A True Garlic Story:

I was planting garlic cloves and it started to rain hard. I decided to call it quits and put the few extra large cloves in my pocket but I forgot to check my pockets before washing my clothes. I realized what I had done after I opened the dryer and was overcome with a strong garlic fragrance that filled the room. I couldn't stop laughing when I saw one of the garlic cloves tumble out of the dryer! Ahh… another memorable gardening moment! 

Spriky and the 2-Liter SIP Comic

We love that people are being exposed to the idea of recycling water bottles and gardening in them. Perfect project for kids, families, adults and small space gardening!

Spritzer, a company in Malaysia did a really cute comic based on my original 2-liter SIP infographic that I designed and posted on GRG last March. I love Woan Ling's illustrations... as an Information Architect, Art Director and gardener I thinks she did a beautiful job on translating the instructions and Spriky the little water drop does a great job of teaching us how to make a SIP. 

Click here to see the original post and more environmentally friendly comics with Spriky.

Stay tuned... we'll be doing more SIP infographics on GRG and at The Singing Seed on Facebook!

Please share!

Lunch From the Garden

Last week I had a lunch meeting with my friend Cassandra. She set a fine table and we ate alfresco on her back porch. A perfect Friday afternoon. I brought a salad of Black Seeded Simpson, Romaine lettuce, Rouge d'Hiver and tender pea shoots. Fresh chunks of feta cheese, pita bread, hummus, and poppy seed dressing accompanied the meal.

Delicious food certainly makes a meeting lots more fun.

I harvested our salad this morning from this bed, one of three rows. These winter sowed lettuces I planted late October 2011 are still being consumed today. Amazing that these plants have been in the ground for 6+ months. This 12' salad bed provided food for our family, friends, and to some who've lost their jobs.

I try and plan ahead... gardening is all about timing. To keep a fresh supply of greens on the table I planted another bed (see below) of chard, bok choi and kale early April. They'll be on the family menu in the next few weeks. After this harvest, I'll plant tomatoes, herbs and warm weather greens in the same bed.

Luckily I planted extra bok choi... the vegetable weevils thought the bok choi was delicious too!

Dinner From the Garden: Spanakopita

Craving Spanakopita...

I harvested 3 lbs. of spinach from the garden...

chopped, mixed and baked.

Then ate it.

Let’s Make 2-Liter SIPs!

Photo: Rachel Glass

My mom and I have really been expanding our gardening knowledge lately. Though there is a lot more to learn, we have been sharing that gardening knowledge with kids and families in our community.

When we were asked to teach children at a special event sponsored by the AUA (Advocates for Urban Agriculture) and Hull House, we decided to teach a workshop on making SIPs. A SIP is a Sub Irrigated Planter. Sub meaning bottom, irrigated meaning watered, and planter meaning… well you know. So a SIP is a planter watered from the bottom.

“First the water at the bottom of the SIP is wicked or sucked up by the fabric. Then, the water comes in contact with the roots and the plant drinks the water,” I explained.

Photo: Rachel Glass

After teaching the Becker girls (above) how to make SIPs I took a quick break. When I came back to the room from my break, I found out one of the girls had taught an adult how to make a SIP all by herself!

 My mom and I invented the seed match game so people could learn what seeds go to which plants.

The Becker girls extraordinarily (unlike some other kids I’ve taught) seemed to want to learn more about gardening. I knew that because when I introduced them to the seed game they enthusiastically started to match the seeds with the pictures of plants.

After the kids constructed their SIPs, we gave them chocolate mint seedlings to plant in their new homemade planters. 

Not long after teaching kids how to make 2-liter SIPs, we taught more children to make SIPs. In this case we taught our Girl Scout troop.

 Please download and share!

Little Green Girl

SIP Instructions updated: 3.17.2012

Seed Starting: Agretti and Onion Update

 

 

Here's a close up of Agretti seedlings just a few days old. They look like mini serpents! H2 grew her's in a cute mini travel SIP.

 

Planted in the soil they start to take on a new form.

 

The onions are coming along; they pop out of the soil folded in half then straighten up. 

Next seed starting project is winter sowing!

Starting Seeds: My Favorite Heirloom Seed Catalogue

The Baker Creek Heirloom Seed catalogue is one of my favorites. I await its arrival in the mail each year and then spend hours viewing the beautiful heirloom vegetables, fruits, herbs, and flowers. It’s amazing that these seeds come from more than 70 different countries!

Jere and Emilee Gettle, a 30-something couple, own and operate this unique seed company and are passionate about wanting to preserve heirloom seeds so that future generations can grow healthy, pure, nutritious food. When Jere was a child he took a strong interest in gardening. At 17 he launched his first seed catalog, consisting of 70 different seeds. Today his catalogue boasts more than 1300 varieties!




