By Vanessa Richins

I’ve been playing video games since I was a little girl – started back in the Intellivision days.

I was very excited, naturally, when I recently got the chance to review Plants vs. Zombies.

This is the newest game from PopCap.

The basic premise has you defending your house from a zombie invasion. How, you say? You have an arsenal of different fun plant types at your disposal. You plant them strategically to destroy the zombies and save yourself.

The 49 plant types are quite clever. For instance, Read the rest of this entry »

By Vanessa Richins

One reason I am in love with sites like Twitter is because I can learn about gardening ’round the country, as well as the entire world.

I enjoy seeing pictures people have posted and hearing about the plants in their city.

Each garden has its own microclimate.

A apple tree in New York may grow quite differently than an apple tree in Utah. I can write and give general guidelines about how a plant often grows…but Read the rest of this entry »

By Vanessa Richins

Over the past few years, we’ve heard the stories about deadly problems like E.coli showing up in our food.

New regulations are in the works to revamp the food safety guidelines and try to lessen the chances of future outbreaks.

However, as sometimes happens, some companies are now going overboard as they attempt to make food safer, requesting strict growing conditions from their farmers.

A coworker posted an intriguing link about this on his Facebook page.

Farmers report that Read the rest of this entry »

By Vanessa Richins

When I was working at the water demonstration garden, one of my favorite spots to work in was the harvest section.

(The other was the vegetable garden – what can I say, I love growing edibles!).

Here they had a large wire tunnel covered by Concord grapes, columnar apple trees, rhubarb, a thyme lawn, and so much more.

It was there that I got to try gooseberries for the first time.

Gooseberries and currants both belong to the same Read the rest of this entry »

By Vanessa Richins

Diana:

“None of the dichotomous keys listed on your site found a plant I am trying to identify. Can you recommend another?

I found the plant in my backyard in CT. Most notable is that the leaves alternate between ovate with serrated margin and deeply lobed with serrated margin.

It has hairy leaves and stem, not woody at all, and oppositely arranged leaves. Any ideas what it might be or where else I could look?”

Hi Diana. You are correct that one of the most intriguing facts about this plant is that the shape of the leaves can vary widely.

How long has this plant Read the rest of this entry »