by GardenLover | May 28, 2014 | Good eats
By Teresa Woodard
Can you smell the super-sweet, extra-juicy strawberries ripening in backyards and fields across the Midwest? With names like ‘Jewel’ and ‘Earliglow’, these berries will be in season for the next few weeks, so be sure to enjoy them while they last. You’ll find them at local farmers’ markets, u-pick fields and specialty grocers. Personally, my favorite ways to savor these fresh-picked fruits are in preserves, a fresh strawberry pie (see recipe below) and strawberry shortcake (using the biscuit recipe on the back of the Bisquick box and topping it with a premium vanilla ice cream and sliced berries).
To learn more about picking, storing and even growing your own berries, check out this First Fruit story I recently wrote for Edible Columbus. As a teen, I worked at a berry farm in western Ohio for a couple of seasons, so I was delighted to talk with central Ohio growers about new growing techniques, harvesting tips and their experiences with customers who take extremes to make the most of the fleeting berry season.
Fresh Berry Pie (from American Discovers Columbus cookbook)
- Baked 9” pie shell
- 2 quarts berries minus 1 cup, chopped
- 1/3 cup water
- 1 cup sugar
- 3 Tbsp., cornstarch (more for very ripe fruit)
- ¾ cup water
- Red food coloring (optional)
- Whipped cream
Bake pie shell. Fill with clean hulled sliced berries, minus 1 cup. Heat 1 cup chopped berries and 1/3 cup water to a slow boil, about 3 minutes. Mix sugar and cornstarch with 3/4 cup water and add to warm berries. Add red food coloring if desired. Heat for an additional 3-4 minutes. Cool, then pour this thick syrup over the fresh berries. Top cooled pie with whipped cream.
by GardenLover | May 20, 2014 | Gardens to Drive
Heartland Gardening was delighted to have high school senior Abby Fullen assist with our blog this spring. Thanks to her writing, photography, copy editing, layout and researching help, we were able to offer the Spring Countdown and several additional posts. We congratulate Abby on her upcoming graduation from Hilliard Davidson High School and wish her the best as she continues the next chapter of her life (hopefully filled with plenty of her writing).
Enjoy this final post by Abby. She spent an afternoon at Inniswood Metro Gardens in Westerville, Ohio. This 123-acre park once was the estate of sisters Grace and Mary Innis and today is cared for by a dedicated team of volunteers. Inniswood boasts more than 2,000 species of plants, specialty collections and several theme gardens including a herb garden, rose garden, woodland rock garden and delightful children’s garden. In fact, the garden will be one of the featured excursions for the 22nd annual National Children & Youth Gardening Symposium in Columbus, Ohio, July 17-19. Plus, our own blogger Debra Knapke is one of its biggest fans as a past curator of the herb garden, former president of the Inniswood Garden Society and a member of the Design Committee for the Sisters Garden, 10 years ago.
Click here for Abby’s pictorial essay.
by GardenLover | May 15, 2014 | Special Topic
By Abby Fullen
My dear sister, Emma, is as sweet as pie, but her eating habits can often drive me to insanity. A friend and I even came up with a song to describe her wasteful ways:
Sheeee’s get a lotta, eat a little, get a lotta, eat a little, get a lotta, eat a little Em-ma/ (repeat)/
She gets a lot of food, but only eats a little/ she gets a lot of food, but only eats a bit.
It’s truly a catchy tune, and it’s unfortunate that you’ll never hear the melodic strains, unless you’re lucky, but it really does summarize the extent to which my sister bothers me with ALL the food she gets, and how it ALL goes into the trash. The positive out of this, though, is my desire to help those who can’t have the experience of getting so much food they can throw it away, or even have enough to eat in the first place.
According to the U.S Department of Agriculture, 1 in 8 households in the United States experiences hunger or the risk of hunger. Approximately 33 million people, including 13 million children, have substandard diets. Food insecurity exists in every county in America: in 2011, 17.9 million households were insecure. More than 50 million Americans struggle to put food on the table.
Despite the need for food, millions of people are turned away from food banks because of a lack of resources. Here’s how one man decided to make an easy, significant change in this crisis, and thus inspired me to contribute in the same, easy way.
