Brussels Sprouts and Aphids
How to keep aphids off your brussels sprouts
Inspire! Excite! Educate!
Let’s Go to Seed School – Part 3
In this, our last installment about Seed School we explore the economic and political makeup of seeds in our world. For me, this is the real reason we need to save seed and preserve species. On our final day, we were asked to brainstorm about how to solve problems on a local level, as well as a global one. As gardeners we know that local action is sometimes the only thing that makes a difference. Community gardens, for example, have…
Emerson Avenue Community Garden
I am Planting a Garden, by Heidi Rose
I ran across this poem a friend wrote several years ago. I read it through again and felt it went right to the heart of what every gardener must be feeling in anticipation of spring. The excitement of new journeys, the fear of failure (yet again), and the burning desire to get out there in the garden right now; all of these feelings are swirling about. This poem reminds us that patience, trial and error, and suspense are all part of…
Recipes for Winter Harvests
How to make good use out of your Winter harvest
Cat Grass for a Happy Mittens
Cats love chewing on grass. And corn seedlings, apparently (ugh!). And young cover crops (double ugh.) In order to keep Mittens out of the raised beds, we've planted a flat of cat grass just for her. She's enthralled. The convergence of two things brought this on: free Cat Treats, Mixed Gourmet Greens grass seeds arriving from Renee's Garden Seeds (thanks, Renee's Media Kit 2014), and some freshly germinated Sonora White Wheat from our germination test at Seed School. Renee's Cat…
Step 2: Pour seeds into a screen that allows the seeds to fall through, but keeps the chaff.
Let’s Go to Seed School – Part 2
We're back with more about our week in Seed School. (In case you missed the first post, click here.) Later in the week, we delved more into the wonders of seeds with dissection, genetics and seed cleaning. So...let's go to seed school again. Plants are marvelous things, all very different. We were given the charge to look closely at the male and female parts of flowers in order to understand the process of pollination. Once again, when the hand-outs landed…
Tips from Seed School
Save locally adapted seeds for better results
Silver Edged pumpkin seeds
Let’s Go to Seed School – Part 1
I had the pleasure of participating in a 6-day workshop all about seeds, presented by the folks at Native Seeds/Search. More than 30 gardenerds gathered to learn as much as we could, and we were not disappointed. We covered everything from plant genetics (for breeding and plant purity) and plant sex (plant parts), to saving seeds (stomping and screens included) and starting seed libraries. What a ride! So here's a quick review of Part 1 - let's go to seed…
Make meals from the garden with a little planning ahead.
Shopping from your Garden
Today we are joined by Jeriann Watkins, our guest blogger. Jeriann is a writer and self-proclaimed chronic procrastinator who is trying to make her life more intentional by focusing on vegetable gardening, making her own cleaning products, and other frugal living tactics. She's come to Gardenerd to share her strategy for eating and shopping from the garden. Take it away Jeriann! Shopping from Your Garden This year I’ve decided to focus on living frugally and paying off my student loan…