Today’s Garden offers a selection of tips, techniques, and information for home gardeners growing annual flowers and vegetables from seed and bedding plants.
Complete Article List
Homegrown In The City
Cucumbers are cool and peppers are hot as many people are showing renewed interest in growing their own vegetables. Today's vegetable gardens come in a variety of sizes, shapes and styles, and can be found in a backyard, on a patio, even on a rooftop.
The Healing Garden
In the best of times flowers help us celebrate the joyous occasions in our lives - the birth of a child, a wedding, career or personal success. In more difficult times plants give us hope and inspiration to meet the challenges of life.
New Beginnings
This is the time of year for new beginnings. Spring signals the start of another cycle of growth. The warming temperatures and longer days reawaken nature and people. This year try something new yourself - become a gardener.
Enhancing the Value of Your Home
Spring is an active time in the real estate market. Agents are busy with open houses and showings as people move across town and across the country. Homebuyers are searching for that perfect new home for their family, while home sellers look for ways to make their house stand out from others on the market.
Green Spaces or Parking Lots
"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot." Today green space continues to disappearturned into another mall, fast-food restaurant or subdivision. To counter this assault on the environment, it is important that an appreciation of the outdoors is nurtured in adults and children.
Why Garden? The National Garden Bureau's Top Ten
Cell phones, PDAs, and MP3 players have become the tools of our modern lives. But it wasnt that long ago that a shovel, a patch of soil and a bag of seeds were the only tools needed to provide sustenance and satisfaction. Gardening was a part of daily life. Ask any gardener today why they garden and youll get a variety of reasons why its important to them.
Great Gardeners Use Seed™ Program Takes The Mystery Out Of Gardening
The National Garden Bureau, through its Great Gardeners Use Seed™ program, will be distributing information that emphasizes the ease of starting flowers and vegetables from seed for home gardeners. The campaign will use information, instruction, and promotion through the Bureau and member companies to encourage gardeners young and old to explore the benefits of starting their plants from seed.
Fall and Winter Greens & Reds & More
When the trees begin to show fall colors, your garden can too. Unless you live in a mild winter climate, you may not have thought about planting for a fall harvest that can continue even into the winter.
Great Gardeners Use Seed - Everything Old Is New Again
It is curious that at the same time modern hybrid plants are getting attention, heirlooms are garnering more appeal among home gardeners. So, what are heirlooms? They are cultivated plant varieties that have been grown for at least 50 years, time-tested and open-pollinated. Chiefly of European descent, heirloom seeds have been passed down from one generation to the next. Through the centuries, people selected out and conserved seeds of those plants with enhanced characteristics such as flavor, vigor, scent, and local hardiness. Heirloom seeds were often among the few belongings immigrants brought to America. Many heirlooms are still being kept in families and some are now available to gardeners everywhere.
Vegetables - The Fresher, The Better
Even in the dead of winter, you can recall the juiciness and delightful sweetness that burst forth in your mouth, as you tasted the first sun-warmed cherry tomato picked straight from your garden. The first bite is most memorable, yet the superb flavor is there in every tomato you harvest through the season. In fact, the quintessence of any homegrown vegetable or fruit is superior to comparable store-bought veggies, or even those purchased at a farm stand. The fresher, the better-taste, texture, and especially nutrients.
Nurturing Seed To Bloom
The tragic events of the 11th of September 2001 changed the world, the way we view it, and how we relate to it. In the aftermath, more and more people are seeking solace and tranquility-their own quiet personal space. Many have turned to gardening for solace. Any time spent in the garden is beneficial-to the gardener, humanity in general, and to the Earth.
Herbs - The Name Game
Etymology (the history of a word; tracing its development and transmission from one language to another) is fascinating. And nowhere more so than in the names of herbs—culinary, medicinal, dye, and other useful plants.
Weeding Through the Web
One could say there is an internet revival occurring. Sites such as eBay are seeing a surge in sales. Business travelers are using the internet to find the best pricing for airfares and hotel room rates.
Edamame
This ancient Asian vegetable is rapidly growing in popularity in America. In Japan, the pods are popped open and eaten out of hand as we would eat peanuts out of the shell—the perfect accompaniment to a frosty glass of beer.
