Lush Green Lawns Are Not Natural

Americans have come to value green lawns.  Thick, homogeneous, bright green grass is a sign of prosperity.  Have you ever asked yourself why?  As any homeowner can tell you, lush green grass takes a lot of maintenance, added nutrients, chemicals and plenty of water. While it might be a sign of prosperity, it’s not natural. […]

Celebrating Your Successes

Living a green life isn’t always easy.  Some things come naturally for us, like recycling, but other things take a real effort, like gardening.  Today we are celebrating our successes. Ellie and I spent hours weeding the garden and front yard.  We worked on it in fits and starts, but we got a tremendous amount […]

Never Too Young To Help In The Garden

We had great weather this weekend and two local plant sales, so I was able to plant our garden!  Our local Garden Club members grow extra seedlings and then sell them as their annual fundraiser in May and I picked up 4 varieties of tomatoes that I’ve never heard of, as well as a kohlrabi plant and an artichoke […]

Harvesting Trash Can Potatoes

Back in April we got the idea to plant potatoes in a garbage can from another green blogger, The Frugal Greenish Mama. Ellie & I planted our potatoes and blogged about the process.  Planting in a garbage can was really neat to try and a great way to expand the footprint of our garden. Now I have to tell you […]

Getting the Slugs Out – Naturally!

I’ve been really frustrated lately with my string beans looking like this: And some of them have been looking like this above. I was talking to my neighbor, and she said that she thought it was from slugs. She was using banana peels around her garden to ward them away. I remembered that my mother […]

Growing, Growing, Growing Potatoes in a Garbage Can

Wordless Wednesday Our regular readers are aware that this year we started growing potatoes in a garbage can.  They’ve grown very fast, so here is a picture walk through the process: We started with these: We let them cure overnight on the windowsill: And planted them in a can: About three weeks later we had […]

Planting Potatoes in a Garbage Can

I have to admit, this wasn’t my idea.  I got the idea from The Frugal Greenish Mama blog, who is growing potatoes in a garbage can for the first time herself.  I’ve always wanted to grow potatoes and it just always seemed too hard, but with this system, I’m sold! Jon has always wanted to […]

The Family Garden: A Different Mindset

Were you an ardent gardener?  Now that you have children, are you having a hard time squeezing in time to work on your garden? Maybe you are new to gardening, but you think you can’t possibly get started with young children? Perhaps you don’t have children yet and this is just one more place where you […]

New Garden: Starting Seedlings Indoors or in the Garden?

I was recently talking to someone who is thinking about starting plants from seeds for the first time.  Some of her questions included whether it’s too late to start seedlings for this year and if she is going to do indoor seedlings,  how should she get started?   Since these are some of the questions I […]

When Living Green Isn’t What’s Best For Your Family

Wow, that sounds like an odd thing for our blog “When living green isn’t what’s best for your family.”  I think it’s important for people to realize that sometimes you have to make choices, and if certain things and certain situations aren’t the right things for your family, that’s OK. For each person, lifestyle choices […]