Month: November 2023

Your end-of-season gardening to-do list in the Midwest

As we approach winter, consider adding a bird feeder to your garden.

As we approach winter, consider adding a bird feeder to your garden.

We celebrated Thanksgiving, and the Ohio State vs. Michigan football game was played. This is usually all that needs to happen for people to put this gardening season behind them and look ahead to the upcoming holidays. There is nothing wrong with this. As we shut the gardening season down, I would like to remind you of a few things you may not have considered.

Out on the patio

There might be a few things out in the yard or around the patio that could be damaged if we have periods of extended sub-freezing temperatures. Items such as plastic rain gauges might get overlooked. You will want to move these items to an area where they will stay a little warmer, such as a garage or shed.

Ceramic and terracotta pots could crack if they are still filled

… Read the rest

The Art of Packing: Streamlining Your Belongings for a Move

The Art of Packing: Streamlining Your Belongings for a Move

Packing for a move is critical, demanding finesse and strategy to ensure a smooth transition. It significantly impacts the move’s quality, from safeguarding belongings to optimising space and ensuring superior organisation. Whether a local or long-distance move, employing the best packing practices, from utilising high-quality packaging materials to meticulous labeling and proper sealing of boxes, sets the tone for a successful relocation. The article explores the art of packing, emphasising its role in streamlining the process and making relocations more efficient and manageable.

1. Adaptability and Creativity

When packing for a move, adaptability and creativity are crucial in adjusting to the specific circumstances and constraints you may encounter during packing while finding resourceful and unconventional ways to pack belongings securely and efficiently. For example, flexibility and creatively optimising packing solutions are crucial when facing space constraints.

Also, creativity comes into play when finding inventive solutions for packing irregularly shaped items … Read the rest

Year-round gardening: Gift ideas for the Colorado gardener on your list | Lifestyle

As the garden goes to sleep, it’s time to replenish garden supplies, add a house plant or two, and plan for next year. What a great opportunity to peruse the local nurseries and immerse yourself in the holiday spirit.

Rick’s Garden Center offers tropical plants, a dedicated cactus room, along with plenty of Christmas trees and wreaths. Tools include space-optimizing kits for self-watering table gardens and balcony gardens, while the foldaway garden kneeler and seat provides gardening cushion and comfort. Prepare now for seed sowing with Rick’s large selection of heirloom seeds and check next spring for their enhanced tomato plant offering.

Phelan Gardens showcases a wide assortment of garden essentials, garden décor, easy-care air plants, and Colorado-made Fire Mountain edibles. The adjoining greenhouse is full of plants including cyclamen and colorful Christmas cacti.

Phelan’s centerpiece Christmas tree is a nice example of organic décor sporting seed pods, dried leaves

… Read the rest

Planting your leftover store-bought garlic

SAN ANTONIO – Garlic is a kitchen staple, and it’s really annoying when you have to run to the store for just one clove, so let’s plant our own supply in our gardens!

In South Texas, you can plant garlic from October to December. October is usually ideal, but November works, too!

What’s excellent about garlic is you can plant the leftover cloves you bought from the grocery store. When you buy them from the store, buy the biggest bulbs and ensure the garlic is dry and still good.

Of course, you can buy native bulbs from a nursery or online, but re-using your grocery store garlic is sustainable, cheaper, and can grow just as well.

Make sure you do the following to get the best results for planting:

  • Peel back and break up the blub into individual cloves but keep the skin on.

  • Plant in a spot that gets

… Read the rest

Help the Lehigh Valley Outreach Depot

I have too many subjects and not enough columns, so I’m going to cram three topics into this one.

First, I want to offer a plea for a terrific organization I’ve written about several times, but not lately.

It’s Lehigh Valley Outreach Depot.

This group was born in 2010 as a mission project of Wesley United Methodist Church in Bethlehem and relocated several years ago to a warehouse at 619 E. Allen St., not far from Dieruff High School.

It offers furniture and household items from which qualified people — referred by governmental and nonprofit agencies and arriving at half-hour intervals only by appointment from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesdays and Saturdays — can make selections according to their tastes and needs. Donors can drop items off at the warehouse or call 610-351-1616 to arrange pickup.

