Recent Posts
Green Talk
Return To Blog Listing
Green Talk is a blog based on the personal experiences of the author who built her house using many green materials. The blog contains a mix of posts relating to green building products, green living ideas, home decor products, organic gardening, a
Recent Posts Tagged With 'gardening'
Why Do My Carrots look like Spiders?
This is my third year of growing carrots from seed. I learned alot about growing carrots over the last two years, but obviously not enough given how my carrots look. See the picture above. So, what have I learned? The First Year. The Beginner...
Greenfield Paper’s Grow A Notes: Why Trash? Just Plant.
When my son was being bar mitzvahed, I was determined to green the event as much as possible. One of my goals was no paper, whether it was recycled content or not. The invitation was a web page created on Myevent.com. Inexpensive, creative and...
Mother Earth Intended Food to Be Eaten From the Vine
Heirloom lettuce growing under a trellis. There is nothing like food which has literally been ripped right off the vine and stuffed into your mouth. Just envision plucking a ripe tomato from the vine and enjoying the burst of flavor as you take you...
Do You Need a Vacation before the Vacation?
Look what is hiding under my mulch. Most people schedule vacations to destress from their hectic lives. Some down time they say. Heck, I need an extra week of vacation just from the stress of getting ready for vacation. I don’t know abou...
How to Create a No Till Garden Bed
What causes back aches, frustration, and stiff joints? Digging a new garden bed. If you have ever attempted this with soil that has never been tilled, it is time intensive and hard work. Don’t let television fool you. How to make it easie...
The Fertile Gardener
Welcome Garden #2! Around May and June I become a little obsessive with my garden. Over the years, it has grown from 4 tomato plants to now 19 beds, 9 heirloom apple trees complete with their own birth announcement, 2 peach trees, 7 blueberry bushe...
NYC Restoration Project Veggie Seed Giveaway
Remember Eat the View, the campaign asking the Obamas to create a White House vegetable garden to feed the staff? Well, the campaign worked and Michelle Obama is busily creating an amazing organic garden at the White House. Feel like a little dir...
Mystery Weed or Amazing Flower?
One of my biggest problems in my garden is I have no idea what are weeds and what are flowers. I recall last year planting Sweet William in this particular bed but could swear that the seed package said it was an annual. In April, this lovely pla...
Sage Gardening Advice from One whose Learning the Hard Way
You know the saying, “do as I say, not as I do?” Here is the skinny of what I learned this year so you don’t repeat my gardening mistakes. I find gardening can be like an Indiana Jones movie. There is peril, unsolved mys...
Banish Crabgrass with Corn Gluten: Three Times a Charm
Corn Gluten Pellets. For three years I have used different form of corn gluten with different success rates to kick the butt of crabgrass. Why corn gluten? Corn gluten is a more natural product to get rid of my crabgrass. I am anti-pesticide and c...
Bring Your Garden on to Win March Madness.
When you think of March, do you think about March Madness or do you start dreaming about your garden? In my house, March madness is very alive and well with the final four approaching. (Basketball lingo that I learn from the five men in my household....
Wildlife-Houses Create Sancuraries for Birds and Bats
Photo by permission of Keven Law. Check out the great giveaway for one lucky reader! G.L. Freedman of Wildlife-Houses sent me this email recently, and I could not resist reprinting it in full because I am an avid gardener and an animal lover. With ...
Grobal: Hassle Free, Self Watering Plant System
How many insist that you can not grow plants in your house? Are you excessive water’er? Forget about your plants and they die? Or insist you were born with a black thumb. Perhaps, you travel too much and have no one to water your plants...
Buy a Real Christmas Tree Just like Charlie Brown
Do you remember in the movie, A Charlie Brown Christmas, when Charlie Brown picks up the only real Christmas tree, albeit a scraggly one, at the tree market store? He chose this tree rather than the big shiny aluminum tree requested by Lucy for the p...
Top 10 2008 Green Building Products from BuildingGreen
This week Boston, Massachusetts hosted the United States Green Building Council’s GreenBuild 365 ,drawing a crowd of over 29,000 people for lectures, green building exhibitions, and networking. During this week, Building Green LLC announced its...
