One of the reasons we garden is because we want to make the world nicer. So it only makes sense that we’d want to do what we can to lessen our impact on the environment. The garden is the perfect place to reduce and re-purpose items you might otherwise be throwing away. When you garden,…

As you nurture your plants along from seedling to full-grown plant, your plants may encounter some rough spots or bumps along the road. You can help your plants along and encourage them to grow bigger and stronger with a little foliar feeding. Why foliar feeding? The leaves of plants are amazing things. Their primary function…

A continuation of our Gooseberry Adventure: We’ve picked the last of our Gooseberries and we got a lot more than I’d originally thought we would. Out of our four Gooseberry bushes we got three batches of jam and four pies. For the finishing touch: this week we made Gooseberry Ice Cream. It’s been a yummy…

As promised, here is my first installment of posts on planning your garden. First things first: tomatoes. It’s the reason God created gardens. I don’t care what else I grow, if I couldn’t grow tomatoes, I would be an empty shell of a person. We love our tomatoes And don’t think just any old tomato…

A stroke of luck I am so excited to tell you about a new source of seeds that I just discovered. It was almost by accident that I ran into one of the owners of Prairie Road Organic Seed today. I was traveling home from two days in Bismarck and Dickinson and decided to check on some…

Last spring I told you about cold frames I made using dresser drawers. I’m sorry to report, the results were not as successful as I’d hoped. The bok choi got too warm and bolted before it got any where near mature enough to eat. (Note to self: open up the cold frame on warm or…

We love Bergeson’s We just made our anual trek to Bergeson Nursery yesterday. Yes, there are nurseries that are closer and many that are cheaper. So why would we travel 80 miles to go to this one? First: Locally grown. Most of the plants they carry are not only bred especially for our area, but…

This week I dug up about 1/3 of my Jerusalem artichokes. The yield was 15 pounds of tubers. Pretty good for a crop that you plant once and it produces food forever, huh? What is a Jerusalem artichoke? Well, for starters, it’s not at all like an artichoke. It bears no resemblance to the artichoke and…

As shocking as this may sound, there are still people who don’t have a garden. I can hardly imagine going a year without a garden. Fresh salad with tomatoes and cucumbers, fresh picked from the garden. That’s my idea of culinary heaven. But sadly, there are people who will never have that pleasure. And that’s…

Tomatoes. Is there any better reason to have a garden? Our tomatoes have done fairly well this year, despite a cooler June and two months of drought followed by two weeks of heavy rains. The tomatoes showed a little wear–delayed ripening, cracked shoulders and catfacing. Catfacing is a new problem that I’ve never seen before…

(In case you missed it, here’s Part One and Part Two of my series on Planning Your Garden.) There’s a buzz going around about “heirloom seeds” especially heirloom tomatoes,  leading people to believe that heirlooms have more flavor or are otherwise superior to all other tomatoes (thus they can charge you double for the seeds or plants.)…

I’ve seen some pretty amazing gardens this year and I want to share some of them with you. The first garden we’ll visit is the Rellaford’s, a young couple, Matt, Mariann and their smart little 2-year old son, Henrie.  Matt is a graduate student at NDSU studying agronomy. Urban gardening The Rellaford’s live on the third floor…

This is our first year harvesting gooseberries and are they ever yummy! We planted them three years go. Last year it looked like we were going to have a good crop. But I didn’t keep a close eye on them ripening and the next thing I knew the birds and rabbits had eaten almost all of…

It’s still too early to plant your garden. But there’s still lots to do to get ready for this year’s garden. While you’re waiting for the weather to warm up, you can be getting ready for a great gardening season with these seven spring gardening chores: Test your soil and add nutrients if needed A…

Meet Lori Living a mile down the road, Lori is my closest neighbor. She has made other attempts at gardening in the past, with varying levels of success. But this year her garden looks to be about the best one ever–lots of lush green plants flourishing in almost weed-free soil. Breaking new ground Her first challenge:…

Last year I experimented growing a new variety (well, new to me, at least) of squash. The catalog said that under ideal conditions this squash would store for a year. That sounded interesting. Who doesn’t want fresh vegetables in the dead of winter or late spring before the garden starts producing? So I decided to…