Outreach Depot is designed to help people who are reestablishing their lives after

… Read the rest

Black Friday Furniture Deals 2023

Black Friday may be over, but there are a number of great furniture deals still happening throughout the weekend. If you’ve been looking to make a big-ticket purchase, now’s the perfect time to tackle it for a lot less. Aside from mega retailers like Amazon and Wayfair, we’ve spotted several direct-to-consumer brands and high-end furniture retailers that are also offering sitewide discounts or deals on select items.

Some of the most noteworthy deals we’ve found include up to 50% off Pottery Barn’s cozy bed frames and major discounts on outdoor sets from West Elm. Given that furniture shopping can get really expensive, this is your chance to find that perfect item to

… Read the rest

New Baptist Health rooftop garden opens up to patients

The produce from the garden will be included in the Baptist Health Food Rx program, which provides food-insecure patients with a three-day food supply.

FORT SMITH, Ark. — Baptist Health-Fort Smith opened a new rooftop garden at the Marvin Altman Fitness Center with hopes of addressing and combating the issue of food insecurity among its patients by offering fruits and vegetables.

The rooftop garden will be “the first of its kind” in Arkansas and “one of 25” in the nation, Baptist said.  

The produce from the garden will be included in the Baptist Health Food Rx program. The program provides discharged patients who have been identified as food insecure with a three-day food supply for a family of four.

Hannah Schultz, a graduate assistant at Baptist Health-Fort Smith, started researching and planning the garden in July. Volunteers from Baptist Health and the River Valley Master Gardeners officially began planting

… Read the rest

Centravis supplies almost 40 tonnes of stainless pipes for modernization of Parisian Garden of Plants

Centravis supplies almost 40 tonnes of stainless pipes for modernization of Parisian Garden of Plants

PJSC Centravis Production Ukraine, part of the Centravis Ltd. holding, supplied about 40 tonnes of seamless stainless steel pipes for the Garden of Plants in Paris.

According to the company’s press release, Ukrainian pipes are intended to modernize the complex.

As specified, the Garden of Plants in Paris was founded in the 17th century. It is the oldest botanical garden in the French capital and the first open to the public. For many centuries, rare plants from all over the world were planted there.

The Garden of Plants is part of the National Museum of Natural History. On its territory there are four large departments – the Museum of Mineralogy, the Museum of Paleontology, the Museum of Entomology and an extensive gallery of evolution, as well as a zoo and an aquarium.

The special pride of the park area of the Garden of Plants is the greenhouses, the first of

… Read the rest

Denver Urban Gardens Hits Major Milestone with its 200th Community Garden

The largest independent community garden organization in the country just reached a significant milestone this year. On October 13th, Denver Urban Gardens (DUG) transformed an orphaned plot of city-owned land that sat vacant for more than 60 years into The 48th & Julian DUG Community Garden— making it the network’s 200th community garden across seven counties in the Denver Metro area. This is a monumental achievement not only in Colorado but in the U.S. 

For 45 years, DUG has worked towards its mission: build a garden in every neighborhood, create community and cultivate food and climate resilience. “When people hear about community gardens, they think “that’s sweet” or that it’s a hobby. What they don’t realize is that they are extraordinary constructs for a city,” said DUG CEO Linda Appel Lipsius. “It’s a way for people, especially city dwellers, to grow organic,

… Read the rest

If a soil test calls for it, apply lime to your garden in November

The long-term weather forecast is calling for a continuing string of nice days through Thanksgiving Day. Many gardeners will be able to catch up on garden projects that they may have been putting off. One of these projects that often gets overlooked is liming the garden soil.

If you have been fertilizing your garden regularly with conventional fertilizers for several years in a row, chances are your soil may need lime. November is an ideal time to apply lime.

Lime is a calcium-based soil amendment that farmers and gardeners use to raise the soil pH. Older farmers used to refer to it as “sweetening the soil.”

It’s not a good idea to just guess if your soil pH is low, soil should be tested.

To test for pH only, you can do it yourself with a pH test kit from a garden center. These kits are fairly accurate. Just make

… Read the rest