“Southern Home & Garden Show Starts - Myfoxmemphis.com” plus 4 more |
- Southern Home & Garden Show Starts - Myfoxmemphis.com
- Belvedere neighbors bring plantings to a different site - Asheville Citizen-Times
- Home & Garden Calendar - Chattanooga Times Free Press
- Vancouver garden gulps recycled rain - Newsday
- Seeds: Nature's Microchips - Wall Street Journal
| Southern Home & Garden Show Starts - Myfoxmemphis.com Posted: 14 Aug 2009 07:06 PM PDT MEMPHIS, Tenn. - This weekend is the Southern Home & Garden Show. Landscaping and remodeling sectors of the housing industry are showing a lot of promise. If you are a home owner, you can probably use one of just about everything at this year's Southern Home and Garden show. Who would not want to soak for an hour or so after a tough day at work in this hot tub complete with its own stereo system and light show. There is even a little house you can put it in to keep out the bugs. Or maybe a new kitchen is something that would make your day. Now if you are thinking all that is great but people are not buying these days, well think again. The folks at Brewer pools and landscape design say they have done triple the business this summer than the last three years combined. The big Southern Home and Garden show runs Saturday from 9am-6pm.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Belvedere neighbors bring plantings to a different site - Asheville Citizen-Times Posted: 14 Aug 2009 09:29 PM PDT ASHEVILLE — A community garden doesn't have to be a plot in the ground. Members of the Belvedere development in North Asheville fashioned theirs in cedar troughs and pots artfully arranged around the neighborhood pool. Sheila Valenti got the project going. Of course, she had Buncombe master gardener Glenn Palmer as a neighbor, who dug right in alongside other neighbors. Palmer is a frequent contributor to the Ask a Gardener column in Saturday's Home & Garden section. He also chairs the neighborhood horticulture committee. Glenn and I have been talking about this thing for five years, and then Sheila came along, said neighbor Suzon Hawley. Less than a year after Valenti moved into Belvedere, she got the community garden going. After co-chairing an ethical eating group at her church, she and others began to think more about the environmental and global impacts of how we eat. Valenti approached the horticulture committee for community garden seed money. She surveyed neighbors about who would like to participate. Seven families out of the 33 who lived there did. By summer, the vegetables were flourishing, alongside flowers in the troughs and pots, the community garden adding beauty to the community pool. Besides adding fresh produce, the garden has brought us together as a community, said Valenti, who has grown chard and kale, pitty pat squash, pole beans, tomatoes and some basil in her plot. I'm sure we are going to have much more community when it comes time to harvest, said Hawley, who has grown four kinds of tomatoes, five kinds of peppers, four kinds of lettuce and some flowers for cutting in her plot. I never come down here without looking at everybody else's bed.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Home & Garden Calendar - Chattanooga Times Free Press Posted: 07 Aug 2009 08:54 PM PDT [fivefilters.org: unable to retrieve full-text content] * Tuesdays-Saturdays: Pick your own tomatoes at Crabtree Farms, 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Call ahead for harvest availability, 493-9155, ext. 14. * Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through August. Canoe the Chattahoochie River with naturalists from Chattahoochie ... This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Vancouver garden gulps recycled rain - Newsday Posted: 14 Aug 2009 03:10 PM PDT VANCOUVER, Wash. (AP) — On rainy days, stormwater used to rush from the street in front of Patty and David Page's Vancouver house and down their driveway. Rivulets sliced through their garden. The Pages grew concerned that the stormwater carried motor oil, dirt and other pollutants into Salmon Creek, which lies below their house. Both became active in the Watershed Stewards Program. Patty joined the Clark County Clean Water Commission. "I always fancied myself an environmentalist, but it wasn't until I got on the Clean Water Commission and I started learning about stormwater management that I realized how much we take for granted," said Patty, 67. She and her husband added features to capture water so it better nourishes their garden. Another benefit: Runoff then percolates through layers of soil in a way that naturally cleans the water. Upgrades to the in-street storm drain in front of the Page's home helped with runoff problems, but so have alterations to their garden. The Pages replaced their concrete driveway with permeable pavers. They used some of the broken concrete as a pathway. Coffee grounds serve as mortar between the so-called urbanite pavers. The grounds tend to pack better than sand, and also discourage weeds from growing, Patty said. The Pages attached rain barrels to their home's gutters. The stormwater feeds into a drip-irrigation system piped to their vegetable garden and giant 20-year-old blueberry bushes. Overflow runs into a rain garden, where such native plants as Joe Pye Weed help absorb the water. "Plants that are happy with their feet wet but also drought tolerant are most desirable," Patty said. The Pages' home, built in 1975, does not have a lawn, and several areas of the garden never get watered, an approach