When I started gardening, I ransacked the seed displays and catalogs in search of new tomato varieties to try. Over the years, though, I’ve settled in to a few reliable favorites, and with life catching up to me and a book to write, I have less time to be experimental with the veggie patch. Sure, maybe one day I’ll give those white cherry tomatoes a shot, but for now, I have my snacking tomato, my dehydrating tomato, my salad tomato, my paste tomato, my yellow tomato and my all-purpose slicer and vegetable soup tomato. No need to mess with what works.

Now that I know what tomatoes grow well in my garden and that my family will eat, I save the seeds from one year to plant the next, sparing me the temptation of the seed catalogs and garden center displays. Seed saving is as old as agriculture. While most seed saving is as easy as letting a plant produce mature seeds and collecting them, tomatoes are a bit trickier. Although I’ve grown tomato plants from seeds that I saved by simply spreading the seed glop out to dry, rinsing and fermenting the seeds using the process detailed below produces a much higher germination rate with just a little bit of work. (continue reading…)

©iStockphoto.com - bunnylady

We’re well into August, but summer’s not done yet! Depending on where you live, high temperatures and hot weather can still stick around for quite some time. For many people, taking in a dip in a swimming pool is a favorite way to beat the heat and cool down. But have you ever considered the environmental impact of swimming pools? Obviously, they require lots of water, as well as chemicals and energy to run the pumps and filters that keep them clean. The following tips can help you reduce water loss, minimize the use of potentially-harmful chemicals and lower the energy needed to maintain your pool.

Choose Eco-Friendly Materials to Build Your Pool

If you’re building a new pool, opt for recycled, re-purposed materials. Doing so will keep these materials from winding up in a landfill and can also slash your energy output. An eco-friendly option for a pool foundation is ICF (Insulating Concrete Foam), which is “made of concrete mixed with other materials,” such as “Styrofoam coffee cups, wood waste, shavings and chips,” to help minimize heat loss, explains the Web site, GreenYour.com (1). Old recycled glass can be formed into new pool tiles, creating mosaics or patterns on the pool floor or around the pool. Water-based, low-VOC paints are great choices, too (1). (continue reading…)

I like to garden. Every year, keep vigilant watch for the first sign of winter’s end so I can plant spinach, lettuce and snap peas, then watch for the last frosts so I can plant the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash and delicate herbs. And that doesn’t even get into the orchard or the berry garden, where I grow apples, pears, peaches, plums, cherries, grapes, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, elderberries and currants.

My veggie patch may be bigger than my first dorm room, but it doesn’t look like those pretty magazine spreads featuring gardens full of lush plants. Not even close. Back in the cool-weather veggie season, it looked like this: (continue reading…)

Cuisinart GreenGourmet

Thanks to new green cookware options you can say goodbye to toxic Teflon pans filled with dangerous chemicals that off-gas into the air and can possibly leach into your food.

Cuisinart’s line of non-stick cookware  is PTFE and PFOA free, which means that it contains none of the nasty chemicals that Teflon and similar non-stick coatings are formulated with.

Cuisinart’s GreenGourmet pans are petroleum free, have a hard anodized interior, an aluminum alloy core, and a Cuisinart Ceramica (TM) interior which is what makes the pan non-stick.

So what does all this mean? Keep reading to find out. (continue reading…)

ⓒ Janet Harriett

Planting a fruit tree or two is a great way to increase your family’s fruit consumption. A mature standard apple tree produces around 10 bushels of apples. To put that in perspective, a large laundry hamper holds about 2 bushels. Those five hamper loads of apples are ready for picking over the course of a couple of weeks.

If you don’t want to learn to can - though it’s not that hard - dwarf fruit trees produce smaller crops of the same delicious fruit varieties and take up less yard space, making them great for smaller lots. No matter what size fruit tree, growing tree fruits requires some homework.

(continue reading…)

©iStockphoto.com - kati1313

Grapes were one of the last types of fruit I started growing. The instructions for training and pruning grapes can be intimidating for a beginning fruit gardener, especially since growing grapes requires building a support structure. While I am handy at many things around the house, engineering and installing a support structure capable of holding up for 30 or 40 years is not one of them. Grape vines should be trained to a trellis or arbor, though if you plant them in a garden arbor where you expect to spend a lot of time, be aware that ripening grapes tend to attract yellowjackets.

Red-skinned grapes contain more antioxidants than the green varieties. Select varieties based on what you want to do with them. If you’re looking to grow snacking grapes, you’ll want a seedless table grape variety like Canadice, Flame, Reliance or Himrod. For juice or homemade winemaking, a wine grape like Concord, Delaware or Catawba fits the bill. Wine grapes often have a slip skin, where the skins slip readily off. Wine grapes are perfectly edible out of hand, but if you or your kids are used to the grapes from the supermarket, the sensation of the squishy grape innards shooting out of the skins inside your mouth takes a bit of getting used to. (continue reading…)

ⓒ iStockPhoto - gewitterkind

It’s officially summer! Sure, that means sun and fun, but also soaring temps and sweltering humidity. So, when you’re sticky and sweaty, what can you do to keep cool? Air conditioning isn’t the only way to go – plenty of other options use less energy and have lower costs. Check out these tips to beat the heat:

Become a Fan of Fans

Fans are a great way to create a breeze and move around stale air. In particular, attic fans are ideal because hot air rises, and a lot of heat comes into your home through the roof (1). Also, having a ceiling fan in your bedroom will circulate and cool the air, making your sleeping environment cool and comfortable (2). (continue reading…)