Turn the White House Lawn into an Edible Garden!
This Lawn is Your Lawn from roger doiron on Vimeo. The other day, I received an message on my personal Facebook page from Michelle, aka the Green Bean of Green Phone Booth, with a copy of a video by Roger Doiron urging our new President (Eater in C...
HomeGrown Movie: Little House on the Prairie in Pasadena, CA
Photo by permission of Robert McFalls “Homegrown is the inspiring true story of the amazing Dervaes family who are living off the grid in the heart of urban Pasadena, California. They harvest over 6,000 pounds of produce on less than a quarter ...
Does Summer Really Need to End?
This week’s Tomato Harvest. I am not ready to let summer go. The last day of summer was this week; however, it seems like summer has been gone for a whole month. Since August, the nights have already started getting cooler. Once September...
Weeds Are Just Unloved Flowers
Weeds are unwelcomed guests in your garden beds, cracks in the sidewalk, and throughout your lawn. We curse them, try and kill them, and they bring out the beast in us as we yank them root and all from the Earth. Personally, I never have so much sati...
My Swiss Chard is Secretly Taking Steroids
For the last month, one of my Swiss Chard plants looked like it was on steroids. It is almost three feet high and has a plume coming out its center like it is off to see the horse races. The rest of the chard looks big, but obviously not as ostentat...
Rabbits Are Not as Innocent as You Think
What are your first thoughts when you see those cute little bunny rabbits in the picture? You are thinking, “they are sooo cute.” I can see why you think this because we associate bunny rabbits with Peter Rabbit, Bugs Bunny cartoons, and the East...
Should I be worried about this Moth?
The other day, I went to open my front door and this beautiful moth was stuck to the door. This is not a touched up photo. This is a real moth that looks like it is stuck to my door. I think it was dead because my friend touched it and it [...]SHA...
Hair Today, Deer Gone Tomorrow
My son came home from a birthday party with a little green mesh bag of candy. What was I going to do with this mesh bag? It is too tiny to hold much and anything that is tiny would slip right out the holes. However, as of late, I have been trying t...
Help! Slugs in my Garden are Ruining My Life!
Photo by Andrew Larsen I Hate Slugs! Why do I hate Slugs? They are vile, ugly, slimy, gross, disgusting, and did I say vile? I wrote this slug article last August and put it away since it did not seem as pertinent at the end of summer. Guess what?...
Give Your Lawn a Compost Shot
My adventures of creating a lush organic lawn are like a book with many chapters. Each year, I create several new chapters with my disasters and triumphs. The first chapter was entitled, “The Beginning,” when we tried to seed the lawn after finis...
Organic Mechanic Potting Soil: A Peat Free Alternative That Plants Love
My Broccoli seedlings, which were spindly and sickly looking were replanted in Organic Mechanic Potting Soil a couple of weeks ago. They now look like they were given a vitamin shot since they are standing strong and tall with several leaves. Organi...
Corn Gluten: Extremely Crabby about Crabgrass
Last year, I used corn gluten to hopefully dent the of invasion of crabgrass in my lawn. I knew based on my conversations with Professor Christians, the inventor of corn gluten as an herbicide that it would take three years to rid my lawn of the...
Eating at Wendy’s Could Have Green Benefits
How many of us catch lunch or dinner when we can? Are you driving up to the drive-in window more than you like to due to a hectic job, children with multiple activities or caring for family members? Does the person at the other end of the microphone...
Tree of Antiquity: Certified Organic Heirloom Apple Trees
Yesterday, I became the proud mama of nine small apple trees. I feel like sending out birth announcements since I am so excited. Here is how it would read: With much happiness and anticipation, we are pleased to announce the adoption of our 9 bundle...
15 Tips to Become A Neighborhood “Greeny”
Photo by Megan under permission of the Creative Commons License 2.0 The most constant complaint I hear as to why people can not live a greener lifestyle is it is too inconvenient or just too hard. Believe it or not, just right outside your door are ...
