Seeds: As Gardening Expands, So Does Burpee Mailing List – sacbee.com
By Debbie Arrington
Published: Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010
Gardening grows on you. That’s one reason so many people discover the hobby later in life.
Baby boomers are gravitating toward gardening as a way to exercise, unwind and spend time together. It’s one of a number of trends that converged in backyards across America last summer as more than 7 million families planted vegetable gardens for the first time, according to the National Gardening Association and other experts.
Those newbies fueled a major boom for Burpee, the go-to seed source for generations.
“It’s been a wonderful two years for us,” Burpee owner George Ball says by phone from his Pennsylvania headquarters. “We were at the right place at the right time. So many trends came together at once. It was a perfect storm for vegetable gardening.”
Please go to Seeds: As Gardening Expands, So Does Burpee Mailing List to continue reading.
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Freeze May Have Damaged 30% of Crops – TBO.com
By MICHAEL SASSO | The Tampa Tribune
Published: January 14, 2010
TAMPA – Thirty percent of Florida’s crops may have been lost in the cold snap, Florida’s agriculture commission says, but for now it appears that the Bay area’s strawberries avoided catastrophe.
Overall, certain crops in Florida were whacked hard by the sub-freezing temperatures, while others lucked out. Still, Florida Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner Charles Bronson said the crop losses probably run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Suffering the most is aquaculture, or the raising of tropical fish that are sold for homeowners’ fish tanks. Among the industries affected by the cold weather are: Continue »
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Monsanto v. Food, Inc. – BusinessWeek
Posted by: Michael Arndt on January 11
Anyone who’s seen the documentary Food Inc. knows that Monsanto comes across as a thug. Its bioengineered soybeans, designed to be unaffected by Monsanto weedkiller Roundup, command 93% of the U.S. crop, yet there’s Monsanto in the 2008 movie, heartlessly hauling farmers into court to jack up its market share even further. Monsanto execs declined to comment then. In retrospect, CEO Hugh Grant now says he should have. He might have blunted the film’s impact if he had.
Grant has a different take on Monsanto’s role in agriculture, of course. From his point of view, the company is working on the side of angels, helping to create commodity crops to feed today’s population and the 2 billion more people who might occupy the planet by 2030. He is proud that Monsanto scientists were the first to have a patented genetically modified plant on the market—Roundup Ready soybeans were introduced in 1996—and he is excited about new efforts to bioengineer wheat and vegetables, too, as well as the next generation of super beans and corn. Continue »
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What Are The Hot Gardening Trends For 2010? – PennLive.com
This article was originally posted at PennLive.com. It will be interesting to see how these trends unfold in 2010.
Gardeners will dig even deeper into old-fashioned values around the yard in 2010, trend-watchers predict.
Tops on the list: another increase in traditional vegetable gardening.
Veggie gardening was up nearly 20 percent this year on top of a 10-percent gain the year before, according to National Gardening Association research.
The leading three reasons: better taste, saving money and better quality food.
Hand in hand with that came hefty resurgences in seed-starting and the home-canning of produce — two other age-old practices that had tapered drastically in the last generation. Continue »
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Squeezed By Space In The City – Washington Post
By Adrian Higgins of The Washington Post
Suzanna Dennis surveys the fruits of months of tender care: a vegetable garden of vigor, health and bounty.
Five tomato vines form one tangled mass, belying the notion that congested vines are disease-prone. Hers are green and lush and full of trusses of ripening berries. Seven chili peppers are developing their fiery pods, four okra plants are blooming, and two tomatillos have already arrayed their papery lanterns. A zucchini variety named Raven is sprawling nicely, and the miniature white cucumber plant is beginning to produce. Two vines of the heirloom muskmelon Anne Arundel hug the ground. The bed also contains flowering annuals and perennials Dennis started from seed. Continue »
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Gardening For The Soul – smdp.com
This article was written by Melody Hanatani
SUNSET PARK — There’s a hearty vegetable garden in Greg Fuller’s backyard with seemingly enough vegetables to fill the produce section of a small grocery store, teeming with zucchini, corn and tomatoes.
Tending to the small farm is a team of men and women who come without fail every Tuesday and Saturday morning for about three hours, pulling weeds, tilling the soil, and taking some of the ready-to-eat crop at the end of the day.
The gardeners are clients of OPCC’s Safe Haven, a shelter that serves the needs of chronically homeless individuals who live with mental illnesses, and for the past year, they have sought solace and purpose in a blooming plot of land on Cedar Street. Continue »
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Four Uses For Coffee Grounds In The Home Garden – Examiner.com
Any coffee drinker will likely throw away a filter full of coffee grounds each day. But, to gardeners these old grounds are very useful in the vegetable plot, flower bed or landscape. Some may remember family members throwing coffee grounds around roses or azaleas. Besides improving acidity for plants like these, coffee grounds are useful against pests and as soil amendments. If you don’t drink coffee or need more grounds than your family can produce, many Starbucks coffee shops will give away used coffee grounds to gardeners. Check your local franchise for details. Continue »
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Primate Suspect Fingered In Garden Store Thefts – USA Today
The owners of a Texas gardening store think they’ve solved the puzzle of who has been stealing valuable plants: a trained monkey.
NBCDFW reports that Jerry Duncan and Shelley Rosenfeld, owners of Plants and Planters in Richardson, Texas, fingered their prime primate suspect after examining surveillance footage. The video shows a two-foot tall monkey jumping the fence and apparently handing the loot over to a presumably human accomplice. Continue »
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Want To Live Longer Than Most Folks? – Orange County Register
This article was originally published by Cindy McNatt, Home and Garden columnist, of The Orange County Register. Here is a link to the full article: Want To Live Longer Than Most Folks?
I recall a conversation I had with neighbors when we all landed at our mailboxes at the same time. As we were talking we watched another neighbor mow his lawn and my neighbor to the left said, “Oh dear…we should pitch in and get Mr. So and So a gardening service.”
As a gardener myself my reply was something like, “Are you kidding? Mowing the lawn every week is the best thing for him.”
Mr. So and So was 92 at the time and not only mowed and watered his lawn, but pruned his trees and planted new plants. He is still the source of my best tomatoes. Continue »
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How Fertilizers Harm Earth More Than Help Your Lawn – Scientific American
Dear EarthTalk: What effects do fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides used on residential lawns or on farms have on nearby water bodies like rivers, streams—or even the ocean for those of us who live near the shore?
– Linda Reddington, Manahawkin, NJ
With the advent of the so-called Green Revolution in the second half of the 20th century—when farmers began to use technological advances to boost yields—synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides became commonplace around the world not only on farms, but in backyard gardens and on front lawns as well. Continue »
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