called xeriscaping. The Pages don't use pesticides, herbicides or synthetic fertilizers. Food waste goes into worm bins to be composted for the garden. The household only required garbage collection four times last year. Patty's environmental passions began with recycling in the 1970s. "When I started recycling, I learned when you go to throw something away, there is no away," she said. "It wasn't until I got into stormwater issues that I really understood that." ___ Information from: The Columbian, http://www.columbian.com Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Seeds: Nature's Microchips - Wall Street Journal Posted: 14 Aug 2009 03:46 PM PDT By GEORGE BALLOnce introduced, Americans invariably inquire what business you're in. While foreigners find the question a bit crass, it's second nature to us. The question reflects our work ethic on the one hand, and our democracy on the other: It's not who you are but what you do that defines you. We mean business. Wall Street high-fliers—investment bankers, brokers and hedge fund profiteers, elaborately upholstered all—tend to regard my business as impossibly outmoded and arcane. Seeds? Plants? Do I, perhaps, belong to the Flat Earth Society as well? When I'm at a social function, I invariably find myself chatting with a Wall Street tribe member. Jared, let's call him, since that's always his name, is a player. A pink-cheeked master of the universe fluent in junk bonds, zero-coupon bonds, REITs and interest rate swaps; he knows what business is all about. His world is one where funds appear from somewhere, most of them go somewhere else, and he pockets the difference. Seeds have no place in Jared's business cosmology. They aren't stylish, prestigious or luxury things. They make a humble showing in the land of high-end bling, although in some traditional cultures they're used as money, and in others these "botanical eggs" are collected rather like jewels. Jared hauls over his pal Nick and says, "Nick, this is George. He's in seeds." They look me up and down, as if I were an exhibit in a natural history museum, their expressions a blend of amusement and disdain. I look them over in turn. I explain that seeds are God's microchips: miniature devices programmed with information and algorithms to generate life. This befuddles them for a moment. Are they missing the next big thing? Or am I playing the players? I spot a friend across the room. "Fellows," I say momentously, as I ready to take my leave. "The future belongs to seeds." Their pink faces flush crimson; they whoop with laughter. Jared and Nick were first-string players in the New Economy, a playground fueled by easy credit, speculation and other people's money. Seeds rightly appeared to them as the barter of another era. And it's true, the seed business has changed little in the last 500 years. The major shift in the last century has been the transition of the home garden from a necessity—how you feed the family—to a hobby for some, a passion for others. A few steps into the 21st century, the role of the home garden has once again changed. Standing in my garden, I can almost hear the stampede of new and rededicated American gardeners. Outfitted in jeans, baseball caps and Wellingtons, clutching their trowels, Americans pioneer their new frontier—their backyard garden. Converging on the home garden is an extraordinary array of trends in tastes, health awareness, lifestyle and demographics—a phenomenon I call a "perfect storm of tipping points." The Old Economy is new again. The major catalyst is the economy's downward spiral. Americans are getting wise to the extraordinary savings they can reap, along with their tomatoes, peppers, green beans and squash. A home garden delivers reliable and extraordinary returns on your investment, a hundred dollars in seeds producing a harvest that would cost you $2,500 at your supermarket. A 25-to-1 return? Snap my striped suspenders! In the last 10 years, Americans have grown exquisitely attuned to issues of nutrition and food safety. Their increasing insistence on food quality—optimally nutritious, fresh, flavorful and safe—is well-founded. The vegetables and fruit bought at the supermarket are picked prematurely, spend weeks in trucks and warehouses exposed to carbon monoxide and other contaminants, and are frequently gassed to boost their colors. To purchase supermarket produce is to compromise on flavor, nutrition, texture and safety—while getting a swift kick in the budget. The local food movement has built upon this kind of new awareness, and farmer's markets are sprouting across the country. But why go to the farmer's market when a few steps away is a garden bursting with fresh tomatoes, string beans and watermelons? It doesn't get more local—or fresher—than this. And in this world of iPhones, PCs, Twitter, 200 cable channels and over the top home entertainment centers, the garden suddenly appears as something new and delightful: a multidimensional, interactive realm of flavor, nourishment, fragrance, pleasure, beauty, recreation, sanctuary and self-realization. At first, we are smitten with our glittering new techno-toys, only to relearn that these clever machines cannot provide what we really want—a sense of connection and authenticity. Welcome to the garden: It doesn't get more real or connected than this. Mr. Ball is chairman of the W. Atlee Burpee & Co. and past president of the American Horticultural Society.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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