In 1995, Anchorage, AK garden columnist and former Garden Writers Association president Jeff Lowenfels asked readers to plant a row of vegetables for Bean’s Cafe, an Anchorage Soup Kitchen. Over 84 million households in the US support a yard or garden. If each household fulfilled their potential for a garden and planted just one additional row of vegetables, a HUGE impact would be made. Being a great success, Lowenfels introduced the Plant a Row initiative (PAR) to the Garden Writers Association, and thus was launched a national program.
It took 5 years to reach the first million pounds donated. The next million was reached in only 2 years, and in the next ten, more than a million pounds of food was donated each year. Since 2011, nearly 2 million pounds of food has been donated each year to various soup kitchens, local food banks, and service organizations to feed America’s hungry. Considering each pound of produce supplements 4 meals, this is a very significant contribution since the start of the program. Since 1995, over 20 million pounds of produce providing over 80 million meals have been donated by American gardeners. And the contributions can only continue as hunger is still, and increasingly, prevalent; the demand for hunger assistance has increased b
y 70% in recent years.
PAR provides focus, direction and support to volunteer committees that promote herb, vegetable, and community gardening at a local level. They provide training and direction to enable committees to reach out into the community, and they assist in coordinating local food collection systems and monitor the volume of donations being conveyed to food agencies. Now a 501(c)(3) organization, The Garden Writers Association Foundation was founded to administer and expand PAR. Contributors and volunteers don’t have to worry about government subsidy or bureaucratic red tape; this is simply “people helping people.”
PAR encourages anyone and everyone to be a part of the easy steps toward helping eliminate hunger in America. Spread the word, share personal experiences, join the GWA Foundation, and of course, Plant a Row!
PAR Hotline: 1-877-492-2727
Abby Fullen is a Senior at Hilliard Davidson High School. She tends a square-foot vegetable garden with her mother. This piece was written to serve in conjunction with her Career Mentorship class at the Dale McVey Innovative Learning Center.
by GardenLover | Apr 18, 2014 | Special Topic
Discover how you can build Adirondack chairs like these by visiting This Old House
By Michael Leach
Putting the white Adirondack chairs on the cozy, brick-paved patio symbolizes spring for me, almost as much as sunny daffodils and fluttering kites in blue skies.
While a thorough cleaning remains to be done, these chairs already do nicely for breaks from the lengthy, early spring chore list. In recent years I’ve found that getting out of those chairs becomes harder and harder. Age isn’t the only factor.
I suppose Auntie Mame, the zany subject of a novel, movie and Broadway plays sums it up best, “Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death.” For us green thumbs, substitute “The garden” for “life”. The suckers spend all their time nurturing their gardens rather than allowing the garden to nurture them.
Unlike some gardeners, who claim they can’t sit in their backyard Edens because they always see something to do, I learned to turn a blind eye. Only the area around the patio is regularly groomed. This allows me to use the space (weather permitting) whenever company comes, a break is needed, or I want to enhance morning coffee or something cool to sip in the evening. Patio time brings peace and pleasure, not a guilt trip.
This is why it’s important to consider garden furnishings as much more than decorative focal points or accents. Besides the patio, the maple-shaded picnic table and an aluminum reproduction of a cast iron Victorian bench beside the sycamore tree are frequently used in clement weather.
Granted, we gardeners are blessed. What many consider drudgery, we delight in. Letting go of weeds, watering cans, trowels, pruning shears and shovels isn’t easy because we derive intense pleasure from working among plants, tending the soil and keeping things tidy.
Too often, however, we obsess over details no one sees — unless we stupidly point them out. Those gorilla in the picture studies show it would take a thistle the size of King Kong before most guests will notice anything amiss in the perennial borders or vegetable beds. If yours is a reputation of plant nerd, they might compliment you on this towering horticultural achievement.
Dormancy is natural, going all the time isn’t. Not that I’m giving you permission to plop down for the rest of the season. Not hardly. A friend, who died last fall at 102 and gardened until well into her 90s, always advised, “Never let the rocking chair get you.”
She also recognized that rest is not a dirty, four-letter word.
by GardenLover | Apr 15, 2014 | Snapshots
By Debra Knapke
The forsythia is in bloom – here is the first of three snows!
Actually, the snow is a protective cover on this cold morning. Tonight, the temperature is supposed to go down into the high 20’s. 
I will be covering my few cold hardy annuals, but the new leaves on the trees will have to fend for themselves.
