Coming up Roses: Think spring thoughts with gardening workshops this month

Image via photography-match.com

Mother Nature’s tease of spring-like weather probably has you ready to swap your gloves and snow shovels for gardening supplies. But while winter is still sticking for a few more weeks, it’s never too early to start planning your gardening.

Throughout the month of February local gardening gurus are holding a number of workshops teaching everything from seed starting to composting to orchard growing. So break out the seed catalog and start thinking about bringing some life to your backyard! For more gardening events, check the Grid calendar.  

Saturday, February 4

• Amending Your Soil Workshop (12 – 2 p.m.) Learn how to amend your garden soil and get your beds ready for spring. Greensgrow Farm, 2501 E. Cumberland St.
• Worm Composting Collective (12 - 2 p.m.) Build your own worm-bin and learn how to care for your new compost pets. Pre-Registration required. $20 for members $30 for non-members. Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, 8480 Hagy's Mill Rd.  

Wednesday, February 8

• In-home Composting (6 - 7 p.m.) Learn how to turn food scraps into nutrient-rich compost with Green Guide Holly Logan. Sustainable 19125, 2446 Coral St.

Click to read more ...

The Law Of The Land: A recently launched initiative offers urban gardeners free legal support

Urban farmers do more than simply grow food, explains attorney Amy Laura Cahn. “These people are building community. They are providing resources for their communities in terms of food, but also in terms of value of property,” she says. “They’re creating community spaces and creating opportunities for education and cross-culture, cross-generational communication.” Urban farmers are investing in their neighborhoods.

Click to read more ...

Natural Allies: Pepper Middle School’s Rebel Gardeners join the fight to save a threatened Southwest Philly community garden

They call themselves the Southwest Child Rebel Gardeners. They’re a group of students from George W. Pepper Middle School in Southwest Philadelphia, and their stomping ground is the Pepper Pride Garden.

Click to read more ...

Book Review: How To Grow a School Garden

How to Grow a School Garden: A Complete Guide for Parents and Teachers
by Arden Bucklin-Sporer and Rachel Kathleen Pringle
(Timber Press, 224 pp., $24.95, June 2010)

Click to read more ...

Book Review: Rambunctious Garden

Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World
by Emma Marris
Bloomsbury Publishing (2011), $25

"Rambunctious gardening is proactive and optimistic; it creates more and more nature as it goes, rather than just building walls around the nature we have left,” proclaims author Emma Marris in the first chapter of Rambunctious Garden.

Click to read more ...

Shoots & Ladders: Office gardens

Fear that cooler temps and shorter days will put an end to your garden-fresh produce? Fear no more, my friends, fear no more. The time is ripe for an office garden.

Click to read more ...

The Audacity of Hops: You, too, can grow beer's signature ingredient.

When you think of hops, you think of beer. After all, the viney, aromatic plant is what makes beer taste like beer: Without the distinctive bitterness, your favorite brew would taste like alcoholic pancake syrup.

But if you think about where they come from, you probably don’t think of Philadelphia.

Click to read more ...

MEDIA: The City Homesteader by Scott Meyer

How can you get back to the land when you don’t have any land to get back to? In his new book, The City Homesteader: Self-Sufficiency on Any Square Footage, Scott Meyer shows acre-less urban- and suburbanites how to grow and preserve their own food, raise small livestock and become ever more self-sufficient—from composting to making soap, pest control to home remedies.

Click to read more ...

Shoots & Ladders: Pestilence! There are big meanies out to destroy your precious little plants. There are ways to fight back.

One of the upsides to container gardening is that crops are less likely to succumb to soil-borne illnesses. Unlike traditional farmers and gardeners, container gardeners have the option of starting with fresh, sterile soil each year. If last year’s crops lost the battle against blights, wilts or mildews, then it’s smart to ditch the dirt, sterilize some containers, and start anew. Sadly, that’s rarely enough to keep a garden hale and hearty—every year, it seems as though my garden gets hit with one affliction or another, despite the clean dirt. Prevention is paramount, but when that doesn’t work, witches’ brews and sacrifices to the garden gods are in order.

Click to read more ...

Shoots & Ladders: Roll the Credits

Sigh. It’s that time of the year again—days are on the wane and winter is on its way. As much as I’d like to replace the contents of each container with a promising crop of hearty root vegetables, the Earth’s revolutions (and my neighbor’s bathroom addition) shelter my little blue roofdeck from most of the sun’s beneficial winter rays.

Click to read more ...