Heirloom tomatoes and other vegetables growing in popularity (with 5 tips for growing a bountiful crop)
July 13th, 2011
A generation or two ago, heirloom seeds were a bit of a mystery.
“Nobody knew what heirlooms were a piece of jewelry from Grandma?” John Torgrimson says. “Now it has a certain panache.”
Torgrimson is the executive director of Seed Savers Exchange, a nonprofit organization that over the past 35 years has helped create that panache by educating gardeners about heirlooms and preserving the heritage of hundreds of vegetables. Seeds from its collection have ended up in gardens around the world, whether sold directly to gardeners or to seed companies.
“I think we helped develop the heirloom concept for people,” he says. Read more…
HOW MANY MOMENTS LIKE THIS have we each had in our gardening lives? Moments when the mulch, just applied, by the next morning has run out of the beds and downhill after a flash storm, or the lawn wed just cleared of winters debris is re-covered in it a day later when another swirling snow blows in. Moments when (fill in the blank with your latest mishap). Sometimes I feel like gardening is a series of what as kids we used to call do-overs, except Im not sure I always want the second chance to do the thing again. I guess our dear doodling friend Andre Jordan agrees. You?
Some delightful weeds I’ve been hosting behind the garage.
How you define weeds is intrinsically connected to how you define gardening. For someone whose garden consists of little more than a front lawn, a back lawn, and maybe a shrubbery surrounding the house, a weed could be anything higher than grass level that does not flower.