Design: Productive Patio Garden
We specialize in small-space biointensive gardening here at Gardenerd, so we get a lot of calls to install patio gardens from eager folks with limited space and sunlight. Our latest patio garden project gave the homeowner an herb garden, a space for veggies, and a few new fruit and berry crops in a small space. The homeowner has 2 children who were interested in eating home-grown veggies. They also like to play basketball and jump on a trampoline, so most…
Ask Gardenerd: Saving Tomato Seeds and Blight
A question came in to Ask Gardenerd from Jeff Bremer this week: "This is a two-part question: 1. I save seeds from each year's tomato crop to plant the following year. I can never get all the "meat" of the tomato off the seeds. How do you clean these seeds? 2. Can early blight be transmitted through tomato seeds? Thanks, Jeff " Great questions, Jeff. Let's start with saving tomato seeds. Saving Tomato Seeds Saving tomato seeds is relatively easy,…
Wordless Wednesday: Keep Going!
Summer winds down and our thoughts turn to fall gardening, or for some, the end of the season. Sometimes it's hard to move forward when all we want to do is take a nap or escape to some far-off place. But the cycle continues; there is no rest for the gardener. Along the way, we can pause to enjoy the beauty of the summer garden. In honor of those affected by Hurricane Harvey, here's a little inspiration to keep going.…
Plan Your Bee-Friendly Garden
Today's post includes an infographic sent by Budget Direct down under. It shares how to create a bee-friendly garden for your local pollinator population. While here at Gardenerd we always recommend starting with native plants for your particular climate and hardiness zone, here are plants from around the world that will help keep bees and other pollinators well-fed during the year. Plan your fall garden to include some of these bee-friendly plants. Next spring you'll have all the pollinators you…
#BeInconvenient
With the recent release of Al Gore's The Inconvenient Sequel, and the recent news of America's exit from the Paris Climate Accord, it seems appropriate to focus on what we can do to reduce our carbon footprint once again. While companies like Tesla tackle the automobile industry and fossil fuel dependency, we gardeners and farmers can hone in on soil carbon sequestration. I had the pleasure of sitting 1 row away from Al Gore during an interview after a screening…
Review: Soil Summit 2.0 – Terroir
Last week I attended the Urban Soil Summit 2.0, a deeper look into soil and how to bring it back to life. This year's theme was Terroir, a sense of place. Terroir encompasses the environmental conditions (soil, terrain, water, climate) that effect the flavor of whatever is grown there. For the Urban Soil Summit 2.0 humans are very much included in terroir. Two days of mind-blowing, bigger-than-us discussion is difficult to summarize. For those not familiar with the Urban Soil…