In 2010 Jere and his wife purchased Comstock, Ferre & Co. in Wethersfield, Connecticut, the oldest continuously operated seed company in the US, dating back to 1820. Here’s a great video of Jere discussing the seed industry, how he collects his heirloom seeds, and the history of Comstock, Ferre & Co.

Here are some Baker Creek tomatoes we’ve grown... beautiful and tasty too! This year I’m going to focus on letting Little Green Girl save her own seeds. I hope it will teach her how important it is to save heirloom seeds for future generations and also how plants grow, die, and give life again.

Chocolate Stripe

Orange Flesh Purple Smudge

Black Cherry

Violet Jasper

Lastly, here’s a great video on everything you wanted to know about seeds and more. Enjoy!

Winter Garden Trial

Today it was 25 degrees in Chicago. We expect to have a severe winter storm with 6" to 8" inches of snow by midnight. Yesterday it was 50 degrees and you wouldn't have known it was Jan 11th. Either way, our winter garden is still showing signs of life. Here's proof that you CAN grow a winter garden in Chicago. Growing anything makes me happy no matter what season it is.

Under the low tunnels the greens are doing well. I have to admit I'm a little nervous about the unusual amount of heavy snow we are going to get tonight, hoping the weight of the wet snow won't bring down the low tunnels.

Fancy red lettuce and spinach

Mache

Mustard Greens

Lactino Kale

Not everything faired as well... but that's ok. After-all, I have to remind myself that it's a winter garden trial.

The beginnings of a winter garden.
A different time. Another season.
October 23, 2011

The O'Hare Airport Aeroponic Vegetable Garden

O'Hare airport now has an aeroponic vertical garden in terminal 2 and 3 and the restaurants on site utilize the fresh produce. Check out the video below to learn more.

Salad to go please!

Debbie's Garden Tour: Melons

The Melon Garden







Japanese Hime Kansen Melon





Tigger Melon





Japanese New Melon





Korean Ginkau Melon

A Children's Garden

Last month I attended the AHS (American Horticulture Society) Children and Youth Symposium in Lansing Michigan. Attendees came from across the nation and as far as India. There were teachers, garden educators, Master Gardeners, horticulturist, scientist and more. We came from very different educational backgrounds but together we were like-minded people passionate about teaching and sharing our knowledge about plants and gardening to children and youth. During the 4-day symposium we enjoyed some interesting workshops, shared resources, networked, and took part in 3 field trips to some children’s gardens: Michigan 4-H Children’s Garden, Dow Children’s Garden and the Lena Meijer Children’s Garden.



I was inspired by the people I met, what I learned, and the garden visits. Here’s a recap of my favorites:

The Michigan 4-H Children’s Garden

The Michigan 4-H Children's Garden has over 56 individual garden themes built upon a mere half acre of land-- quite small in contrast to newer gardens designed for children but every inch is packed with creativity, inspiration, interactivity and fun. This seems to be one of the best ways to engage kids to learn about plants and gardening.



What’s 4-H stand for? The H’s stand for Head, Heart, Hands and Health... the whole person. It’s the largest out of school program in the nation and the clover logo and motto is to “Make The Best Better.” Their philosophy is “Learning by Doing.”



Jane Taylor the original curator of the 4-H Michigan Children's garden and horticulturist designed the garden in 1993 based on ideas and feedback from children. Today Dr. Norm Lownds the curator, and Jessica Wright, the education coordinator, provide educational programs to over 10,000 people each year including schools and families.

Thank you Jane Taylor (left) for blazing the trail. You have been inspiring and encouraged us to share our love of the garden with children.

Meet Dr. Nathen Phillips, who enjoyed playing a brilliant horticulturist and tour guide at the 4-H Children’s garden. Come fall, he’ll trade in his white lab coat and head back to school. He hopes to study Computer Science at MSU in the future. Nathen was very knowledgeable and showed us most of the unusual plants in the garden. Thanks for the fun tour Nathen. Loved your enthusiasm!

Here's a Quick Response code or QR code. These "techie" looking signs were sprinkled through-out the garden next to various plants. Attendees were given i-Pods (smart phones work too) pre-loaded with an app that scanned and read the code on the sign and then linked to a web page containing plant information. QR codes were originally created in Japan in 1994 by Toyota to quickly decode content. Who would ever think they would be so useful as a learning tool for a garden?

Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunt game. Players are given GPS trackers to help locate a cache/small box loaded with treasures within the garden. Only one rule: if you take something, you must leave something, and then you are required to write something about your visit in the log book. Geocaching apps are now available for select smart phone, I’ll have to check this out one day and leave some seeds in a cache.

