The book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, is inspiring for anyone who has ever considered a vegetable garden.
Kingsolver recounts how she, her husband, and their two daughters moved from Arizona where growing your own food is much more difficult and uses up much precious water. The family settled in Virginia on a family property in order to grow their whole food supply.
The first time I ever heard of carrageenan was when I was embarking on the Whole 30 for the first time. This is a diet – or more like a 30-day food challenge – designed to radically change your relationship to food and bring you back to a healthier place, physically.
It has become common to see pictures of people’s food on social media with a hashtag label for what Whole 30 day they are on as a mark of accomplishment. The challenge can get intense. You are not allowed to eat any grains, sugars or dairy.
One of my favorite memories from childhood is of picking apples at my grandparents’ house. Neither of them would have considered themselves farmers. However, since they both grew up on a farm – in the midst of the depression – growing their own food was second nature.
Twenty or so years before I was born, they planted several kinds of apple trees in their large front yard. I can remember climbing a ladder to get to the very top branches with the sweetest apples and eating them straight from the tree.
Weed trees. Have you ever had one? I bet you remember if you have.
I will never forget the sweaty weekday I spent weeding the overgrown flower beds at a rental house I lived in with three other people. None of us had grown up taking care of our own flower beds or even doing very much weeding with our parents.
There’s nothing more tragic to a lover of plants than the sight of several sad little plants languishing by themselves in a newly “landscaped” front yard or park. It may be on a small island amidst a sea of concrete, or even in a sea of grass.
I often see the beginning gardens of amateur gardener and wonder what’s going wrong with it.
Why doesn’t it please the eye? Why does it look stunted and sad?
After all, the gardener was most likely following the instructions that are given by the nursery about how best to cultivate the plant. Most instructions give placement requirements: “plant no closer than 2 inches from another plant.”
A friend of mine discovered she had juniper bushes on her property the first year she lived in her house this way: Every year she uses fresh evergreen branches as decoration around her house to make wreaths and garlands.
Here at Rootwell Products, Inc., we want you to be a gardening success. We know that a green thumb isn’t something you’re born with. You need advice from the pros and you need lots of practice.
To that end, we try to supply you with tips every week on a range of gardening topics. Every New Year, we post a roundup of the top 20 articles from the previous year. We like to keep tabs on what you are most interested in.
So take a peek at this year’s list and see if any of your favorites are there.
I don’t know about you but winter has come to my yard. My trees are all bare, the plants are dead and all the other natural foliage is dry and brown.
The long slumber has started until the new green shoots arrive in the spring.
Have you been putting off winterizing your garden?
Fall is a busy time. Many of us have kids who go back to school – and all that comes with preparing for that. Many of us have clubs and organizations that begin again in the fall and we resume things we may have taken a break from during the summer.
This summer marked a huge change for organic food lovers. Amazon bought Whole Foods and immediately marked down prices.