. Then refill the planters with fresh fluffy organic compost.
Mistake 2: Accidentally pulling up flowers instead of weeds
"I planted some lovely perennials one summer. The following spring all the flowers sprouted along with some weeds. I pulled the weeds and lovingly tended to the flowers. I even staked a tall lanky plant that I was certain was going to produce a beautiful bloom. Then, one day my neighbor asked me why I had staked a weed. Turns out, I had pulled out the flowers and left the weeds. Oops."
--- Lisa Benter Rich, Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada
Click link to read on ...
4 months ago -
Emily Invasion of the Superweeds (Yikes!)
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/invasion-of-the-superweeds/?ref=style
American farmers’ broad use of the weedkiller glyphosphate — particularly Roundup, which was originally made by Monsanto — has led to the rapid growth in recent years of herbicide-resistant weeds. To fight them, farmers are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides, pull weeds by hand and return to more labor-intensive methods like regular plowing.
What should farmers do about these superweeds? What does the problem mean for agriculture in the U.S.? Will it temper American agriculture’s enthusiasm for genetically modified crops that are engineered to survive spraying with Roundup? (click on the link above to read the rest, and great answers from six experts.)
4 months ago -
ChristineC My husband will tell you that I have the opposite of a green thumb. Yet, I continue to try.
This year I promised my boys we would have a small garden. We did our planting about 2 weeks ago. I am VERY happy and excited to report that we actually have some things growing. We planted corn, carrots, cantaloupe, tomatoes, and a few other things. I'm still not sure how it will turn out, but as for now I'm hopeful.
4 months ago -
gottalovemom Procrastinating the Topsy-Turvy Way!
One weekend, a dear friend introduced me to “topsy-turvy” gardening. My mom loves to garden and she has the patience and the passion. I don’t have a big backyard and we mostly have pavers, trees and shrubs. There really isn’t a whole lot of ground where I can plant vegetables and herbs.
But to my surprise, I was intrigued with the prospect of harvesting my own tomatoes, strawberries, herbs, eggplant, zucchini, squash and a little treat for humming birds!
I have a topsy-turvy life, it seems. I have plenty of projects that have not seen its completion. So surely I don’t have shortage of tasks I need to complete, but I’m having a major writer’s block that I need a little diversion. The other project that I have to work on in the next few weeks is emotionally exhausting so tackling a “gardening challenge” can be fun and uplifting? Or am I setting up myself to another source of frustration?
Of all my four children, my youngest is probably the one that got my mother’s “gardening chromosome”. He gets excited planting annuals, perennials, and vegetables.
So today I drove to Home Depot and “splurged” …
Hopefully, in the process of putting together my “topsy-turvy” garden, I can find that word that will jumpstart my other project.
Have a great week everyone and keep smiling
4 months ago -
Brandie Farmers Cope With Roundup-Resistant Weeds
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/business/energy-environment/04weed.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
DYERSBURG, Tenn. — For 15 years, Eddie Anderson, a farmer, has been a strict adherent of no-till agriculture, an environmentally friendly technique that all but eliminates plowing to curb erosion and the harmful runoff of fertilizers and pesticides.
But not this year.
On a recent afternoon here, Mr. Anderson watched as tractors crisscrossed a rolling field — plowing and mixing herbicides into the soil to kill weeds where soybeans will soon be planted.
Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds.
To fight them, Mr. Anderson and farmers throughout the East, Midwest and South are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides, pull weeds by hand and return to more labor-intensive methods like regular plowing.
Click the link above to continue reading
4 months ago -
Brandie Organic Lawn Care For the Cheap and Lazy
http://www.richsoil.com/lawn-care.jsp
So, it's not gardening per se, but I figured it works here! I had to do some major lawn research after the neighbor's kids outed how her parents were feeling about our lawn - which if I'm being very truthful is really dandelions and clovers with a bit of grass mixed in. But, seriously I'm not dumping chemicals on my lawn - a green lawn is just not that important to me. But we should probably do something a little more than what we are doing. So I read this and I really liked what he had to say. And also, it just made sense. So i thought I would share it. =)
4 months ago -
Deborah I LOVE LOVE LOVE cilantro. The way it looks, smells, tastes, tears. Everything. I love it in Thai, Mexican and Indian food. Love it, I tell you. But, some people don't. Here's the reason. http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/food/the-science-behind-cilantro-hatred-1285539/
5 months ago -
Becki All this sunny weather is making me think about starting an herb garden! I have usually done my herb gardening in pots, but if I can figure out how to outwit Chuckie, our resident groundhog, I'd really like to expand it this year. Here is some good info I found on planning an herb garden, whether in a pot or a plot: http://culinaryherbguide.com/herbgardens.htm
5 months ago -
Deborah My husband just performed CPR on my tomato plant. It was touch and go there for awhile. ;) Nice to meet you:)
about 1 month ago
PartlySunny Now that, I'd like to see. Nice to meet you, too:).
about 1 month ago