One of the highlights of the garden was experiencing some unusual plants. Many of us were in awe and wonderment over a plant that smelled EXACTLY like peanut butter. The Melianthus “Honey Bush” plant may be consumed as a tea and our tour guide noted that the peanut butter essence has also been utilized in food products.

This beautiful plant, a Senna didymobotrya, smelled just like the buttered popcorn you get at the movies. I was tempted to taste it, but didn’t. I had some serious doubts that it wouldn't have tasted as good as it smelled.

Here’s an eyeball plant or an Spilanthes oleracea, placing the flower on your tongue can numb it. It's also been prescribed by herbalist for toothaches.

Do plants really pass gas? Guess this one does, and it’s highly flammable. Here’s proof that you shouldn’t hold a flame to it either.

If there’s one non-edible plant that I’ve probably take for granted, its gotta be a cotton plant. Seeing how each pod (top) can only produce a small amount of cotton (bottom) I began to ponder how many plants and pods would be needed to produce a medium size T-shirt. Anyone know?

I loved the little tea garden area where cups and saucers were surrounded by various types of herbs.

Across from the tea garden was the peanut butter and jelly sandwich planter-- peanuts plants on top with strawberries in the middle.

Here’s the very popular dance chime. Check out the video of how it works.

Jessica Wright (left) the education coordinator and teacher extraordinaire at the 4-H Children's Garden and Keri, a happy symposium attendee. Note: The bag on Keri's head was the result of an ice-breaker facilitated by Jessica, not a bad hair day.

Welcome to the Curiosity Classroom which is part of the 4- H Garden program. Dr. Norm Lownds is the mastermind behind the QR codes in the children's garden. He is also known as Dr. Norm, a super hero on kidscom.com which is a virtual world for kids that integrates plant science education, gardening, cooking, social networking and more for kids. He's helped develop the Kidscom.com site and holds on-line learning lab discussion (chats) on various topics. His commitment, energy and passion for teaching children is extremely creative.

The Butterfly Garden Workshop

Nancy Sale is a butterfly expert and generously shared her knowledge and expertise with us at one of many symposium workshops. We were shown beautiful caterpillars and cocoon, we learned about plants that attract butterflies, habitats, and grant resources to fund butterfly garden projects. I learned a great deal from the class and hope to grow some additional butterfly plants and certify my Monarch Butterfly Waystation next summer.

Here's Nancy looking for caterpillars on kolrabi.

I believe this is a Swallowtail queen. Look closely and you'll see a triple set of antennas.

This is a Monarch butterfly cocoon, it seems to resemble a nugget of jade and the gold detail like fine jewelry.







The Michigan Herb Association

On Friday night the Michigan Herb Association prepared and served us wonderful appetizers with herbs freshly picked from the 4-H Children’s garden. Beautifully prepared and presented, I enjoyed every morsel and also learned how to make cheese rosettes with a Girolle machine.

Cherry tomatoes, basil and marinated cheese on mini skewers. Beautiful!

Here are a few members of the Michigan Herb Association volunteers that made us the incredible appetizers. Thank you again ladies, the appetizers were amazing!

During the Friday cocktail hour a nice lady demonstrated how to uses a Girollo, a machine that makes beautiful cheese rosettes from Raclette, a handmade Swiss cheese. The Racette cheese from Black Star Farms in Sutton Bay Michigan was nothing like I had ever tasted... rich, creamy, smooth, velvety soft and wonderful served on top of fresh cut juicy apples slices!

The Dow Children's Garden



Coolest scarecrow I've ever seen!

Melissa Butkiewicz is a horticulturist at Dow Children's garden and also runs the Growin' Gardeners program, an award winning 10 week gardening program for families wanting to learn how to garden and grow their own food. The program currently has 84 garden plots and 270 participants: everyone learns the basics of plant growth, weed and insect control and the use of gardening tools.

Meet some mini Master Gardeners who have been involved with the Growin' Gardeners program for many years; they've enjoyed selecting different vegetables and herbs and growing them in their 4' X 4' garden bed.

Here are some of the 84 Growin' garden beds tended by over 270 gardeners, as a part of the program each family makes their own scarecrow.





The symposium came to a close after 4 days. Jane Taylor was the closing keynote speaker and was funny, spirited and compassionate. I think many of us felt fortunate to hear firsthand about her life's work with the 4-H Children's garden and to learn more about the children's nature movement that was started by Liberty Baily back in 1909. His book "The Nature-Study Idea" is now available and downloadable for free at google books.



Fern Culhane and Penny Colgan-Davis, my dorm buddies at the symposium, also blogged about Jane's work and the founders of the nature movement at pennyandferngardeningwithkids.blogspot.com.

I believe this planter summed up the purpose of our symposium and what we shared.