By Mindy McIntosh-Shetter

I am always looking for bargains in all aspects of my life and one that I seem to have specialized in is planting plants that serve 2 purposes.

Flowering kale, ornamental cabbage and pansies fit this bill.

Early spring always makes my gardening elbow itch with excitement and anticipation of a new year of gardening. To treat my ailment I go to my favorite seed store and drool over my choices.

What to get, what to get I keep asking myself but my frugal lifestyle always leads me to plants with a double life that is flowering kale, ornamental cabbage, and pansies.

Flowering Kale and Ornamental Cabbage

These plants provide rosy and /or white ornamental foliage to a drab early spring and a splash of color in the fall. They go from seed to mature plant in about 11-14 weeks. Cool weather either spring or fall is needed fro the brightest color and planted in mass or as an edging enhances this color. But visual stimulation is not the only use for these plants they also address the palate.

Greens, Grits, and Country Ham with Red-eyed Gravy

Ingredients for greens dish Read the rest of this entry »

By Cindy Naas

My seed catalogs all came in early January.

I have been trying to block out all thoughts of this cold Minnesota winter by looking at pictures of vines sagging under the weight of tomatoes, peppers of all hues brightening a summer garden, and lettuces of all colors and shapes beckoning temptingly from the pages of these catalogs.

I have seeds saved from my heirloom tomatoes last summer, I have some seeds given to me by friends and soon I should have a wonderful variety of seeds coming from organic growers.

There is a lot more room in my new garden and so I have the luxury of growing a much larger variety of vegetables this year. I will grow my old favorites but will also experiment with some new vegetables. Some of my new picks for 2010 are:

Strawberry Spinach, or Chenpodium capitatum– grown for the greens which thrive in cool weather but are heat tolerant, as well as the berries which make an interesting addition to salads.

Imperial Star Artichokes – requires Read the rest of this entry »

By Cindy Naas

Recently I was invited to help create a large community garden on the campus of the Sabes JCC in the Minneapolis area.

I’m going to blog about each step of the process.

My hope is that some of you will use this information to go out into your own communities and create urban gardens which will benefit so many people.

History

This is the third year for some sort of garden at the JCC. The first garden was built with grant money. They had a large greenhouse, an outdoor garden and even staff to oversee the building and tending of the garden. Year 2 saw the grant money dry up, and with not enough workers the garden didn’t do well. This year the garden will be done on a shoestring budget, but my hope is to not only plan a large productive vegetable garden but to make it a sustainable project as well.

Planning

One of the ideas suggested for Read the rest of this entry »

By Vanessa Richins

I’ve been seeing websites advertising “Survival Seeds” popping up.

Basically, they offer a collection of different heirloom seeds to have on hand in case of food scarcity, disasters, and more.

They can be pretty pricey – so are they worth it?

In one such pack I found advertised. there were 22 varieties, said to plant 1 acre. At a price of $149 (on special, of course!) , that means each kind of vegetable is basically $6.77. Some will be more, some will be less.

I searched out prices for the same varieties that were listed. Most of these are priced Read the rest of this entry »

By Vanessa Richins

It’s likely that you’ve heard about hydroponic gardens.

These allow people to grow plants without soil.

However, you might have thought that would be difficult to implement as an urban gardener.

Today, though, I discovered some pretty impressive plans for making your own hydroponic garden inside a sunny window. I found it on LifeHacker, who gave a link to the creators, WindowFarms. Their website announces that “Window Farms are vertical, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield edible window gardens built using low-impact or recycled local materials.”

I declare: Window Farms are awesome.

As I opened the PDF instructions that were available on their site, the first thing I noticed were all of the plastic bottles. The how-to calls for 1.5 liter water bottles. What a fantastic way to Read the rest of this entry »