I lead a homeschool hiking group that meets in nearby state parks and natural areas at least once a month. We’re working on nature journals this year and I decided to turn the student tutorial I was writing for next Friday’s hike into a blog post. When beginning a nature journal, you don’t need much. Prior to setting out, we…
I’m not a big fan of shopping or owning huge quantities of stuff. When I do put on my modern hunter/gatherer hat, I think of my purchase as a vote. Do I spend my voting dollar on artisan-made or an overseas sweatshop? Am I going to vote for something that will last generations or for built-in-obsolesce? Will I purchase biodegradable…
Here it is! For issue #2 of How to Find Great Plants I decided to highlight four each in the food and ornamental categories. It was such a hard choice to choose only eight of this month’s 32 submissions! Don’t miss out on the complete list of entries located at the end of the post, they were all a pleasure…
Let’s talk about snow. You’d think the American city famous for distributing the poinsettia wouldn’t have to wait 47 years for a white Christmas! But we did, and since I grew up here it was my very first one. My Vermont-native boyfriend finds it laughable that southerners get so excited about white stuff on the 25th (especially since it was…
I live in Greenville, SC — as did Joel Roberts Poinsett (1779 – 1851) for parts of his life. His Greenville plantations near White Horse Road were equipped with hothouses for botanical study. Sometime between 1825 – 1830, these hothouses were the recipient of Euphorbia pulcherrima specimens he collected in the Taxco de Alarcón region while serving as American Minister…
Well, not really. Even if I could find any flowers for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, I think the crisp fragrance of winter would have taken precedence. Sometimes the only “How To” needed is how to relax and take it all in. Here’s what I found “blooming” out in the garden this morning.
Organic gardening often produces healthier, more easily grown vegetables and fruits than the same crops grown with “conventional” methods. There are, however, a few crops that have a pouty reputation for organic growers. The cucurbit family claims most of these weak-kneed plants. I count on summer squash and cucumbers to be riddled with squash vine borer, cucumber worms, and fungal…
Even though it’s getting late in the edible mushroom season, we found a nice little haul of sweet tooth hedgehog mushrooms after the rain last weekend: Daytime temperatures were reaching the upper 40’s to 50 F when we found them under oaks in a South Carolina forest. The entire slope seemed to be covered with them but we only picked…
I’ve just updated to a new blogroll that tells me how recently you’ve posted on your blog. If you’d like to share reciprocal blogroll links with me, just let me know in the comments! I’d also like to thank Stuart Robinson for creating Blotanical — it helped me find a lot of my favorite blogs. I’ve seen plenty of directories…
We took my daughter to the Riverbanks Zoo & Botanical Garden in Columbia, SC last week. By that, I mean we spent 90% of our time at the zoo before running around the Botanical Garden for the last 10% like our pants were on fire. This is what happens to a gardener when the people with her are more interested…
Now that my feet are wet from hosting How to Find Great Plants, Issue #1, I have a better idea of what I’d like this collection to look like. I want to include everyone’s qualifying submissions and also highlight the best ones with a photo link and review. I’ll be selecting an equal number of “Food” vs. “Ornamental” posts from…
The best plants I’ve ever grown were recommended to me by other gardeners, and this blog carnival seeks to collect posts about exemplary food and ornamental plants. *Edit: I’m still experimenting with the best format for this carnival. Expect improvements in future issues. CLICK ON THE PHOTOS to visit the blog article on each plant! Photo Caption: FOOD, Onion ‘Rouge…
Lemon grass (Cymbopogon citratus) deserves a more prominent place in our herb gardens, kitchens, and even the ornamental landscape. I think it is one of the prettiest plants in the garden! Lemon grass looks just as nice in the flower border as it does in the kitchen garden. You can put a grouping of it in your rose beds or…
It’s officially “Armchair Gardening Season.” In its honor, I’ve updated my Food Catalog Directory for the 2010 – 2011 growing season. I hope you can find what you need! If you really want to get the most out of your perfect spring daydreaming, I also recommend these articles from the old Kitchen Gardener magazines. Don’t you just love late fall…
Conundrum: I don’t want a giant agri-business to be able to sell my family the spinach they grew downstream from factory-farmed cattle (mmm, E. coli!) but I also don’t want much (or any) regulations placed on small-scale farms, CSAs, farmer’s markets, online farmer’s markets, small dairies, or backyard growers. Citizens are capable of inspecting their own local food — because…
At first glance it’s so cute and fluffy, but the loggerhead shrike has grim eating habits that easily earn its North American nickname of “butcher bird” (different from Australasian butcherbirds). This little tool-using songbird outperforms the deadliest skills of hawks and the creepiness of vultures when it dines. Sure it doesn’t look much different from an insect-eating nuthatch, a seed-eating…
We may have overdone it this year with the hot peppers. We don’t feel the least bit repentant, though. Spicing up a meal is quick when using small peppers, and they look great in vinegar-based hot sauces or simply as fiery pickles. I try to find peppers that produce a large spectrum of beautifully colored fruits on a single plant….
In November 2010 I decided to host a monthly carnival called “How to Find Great Plants.” (HtFGP for short). Posts in this carnival should be about a food or ornamental plant that you’d recommend to others. For example, you might want to describe your love affair with sedums or your preference for ‘Rattlesnake’ pole beans. Photos-only posts are fine as…
My daughter didn’t like tomatoes and it was killing me in the kitchen. When I read this Slate article* and learned that food dislikes were psychological,** and therefore fixable, I decided to eliminate the family food aversions one by one. I managed to turn my intense hatred of anything that had even touched mint, cucumbers, or cinnamon into absolute cravings….
After the warm months we gardeners are either squeezing as much remaining produce as possible from our plants before the threat of frost, or we’re incredibly grateful for an excuse to stop harvesting… finally! Last weekend we decided the weather prediction was chilly enough to go ahead and strip the garden bare. We ended up with a backseat and trunk…