Computer gardening?

When I was growing up, my mother had an enormous garden in the back yard – I remember tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers pouring out of it, and I only vaguely remember the work that went into it. Moving to Michigan and having space for a garden motivated me to give it a shot last year, and [...]

Garden News

As the cucumber vines die back after producing like champs through the beginning of August, the long beans are just coming into their own, and we have 1 (count it, 1) bitter melon on the vine. We’ve had 2 small harvests of amaranth and Japanese spinach, and it looks like we might get one more [...]

Garden update

We’ve harvested our first cucumber from the garden! It was fun to see the kids’ eyes widen with the first bite – even Nikolai ate it, and he is NOT a fan of cucmbers as a rule. I planted a longer, thin-skinned, less “seedy” Japanese variety and it looks as though we will have quite a [...]

Garden update!

The seedlings I started a while ago have been traveling a lot recently – under the light frame in the basement, up into the garage, back downstairs, in and out of the garage, in and out of the sun and rain. I’ve finally decided that spring is here to stay in Michigan and have transplanted [...]

Garden update: sprouts & compost

The seeds planted a few weeks ago are happily sprouting under the light frames in our basement – in addition to the 2 flats of lettuce due to return to Growing Hope, I’ve planted a mass of herbs – not only for using in cooking, but to line the edges of my garden to give [...]

Gardening 101

Full disclosure: I am a complete novice at gardening. I think the last time I actually grew something was in one of those elementary school experiments, the seed in the Dixie cup sort of affair. So I’m very excited to be starting a garden. Well, sort of a garden – I think this year it [...]