Evergreengirl posted a photo: I have been wanting to post some pictures from the Ferndale Friendship Community Garden for quite awhile, but it seems like other pictures just kept grabbing the spotlight and these snaps kept getting moved to the bottom of the pile. I hope this series, while having nothing of particular artistic merit in it, will at least give you some idea of the joy and satisfaction that comes from growing your own food.

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Yours Truly in the Garden

Once upon a time, before the advent of synthetic weed killers for the lawn in the late 1940s, most American lawns contained white clover. Because no formulation of weed control could be developed that left both grass and clover, but killed everything else, clover was then lumped in with the weeds in subsequent marketing campaigns. The scientist who developed 2,4-D, the most common synthetic herbicide, was publicly apologetic because his new product had the unfortunate side effect of eliminating clover.

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Six pieces of evidence that clover is not a weed

Mystic Ed & Fluffy posted a photo: Fluffy was on a mission these last few months which started with laying some decking (see earlier pics), then an idea came of building a pergola with climbing plants to cover the frame (which they will do as the years progress) and then we attached our pretty lanterns and at night when they are lit up this are is so very magickal and it looks even more beautiful when it has been raining. This was taken from the back of the pergola/Decking area.

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Fluffy`s completed pergola

MaxiRider posted a photo: Day 37- 365…Picture My World To kick of what will be a very difficult week for me which will become more apparent as the week goes on, is a pic I took of me bedding in a few trays of summer Dianthus I bought this afternoon to replace the spring bedding plants I removed earlier from the front garden. I edited this pic on Picnik with a Cinemascope and light Orton-ish, although I am still disappointed with the quality of this self-timer shot.

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Gardening! 365…Picture My World

I have a gardening background, both from spending years as the Brand Manager for Miracle-Gro and from my master gardener mother, who continues to teach me all about how to coax loveliness from a bare patch of earth.   She was talking about tomatoes, and it reminded me of a very important personal branding lesson.   You see, tomatoes get to a certain point in the ripening process called the “breaker stage,” when the fruit begins to turn pink

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The Brand Provides the Key … or You have what it takes

super doo posted a photo: I have the best husband ever! I mentioned I wanted a potting table for my gardening…in a couple of days time, he had welded this up for me with left over steel we had! It’s heavy duty, sturdy and good looking…but very easy for me to move around the yard because it’s on wheels! I absolutely love it, and can’t wait to work in the yard!…I can hang my hand tools on the side, and put my potting soil in bins on the bottom! Am I spoiled or what? LOL!!!

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potting table, front view

(Photo: Kitchen Gardeners Intl.) If you shop at the grocery store for tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini, salad greens, or strawberries — and who doesn’t? — then you are the perfect candidate for becoming a kitchen gardener. Growing your own will save you an incredible amount of money — more than $1,200 if you plant all five, according to the analysis of one Maine gardener.

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20 garden veggies that could each save you $25 or more

Many novice gardeners are growing the Queen of the Vegetable Garden, tomatoes, for the first time this season, and may have some questions about everything from hornworms to entering the May Dreams Gardens Annual Tomato Contest.Here are some of the more popular questions and answers:How will I know if I have tomato hornworms on my tomato plants?It is generally not a question of if you have

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My First Tomato That Doesn’t Count And Other Tomato Growing Questions Answered

A while ago I wrote about some of the issues we encounter when engaging youth online and how people sometimes assume that young people will come to a website just because it is a website. Of course this is wrong. Equally wrong are the people who assume that older people (the over 65s) cannot be engaged online

Link:
Are older people really under represented in an online engagement?

