New Year’s Resolution Garden

The holiday season is about ready to wrap up with the new year just a couple of days away. Last New Year’s we posted the Resolution Garden. Did you take part? Were you able to follow through? Well if not, it’s a whole other year and time for a new resolution to start planning that spring garden.  If you followed through on this past year’s resolution, then it is time to look at your garden journal and see what tweeks you can make to bring in an even greater bounty of fresh produce.

For those of you whom follow through on last year’s resolution garden, let us know what you did to bring in a successful garden.

Is the 2010 Home Garden Vegetable Seed Shortage Real or Myth?

2009 was one of the worst growing seasons in the U.S. and Europe in nearly 50 years. Soggy and cooler weather were devasting to home gardeners. This resulted in less seed being produced for this year’s gardening season. That’s a fact. However, will we see a true shortage in home garden vegetable seeds this year?

“Food Technology” in America

I recently read an article in O, The Oprah Magazine, titled “Banned in Europe, Okay Here?” written by Sari Harrar. Sari reviews some of the food technology Americans have accepted, while Europeans have said no to it. The article was super informative and laid out the data really well, so I thought I would provide a summary of the article for you.

Starting Vegetable Seeds Indoors

Time to start planning for your garden? You can get a head start on your garden by starting your seeds indoors, especially if you have a short growing season. There are also other benefits to getting your plants growing indoors. Starting seeds inside improves the germination rate and a garden established from transplants tend to mature much earlier than direct-seeded ones. Yes, vegetable starts are available at your local nursery, however, you are going to be limited to just a few varieties. When starting from seed, you will have hundreds more choices to choose from. Growing from seed also allows you to have full control over whether a plant was grown in a truly organic manner. For someone that’s never started their garden indoors, here’s a step by step guideline and some common pitfalls to avoid.

Find A Green Restaurant

These days with the economy taking its toll on household budgets, a lot of people are reducing how much they dine out. However, the next time you take the family out to eat, try going to “green restaurant”.

Healthy Eating – Simplified

In a previous post, “Another reminder of why you should grow and eat your own food in the U.S.”, a reader commented that although it’s great to know on a broad level what to avoid eating, it would be great to have a simple guide of specific foods to eat (or not to eat). In response, here’s my attempt to simplify what we should and shouldn’t eat and what foods we can grow for ourselves.

Our Homes’ Garbage Problem

In the context of our garbage problem, what defines “home”? Some would think it’s the structure we live in. Others picture the city or even state they reside. Is it our country? Nope. Think bigger. When we speak of the garbage problem we are facing, our home is defined as Earth.

All over the world, garbage is piling up not just in landfills, but along city streets and in our waterways and oceans. How many of us have actually been to one of these overflowing landfills? What about our children? I have personally experienced a landfill, but my children have not and although we recycle, compost and try to reduce our waste, I’m not sure that they really and truly understand why. Now, I say “experienced a landfill” because when you visit one of these places, you just don’t look at it, you are in awe of it. Most people literally experience some form of emotion when they truly realize the amount of waste being produced in such a small area of our planet and then wonder just how can we continue, as a civilization, to keep living the same way we always have? Where will it all go?

Free Recycling Garbage Cans

I stumbled upon a wonderful service today and just had to share it with everyone. It’s called The Free Green Can. The free green can is new dual purpose recycle/trash bin and is, you guessed it, FREE to anyone who is looking to start or complement a public recycling program.

Another reminder of why you should grow and eat your own food in the U.S.

A new study just released found that Hispanics living in Florida have a 40 percent higher chance of getting cancer than their counterparts that lived in their native countries. The conclusion of this study suggests that the lifestyle and environmental changes (foods they eat being one of them) are probably the culprit. 

Of course the recommendation is to live a healthy lifestyle and avoid smoking, drinking, and bad diets. With the abundant use of processed foods in the U.S. that contain many additives cancer, once rare,  now affects up to a third of the country’s population. 

City Farming – Small Garden Spaces

Drive a few miles out of the city and you’ll see gardens all around, in almost every yard. Although the “grow your own food” movement is exploding, I can drive down just about any urban street in my city and see so much unused, wasted space in our urban areas that could be repurposed for growing food. Just because you do not live in the country doesn’t mean you can’t have a kitchen garden. You would be surprised to see how much can be grown in a very small area. Back, front and side yards could be better used. Patios, porches and balconies can be used for container gardening. Even fence and deck rail planters along with window boxes could be utilized instead of sitting empty.

Preserving Your Strawberries – Freezing

There is nothing like the flavor of a fresh picked strawberry from your garden or local farmer when it’s at peak ripeness. However, strawberry season is coming to a close for most of the U.S. Even though May is National Strawberry Month, in some areas of the country, like here in the Pacific Northwest, the height of strawberry picking season does not begin until the first or second week of June. Regardless of when your particular season is, that’s the time when prices are low, flavor is phenomenal and you’ll want to stock up and preserve them for use all year. Of course, there are several ways to preserve your strawberries such as canning/jarring, dehydrating and freezing. Today, I’d like to go over the best ways to freeze those red beauties. Strawberries only last about 4 or 5 days in the refrigerator, so if you want to keep eating your tasty garden strawberries well into the fall and winter, make sure you think ahead and freeze them.

Why isn’t my garden growing well?

I’ve heard this question asked by several people as of late. They all have variances in their garden setup – some are planting straight in ground, some in raised beds – some have tons of sunlight, while others have a limited amount – some started with seed while others bought starts. But one thing I’m hearing quite commonly is, “I bought some great veggie soil mix and had it trucked in. So I know that’s not the problem.” Wrong. This could very well be the problem.

Rainwater Harvesting – Are we facing increasing future water shortages?

The short answer… If human daily living habits around the world don’t change for the better, absolutely.

Now for the longer one… When most of us think of collecting rainwater, we might think of weathered oak barrels with rusty metal bands sitting at the corner of a an old barn – right next to the hitchin’ post. While it’s true that the practice of conserving rainwater dates back to forever ago, it’s not a practice we’ve seen much of in the past few decades in the U.S. Over time, our country’s population has come to take clean water for granted. However, this is proving to be a dangerous stance.

How to choose a composter

Many people have asked us how they decide what type of composter they should get.  The answer is: it depends.  Not much help there right?  Well, let me see if I can lay it out in an easy to understand format.

Natural Slug Control

This year, I decided to go a step further in pursuit of  aligning with the “Food, Not Lawns” paradigm.  So I decided to rip out my azaleas, periwinkle and lily bulbs from my raised garden bed in the front yard and replaced everything with salad edibles like lettuces, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower and kale. It was a bit painful since it was a beautiful display most of the year and one that I’d been cultivating for four years now. But I have so little space to grow food since I don’t get a whole lot of sun in my tiny backyard, so I took the plunge.