Edible Flowers
Edible flowers have become familiar garnishes in countless restaurants—the 21st century's equivalent of parsley. However, like parsley, most people don't eat them.
America In Bloom
What better place than Chicago to celebrate the efforts of towns and cities all over the country to beautify their communities? The grand winner of America In Bloom's 2002 big city competition category, this "city in a garden," is a magnificently blooming example of the benefits of community beautification and greening.
Reach for the Sky With Vertical Plants
Growing plants vertically makes good use of space in the smaller gardens people tend nowadays. Vertical plants also make harvesting easier--no stooping to cut the fruits from the vines.
Tropical Times-A Garden From Seeds
The lush landscapes of the tropics seem unattainable to most gardeners but the lure is irresistible. Actually, many of the plants we use regularly in the garden come from tropical climates — we simply think of them and use them as annuals.
Veggies in Containers
Gardening in a container is much like gardening in the ground; think of it as simply using a smaller "plot." No need for a large yard to enjoy your own garden of edible delights.
Butterfly Gardening for Kids
Winged jewels of the air ... flutterbys ... no matter what you call butterflies, they entrance everyone. Planting a garden to attract them is one of the best ways to get children of all ages interested in gardening and nature, while introducing them to a bit of science at the same time.
Planting Pride in Your Community
Communities enhance the lives of residents in many ways, but one of the best examples is the beauty of flowers, gardens, and treescapes. Flowers spilling from lamppost baskets along Main Street or meandering on a highway median and parks looking neat raise people's spirits.
Designer Gardens
Is your garden a certain style? Or is it eclectic, which in gardening terms means a little of this, a little of that?
Sow What? Annuals!
Serious gardeners plant perennials not annuals, right? Well, yes and no. They plant perennials for beauty that returns from one year to the next, but they also indulge in annuals to bring season-long color to the garden. Annuals
The 21st Century Victory Garden
During World War II, experienced and first-time gardeners in urban, suburban, and rural areas planted vegetable gardens to grow produce. Many turned over patches of lawn to create gardens large enough to feed their families through the summer and, sometimes, to preserve some for winter use.
Back to Basics: How to Start Seeds Indoors
Gardening is a wonderful pastime and filling your garden with plants you started yourself from seeds simply doubles the pleasure. If you think growing from seed is difficult and takes too much time and equipment, the steps and tips here will dispel those apprehensions.
Plant Genealogy
Some people think all new varieties are hybrids. This is not true. There are new flowers and vegetables introduced each year that are open pollinated (OP) varieties.
GrowLab® Gardening in the Inner City
In the essay that she wrote to accompany her application for the National Garden Bureau's Youth Garden Grant, teacher Linda Semenek put it very succinctly: "With this grant my students can have the experience of a lifetime."
Giving from the Garden
"Giving from the garden is a simple, deeply satisfying way to meet a growing need." — a gardener participating in Plant A Row for the Hungry.
Eating Fresh is Eating Best
Vegetable gardeners are always asked: "Why do you spend so much time and effort growing your food, when it is readily available at food stores?" Good question.
It's The Dirt
To the uninitiated, gardening seems to be all about plants. Certainly each of the seemingly infinite variety of trees, shrubs, flowers, vegetables and grasses is fascinating.
Annual Attraction
Say "flowers" and most people think "annuals." Of course there are all kinds of flowering plants for residential landscapes.Perennials, vines, shrubs, trees - they all have flowers.
Lessons Learned with GrowLab®
It is not absolutely clear who is more enthusiastic about the GrowLab in Mr. Flint's classroom--the class or Mr. Flint.
The "Extended Family" Garden
The hot, new trend in home gardening is to treat vegetables as decorative plants and mingle them in beds and borders with flowers. Since each plant, like a person, belongs to a family, growing many diverse plants together in a bed creates an "Extended Family" garden.
Networking for Nutrition
A million pounds of garden fresh produce sounds like an enormous amount of food. To imagine that backyard gardeners across North America might be willing and able to grow and donate that much extra to help address the problem of hunger in their communities seems wildly optimistic, at the very least.
