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 | Feb 21, 2014 | Special Topic
By Debra Knapke
Everyone knows that old saw about the weather: wait ten minutes and it will change. As I sit here on Feb. 20 looking outside at snow, watching lightning and listening to thunder, I wonder… is this someone’s idea of a joke?
The birds have been very entertaining and stories have been playing out all winter. I’ve watched them huddle in our evergreens, and in the weeping purple beech and climbing hydrangea that are close to our house during the subzero days.
Michael asked the same question I did, but mine was not about cardinals. What is with that titmouse that has been singing in the serviceberry for the past three weeks? It turns out HE is looking for his next mate. Hopefully, she will show up before he loses his voice.
We have an enterprising Cooper’s hawk who has scoped out our feeders. Patience is something we humans often lack, not so a Cooper’s hawk. Picture the hawk, sitting in our ginkgo tree, 25 feet from the feeders, waiting for the right moment. In a flash she* streaks to the feeders and is back in the tree with a male house finch clutched in her talons. The feeders are clanking together and there is not another bird in sight. Various birds have been breakfast or lunch for this hawk, even a large mourning dove.
One day her patience was not rewarded. Several birds sat in the serviceberry not moving. Birds preen, flutter, shake or do any number of movements as they wait for their turn at the feeders. No birds at the feeders, one mourning dove huddled against the house also not moving, no hawk in the ginkgo… so this human went outside to investigate. The hawk was three feet above me, sitting on the gutter right above the feeders. I am imagining the look of disgust she gave me as she flew away; hungry.
Every year I’ve watched for the color change in the male goldfinches. Like the titmouse this is a signal that the male goldfinch is ready to breed and looking for his lady-love. Their drab gray-yellow plumage transforms to pure gold. Even though birding books state that the change occurs in mid to late Spring, I will swear that I have observed one male goldfinch that is sporting more golden feathers than the others that are visiting our feeders.
While watching the birds I am noticing the difference between the bloom “show” from last year to this year. If this year seems to be extremely cold, consider the Winter of 2012-13 which was extremely mild. We had an extended warm-up in January and February. At this time last year, my snowdrops had been up and blooming for three weeks. There is nary a sign of them in any parts of my garden this year.
There are more winter animal and plant stories and they are all down in my journal or captured by my camera. I will enjoy them next year as I try to remember what happened when.
* I’m guessing. Females are a larger than the males – and she is big – but I did not have the opportunity to measure her.
by GardenLover | Feb 17, 2014 | Special Topic
By Michael Leach
What could prompt a cardinal to sing on the recent near-zero mornings? Personally I find little to sing about these days, especially with frozen tonsils a distinct possibility when inhaling deeply.
Certainly this early bird can’t expect to be the first at the worms. They’re close to China by now to escape my permafrost backyard.
If the male of the species does something seemingly stupid, like singing in the rain or arctic temperatures, instincts relating to sex or territory are usually to blame. Could it be he will win choice territory with these daring, macho solos? In recent years I’ve noticed male cardinals start singing in early February. My guess is growing day length could be the trigger, rather than temperatures.
Yet in a few weeks temperature will play a part. Temperature helps time the birds’ songfests, not their desire to make morning coffee a more pleasant experience.
Birds need to send their messages as far as possible. While they probably know little more than I do about the physics of sound, they’e learned to take advantage of air temperatures.
In her engagingly educational book, On Looking: 11 Walks with Expert Eyes (Scribner), Alexandra Horowitz writes delightfully about walks she took with gurus in various fields of study. One is a sound designer and engineer, who works in theaters and many other venues. Birds take advantage of air inversions according to him.
Sound moving though a warm layer of air, with a cool layer nearby, travels farther before weakening and fading away. “This is why you will hear the most birds singing at dusk and dawn. After a cold night, when the earth is chilled, the ground layer is cool and the layers above the treetops are warmer …,” Horowitz writes. “A bird singing at dawn can send his tuneful song farther along the treetops than it otherwise would.”
At noon few birds sing because the warm air diffuses the sound making singing a wasted effort. (Perhaps, like me, they prefer a short siesta.)
All this is fine for warmer weather singing but this daring cardinal reminds me of Thomas Hardy’s poem, “The Darkling Thrush.”
