By Mindy McIntosh-Shetter

Throughout my community garden project, I noticed a unique trend that I could not explain until recently.

My group consists of a majority of people who are under 30 years of age.

How wonderful I felt and still feel that the youth was getting involved in gardening.

I thought economics was a big factor and the organic food movement pushed these individuals to the community garden. But while my uneducated analysis of the situation was partly correct, it took a little research to find the “roots” of my community gardeners.

Personally, I am on the very backend of the baby-boomer generation. I was raised in an environment that I could do anything without any boundaries. For years, I have felt that I was raised this way because I was an only child but to my dismay that was not necessarily the case.

Baby-boomers were raised to think Read the rest of this entry »

By Mindy McIntosh-Shetter

One may not think about geraniums when considering vegetable gardening but it does have its own place in the culinary world.

This place was created before in Victorian times when formal teas and treats were popular.

Decorations for these treats where limited and the cost of sugar, for many, was too expensive so creative cooks went to the garden and found decorative substitutes.

These substitutes started off as flowers and then progressed to leaves. The decorations moved from just being pretty to something that added to the taste of the food or drink.

Scented geranium leaves started showing up on cake plates as decorations and progressed to the top of the cake as a substitute for icing. Many complex designs were created using different types of scented geranium leaves.

This culinary movement continued into Read the rest of this entry »

By Mindy McIntosh-Shetter

It is amazing how much can get done when one has a vision.

One vision I have had for years is for every community to have gardens.

No, I am not talking about those showy, non-native flowering gardens that every community has down their main street but instead gardens that tell the story of their individual roots.

These individual roots grow out from the concepts and ideas that each community has been built upon.

My community has seen Jonathan Jennings, Lewis and Clark and many other famous people that came before me and established the framework that we all can add to but choose not to.

We all wait until that right person steps up and does it. If it works, it was a great idea but if it does not then no one claims it. But being a person who takes pride in “thinking outside the box” and having no problem “sticking my neck out,” I decided to start a community garden. Read the rest of this entry »

By Mindy McIntosh-Shetter

The other day I was walking through the gardening center and saw a plant that brought back a found memory of children, plants and Mother’s Day.

When my daughter was about 3 years old she was asked what here favorite color was.

She replied, with her little 3-year-old voice, purple, pink and blue.

Every piece of clothing, shoes, and toys needed to be one of those colors. My son was a little easier and only liked black but he could tolerate other colors.

So during the 3rd year of being a mother, my husband took the twins to the gardening center to pick out mom’s gift. Our daughter wanted everything purple, pink or blue while our son was disappointed that flowers were not black. So Read the rest of this entry »

By Mindy McIntosh-Shetter

Every year I seem to get the odd looking caterpillar called the tomato hornworm on my tomatoes.

These little beasts always seem to appear over night with devastating affects.

Stripped stems poke upward and before I know it my tomatoes are stripped of all vegetation but is the organic gardener to do.

The first step is to recognize the pest. Some individuals feel it is deer damage or some other grazing type of animal consuming their crop.

But a telltale sign that it is a tomato hornworm is the fact that the vegetation will be missing from the top of the plant and will move downward. Also, this damage will start around midsummer and continue until the end of the growing season.

Next, the most obvious sign that Read the rest of this entry »