Consider a Cutting Garden
Everyone loves to give and receive flowers. So great is their appeal, that fresh cut flowers play a role in the celebration of holidays and the milestones of family and personal life over much of the world.
Discover Dill
Dill (Anethum graveolens), a member of the carrot family, has been a favorite culinary herb for centuries. It is valued both for its flavorful foliage and for its pungent seeds.
GrowLabs®: Learning by Doing
What better way to help children learn about gardening than to encourage them to grow plants themselves? That is the idea behind the GrowLab program for school children sponsored by the National Garden Bureau (NGB) in a joint venture with the National Gardening Association and the National Science Foundation.
Butterflies and Caterpillars in Your Garden
There is no more delightful decoration for a garden than nature's own--butterflies. On a warm sunny day these visitors provide color and motion that doubles the pleasure of gardening.
More Food in Less Space
Back in the 1970's the average backyard vegetable garden was about 1000 square feet. Now it is typically 200 square feet.
A Million by the Millennium
Hunger is a national problem, but it is predisposed to a solution within the community. It cuts across geographical and cultural lines, affecting senior citizens, infants, schoolchildren, unemployed, underemployed and homeless everywhere.
Parsley
Parsley, (Petroselinum crispum) a member of the carrot family, is a lot more than a decorative green bit on the side of a restaurant plate. The Greeks and Romans knew parsley well as a medicinal plant and a seasoning.
Growing Children and Plants
If ever there were the perfect growing medium to nourish and nurture students' minds and imaginations, the GrowLab program is the tool. The essence of the GrowLab program is actual hands-on growing in a controlled environment.
Color Your Garden
Adding color to our lives is often why we garden in the first place. Color can excite and stimulate, can soothe and refresh. Perhaps most importantly, the colors of our garden are a reflection of who we are.
Basil
Whether you say bay-zil, and I say baa-zil, there's one thing everyone will agree on. Juicy, sun-warmed tomato chunks mixed with olive oil, freshly torn basil and garlic spooned over hot pasta is truly a feast sublime.
Summer Vegetables
Who can resist just-picked home-grown vegetables? Not only are vitamins at their peak, but the taste is exquisite and wholesome, quite unlike vegetables that have been shipped hundreds of miles to your supermarket.
Flowering Vines
There's something irresistibly romantic about a split-rail fence softened with intense clove-scented sweetpeas. Flowering vines of all sorts add an extravagant air to outdoor living areas.
Growing More Than Plants
Growing plants is more than placing a seed or cutting in soil and seeing the results, it is actually about chemistry, economics, art, mathematics, sociology and a host of other subjects.
Quick Tips on Color
For the past several years, National Garden Bureau has addressed color in the garden in one of the spring issues of Today's Garden. This year we are offering a variety of quick tips for using color, and a brief interview with a color expert - information we think you will be able to use in many different ways for your readers.
Go Wild (flowers that is)
Nothing beats Mother Nature. And many gardeners consider wildflowers to be among Nature's loveliest gifts.
Spring Into Action
The mailbox has been brimming with seed and gardening catalogs for the past month or two. If you are a gardener, no doubt you are like a toddler anxiously awaiting Christmas.
Re-Engineering Your Garden
Re-engineering is a popular buzz word today. Corporations use it to describe changes they are making in their market focus or their corporate structure.
Fresh and Flavorful
It won't be all that long before those vegetable transplants are setting fruit and getting ready to be harvested. Nothing compares to the stand-alone taste of fresh picked vegetables eaten for their own sake, and many gardeners grow vegetables just to have raw, fresh, tasty vegetables to enjoy at harvest time.
Weeding and Writing
Avid gardeners have always known that growing a garden is not only fun for children, but also teaches them skills such as patience, caring for something other than themselves, and the value of regular work, among other things.
Meet Pat Welsh
English-born and now a Southern Californian, Pat Welsh is a life-long gardener, and an award-winning author and television personality.
Versatile Containers
One of the most versatile and easy ways to grow bushels of colorful annual flowers is in containers. The fast-growing popularity of "color bowls" is proof positive that Americans like container growing, whether they do it themselves or have someone else prepare it for them.