The poet describes a depressingly bleak winter dusk, something all Midwesterners have experienced once too often this bitter season. He hears a thrush “… in blast-beruffled plume” singing “..a full-hearted evensong of joy illimited.”
He continues,
So little cause for caroling
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
Forgive me science, but this cardinal is a glowing, red herald of brighter days ahead.
by GardenLover | Feb 12, 2014 | Special Topic
By Abby Fullen
There’s no doubt this winter season has been a tough one, and just within the past couple of years we were thirsty for help to get through the drought. What’s a gardener to do with these almost impossible extremes? Well don’t fret, because with some simple tips you’ll be well on your way to maintaining a healthy garden through the brutal winter cold and fan-waving heat.
Start by familiarizing yourself with the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map and get to know the plants best suited for that zone. The Midwest is generally in zones 3-6.
According to our blogger horticulturist, Debra Knapke, you should keep these ideas in mind for the cold:
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Plants don’t feel wind chill. We may not be able to feel our faces by the time we get to the car, but plants are tougher than they look.
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But wind can be a problem for our broad-leaf evergreens especially on a sunny day. Keep your plants protected from potential high-wind areas to avoid winter-kill or winter-burn of the leaves.
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Leave the snow where it is. The snow cover insulates the plant from the cold.
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Don’t prune your big-leaf hydrangeas right now. They may look dead, and very well may be, but if you touch them now there’s no chance the flower buds make it through the winter. Have faith in your plants.
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Raised beds will provide the soil a better chance to warm faster.
And here are tips for the heat:
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Provide your plants the moisture they need by mulching. This will retain that precious water. And spread it out; the more you plant, the more competition for water.
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Shade. Pay attention to how much sun your plants really need and plant accordingly.
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Water in the mornings, and evenly. Use a soaker hose to prevent water loss from evaporation and disease to your plants. Plus you’ll save on the water bill.
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Be gentle. Just as you conserve energy by lazing at the side of your pool, gardens need the same treatment. Encourage flowers to continue blooming by deadheading faded and browning flowers around once a week, but leave it at that.
- Have patience. Don’t jump for the fertilizer; your plants will be conserving energy during this heat. Give them the time they need.
Hardy “Proven Winners” favorites for the cold:
Here are some “Proven Winners” favorites for the heat:
As you gaze at your garden with longing for a better harvest or display, turn that frown upside down and know that with the right planning, your garden can and WILL prevail.
Bio: 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 | Nov 19, 2013 | Special Topic
By Michael Leach
Are you a guilty gardener? Do you appear to mourn the passing of the growing season with appropriate remorse and gloom, but can’t quite hide a twinkle in your ey
e? Is there a certain hollowness in your sighs and tut-tuts about the demise of the gardening season and onset of winter?
I confess to feeling relief after the first walloping frost blackens tender plants. And why not? There are just so many times I can handle the “ings” of gardening: watering, weeding, fertilizing, trimming, raking, sweeping, fretting, pleading, and cursing. (Plenty of opportunity remains for that last item, as watering houseplants is always fraught with spills, drips and splatters. But I digress.)
My advice — rejoice. We are into the season when the landscape becomes a grand dried floral arrangement.
Granted, chores remain. For me there are still evergreens to trim and shape. This I do around Thanksgiving to provide materials for a few Christmasy, winter-theme decorations. Outdoor containers are stuffed with evergreen branches and red twig dogwood stems to make them seem lifelike. Fortunately these branches won’t need a single “ing” for months. About th
e time they begin looking ratty, it’s practically pansy season, and life is returning to the scene.
Even dragging the heavy patio chairs into the garage, has a certain delight –I’ve almost crossed every item off the chore list.
There is one gardening tie that even a killing frost can’t break. Being fond of fresh food, I cultivate cold-tolerant collards, kale and turnips under row covers in the vegetable garden. They are largely on autopilot. Harvests tend to be skimpy in January but by late February, longer and slightly w
armer days prompt them to grow again. Sort of the same thing happens to me in late February.
By then I tire of hours of reading, tucked under a thick afghan on the sofa, whiling away weeks of seemingly endless nights.
We gardeners are rather like children building sand castles. We play amongst our plants for months. Somewhere about mid-autumn the fun wears thin, but we refuse to admit it. Children secretly hope for a big wave to give them a respite, gardeners a killing frost. We return refreshed and excited to our pleasures, whether in the surf or the soil.