Part 2:  The Internet Marketing Plan It is widely accepted that the Internet has become the “go to” source to find products and services.  For this reason and in today’s difficult economy, it’s critical for every company to utilize the Internet to generate sales and/or leads to fuel their business.  Whether you’re an enterprise company or a small business, you should have an Internet marketing plan.  Obviously, a larger company requires a more sophisticated and comprehensive Internet marketing plan.  However, independent of company size, the central element of any Internet marketing plan is a search engine optimized Website.  This being the case, let’s examine what it means to have a search engine optimized Website. A question I am often asked in my seminars and workshops is:  What makes a good Website?   The answer to this question is relatively simple:  It needs to be equal to or better than your competitors’ Websites and it needs to be easily found in the search engines.  There are all types of Websites and generally, the price of the Website is directly proportional to the level of sophistication.    It is possible to spend millions of dollars developing a Website.  Good examples of a multimillion-dollar Websites are Amazon and Dell.  These Websites contain some of the most sophisticated technology available.  However, the technology has only one goal: Meet the company’s online sales objectives.  So the complete answer to what makes a good Website is three fold: 1. It must be equal to or better that your competitors 2. It must be built to achieve your company’s online objectives 3. It must be easily found in the search engines for keywords that your target market is likely to use If it doesn’t meet all three criteria, it isn’t a “good” Website.  No matter how attractive and sophisticated a Website may be, it must meet the above three critical criteria to actually do a company much good.  Think about it.  Let’s assume you have an attractive Website and when people see it they usually say “Wow.”  That’s really a “so what” if it isn’t easily found in the search engines.  The reason for this is that search engines account for almost 90% of all the found sites on the Internet.  That means that even a company like Amazon must be easily found in the search engines.  Do a simple search for any thing that Amazon sells, for example “gardening books” and you will find them on the first page of Google.  If the result isn’t in the natural listings it will be found in the paid listing (i.e. listings a company pays for when someone clicks on their advertisement).  They do this because even with their immense branding and online presence, they completely understand the power of search engine marketing.  In the example I just gave, as of March 8, 2009, Amazon had the number one paid listing in Google and the number one natural listing

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Internet Marketing Required to Fuel Economic Recovery – Part II

Because there are cracks appearing in my concrete block house over the past couple of years we had an engineering report prepared. Now while some of the damage has been caused because of the volatil;e clay soils, and the mining industry of the area over the past 100 or so years, and no-one knows even the exact location of some of the tunneling that went on. The major concern that involves a gardening perspective here was the ingoing damage of the small leaf fig tree in the neighbours yard near my fence line

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Tree Troubles

Being on dial-up I get very frustrated and often end up surfing away from many blogs when they have a lot of pictures on their main page. Simply because it takes so damn long to load their main page I end up giving up trrying to see it. It also frustrates me with the big gaps between their writings with the blank spaces between it…..Things often freeze up with my old computer while they are loading, and this is not just with that page but everything else that I am doing on the computer, which adds to the frustration levels.

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Dial up frustations

With reading many blogs from those in the northern hemisphere, and all the talk of visiting ‘Christmas tree farms’, I have to say I am grateful for the Aussie tradition of using ‘Plastic’ christmas trees. My own tree is about 5 years old, and gets packed away and brought out each year. With all the talk out there on the net of saving the environment and carbon tradeoffs etc

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Plant a plastic pine in your home this Xmas.

One of the problems that we face here in the subtropics during summer, is broiling our pot plants in their own juices…. With the heat we have during warmer weather when the sun heats the surface and sides of our pot plants. Why plant companies insist on putting our plants in black plastic pots is something I do not understand as things coloured black, like most of our pots conducts heat faster and more than other colours….

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Insulated Plant pots

Why not nail or screw up one or more old mouse traps above your garden shed bench, or even near the door of the garden shed. These can be put to all sorts of useful purposes, like…. Holding pairs of gloves, Fingers up for drying them out, or wrist end up (especially if the wrist is folded over), to stop creepy crawlies from crawling in and creeping you out on putting them on again Keeping Seed packets in view to remind you of what has to be planted soon Holding construction plans at view level, so that you don’t end up too many spare parts left after purchasing ‘Put together yourself’ items

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Mouse Trap Clipboards

We hear a lot of people state that we should not use peatmoss as an additive to our potting and propagation mixes and for burning in house fires, because of the farming/mining of which is destroying the ecosystems around the peat bogs, which are mainly located in the cool temperate climates of places of the world, like Europe. However I would have to argue why shouldn’t we use it? After all most of the Peatbog ecosystems are not natural ecosystems or environments after all…

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Why Protect Peatbog Ecosystems?

Helping my son do some research on ‘Collective Nouns’, I began to wonder what you would call a collective of gardeners. After searching around on the net for a while, I wasn’t able to find a reference anywhere, so I guess it is up to us ourselves, to come up with our own ‘collective noun’, for our own kind. What should the collective noun for a group of gardeners be

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Collective Noun for Gardeners

We gardeners often suffer from Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia Which simply means a fear of long words Just seeing some of the words and phrases used to describe some of the plants, chemicals, fancy botanical or manufacturing terms, pesticides and fertilizers. When it comes to the botanical words many of these words and terms are simply descriptive words and phrases in Latin or Greek, to describe a certain aspect of that species, whether it’s the flower or leaf colour, shape or texture. One of the problems we gardeners face is in dealing with Botanical Latin is in understanding and having a go at trying to pronounce some of these damn term and words, or what the botanists mean by many of the descriptive names they give to plants

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Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia