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Book Review: Grocery Gardening

Me & Grocery Gardening

The first book I want to share with you is called Grocery Gardening – Planting, Preparing and Preserving Fresh Food (Cool Springs Press). I like this book because I love growing veggies and this book has a lot of great recipes, interesting facts and helpful tips.

When I first opened the book, I was pleasantly surprised by the layout.  It starts by giving the basics on composting, pest control, disease and picking a garden location – which is especially important for new veggie gardeners. Then it moves into the specific items you can grow by categories: herbs, fruit, and veggies.  In close it provides additional information on preserving and disease and pests.

I like how the information on the featured herbs, fruit and veggies is easy to read and scan — perfect for people like me who skim read. Each featured item includes six or more pages of facts, fun quotes from the authors, planting & growing information, varieties, produce selection & harvest, preserving/preparation methods and recipes!

In short, it includes the basics on planting, preparing and preserving fresh food.  Just like it states on the cover.

You’ll enjoy this book if you’re starting a vegetable garden, interested in learning more about growing veggies, like to cook and/or just enjoy reading a well designed book on a subject you love. My only complaint is not knowing if I should put this beautiful book with the cook books or the gardening books!

Grocery Gardening was written by Jean Ann Van Krevelen, Amanda Thomsen, Robin Ripley and Teresa O’Connor.  It’s available now – I picked mine up on Amazon.com.

Here’s are a few examples of how the pages are laid out:

Beautiful Pictures and Easy to Read

Facts, Fun Author Quotes & Recipes

Silence of the Bees – A Must Watch PBS Video!

Everyone (especially gardeners) should watch this PBS video on “Colony Collapse Disorder.”  It was required viewing for our Master Gardener training.  I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not hand-pollinate flowers, crops and fruit trees because we’ve killed off all our honey bees.  

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/silence-of-the-bees/full-episode/251/

Collecting nectar & pollen from our chive blossoms

Garden Show Pictures – My Favorite Display Gardens

Yesterday I attended the Northwest Flower & Garden Show and loved every minute of it. Today I’m going to share my pictures of the display gardens. Below are my show favorites; you can also click here to see all my show pictures.

I'm incorporating these evergreens into my garden for sure!

I love this rock/cement water feature.

I want this Golden Hinoki Cypress!

Loving the Corylus avellana 'Contorta'

Great green winter interest.

Great cold frame! Beautiful!

Cute veggie & tulip filled pots

My favorite! Maybe I can add one these to my next yard?

Aside from these pictures, you can click here to see all my show pictures on Flickr.

You Know It’s ‘Officially’ Spring in Seattle…

In case you didn’t know, the Northwest Flower and Garden Show is going on NOW at the Convention Center in Seattle.  I look forward to this event all winter (and all year for that matter).  And really can’t imagine a better way to kick off spring than looking at display gardens, shopping for garden stuff and buying new plants!

For those of you not living in the Seattle area (since that’s only excuse for not attending yourself), I’ll do my best to capture the display gardens in a post following the show. I’ll also share some of my favorite vendors, like Glass Gardens NW in booth #1104 (this is where I get my glass pond floats)!

For the folks attending or working at the show, I’ll be wondering around all day Saturday.  I should be pretty easy to spot in my new black Hunter boots.  If that’s not easy enough, here are the seminars I plant to attend:

Hood Room

Rainier Room

For more information on the show, visit the official site at http://www.gardenshow.com/seattle/index/.

See you at the show!

Welcome My New Hunter Boots!

 

Used Armor All on left boot. Right boot has 'blooming.'

 

I’m happy to report I bought my first pair of Hunter rubber boots yesterday!  I really wanted a ‘fun’ color (like lime green), but ended up buying black. I just can’t help it.

I’ve been looking online for a pair of black Hunter boots in size 8 but they’re always out of stock. I guess this is another reason I should’ve picked a different color. Anyway. I finally found a pair at the Bellevue Nordstrom — the last one.

When I called about the boots they explained to me the boots had a white film or ‘blooming’ all over them. Apparently a natural aging effect. This wasn’t discouraging to me since Nordstrom has a fair return policy and they mentioned Armor All would clean up the ‘blooming.’

Since I’m impatient and always a sucker for something that needs to be fixed, I bought the boots. And guess what, Armor All works great!

10/13/2010 Update:

I was on the Hunter Boots Web site and found their recommendation to fix the blooming:

Every Hunter rubber wellington boot is made from 100% natural ingredients and small amounts of wax are included in the rubber compound during the vulcanization process that is used to make each pair. When exposed to certain environmental factors, this wax can “bloom” to the surface and appear as white marks.

This is not a defect with the boots, and is completely natural. If this does happen, you can wipe this blooming clean with a warm, damp cloth. We also recommend UV Tech* Spray which can be found at boating, hunting or fishing stores.