Category: gardening

Grow Your Own Food for Healthier Vitamin Content

Growing your own food can lead to improvements in your health and wellbeing. Even a small garden can have a big impact on you and your family’s big health. Because we cannot create vitamins or fiber within our bodies, we must find nutritive foods that will supply the critical components we need to help the…


Exercise in Your Garden to Lower Chronic Pain and Improve Mood

Exercising in your garden can lower chronic pain and improve mood. The magic is in consistent and regular movement, whether it be walking, digging, lifting, or tending to your garden; a garden is a balm for the soul because when you are active outdoors it can help you feel better. Creating time and a space…


How to Test Saved Garden Seeds

Q: I saved seeds from several of my garden plants last year, including pumpkins, peppers, and peas. I want to store more again this fall, but I wanted to start with a few and see how they worked. Besides just planting them and seeing what comes up, how can I be sure the seeds are…


Three New Award-Winning Vegetables for Your Garden

Last week, we looked at the flowers that won 2021 All-America Selections (AAS) awards, and this week, we look at the three new vegetable winners. The AAS is an independent, nonprofit organization that tests new plants. They have about 80 test gardens from Alaska and Canada to California and Florida. They also have almost 200…


The Dark Arts of Winter Mushroom Gardens

As the dark days of the year chase us indoors, we look for ways to stay connected to the earth. Seed catalogs, house plants, frozen broccoli from last year’s garden—all reminders that life goes on, and will come back around. Let’s add mushrooms to the list of wintertime ways to plug into the cycle of…


Three New Award-Winning Flowers for Your Garden

My garden seed catalogs are arriving, and I am always happy when I find the All-America Selections (AAS) logo in a plant’s description. These plants have been vetted by the AAS, an independent nonprofit organization that tests new plants. They have about 80 test gardens from Alaska and Canada to California and Florida. They also…


Award-Winning Roses for Your Garden

The American Garden Rose Selection (AGRS) judges have announced the newest roses to be selected in the testing program. This was a bountiful year. There are six new winners. There have only been 22 in the previous seven years. The AGRS program is the replacement of the All-America Rose Selection (AARS) program that ran from…


Planning Your Garden for the New Year

They say that hindsight is 20/20, and that is what we want to do this year: put 2020 in our hindsight. As I wrote in my first “A Greener View” column for last year: “In our mind’s eye, we see ourselves healthier, happier and leading more productive lives. The pursuit of gardening can help with…


Seeding a New Year

The long nights of January always lead my imagination down a well-worn path to the garden. As I flip and click through the pages of each year’s new lineup of seed catalogs, the images and descriptions of full-grown plants take my mind to an earthy paradise that is waiting in the near future and mine…