Yesterday, I enjoyed a nice evening at my local Whole Foods. I arrived early enough to take part in their wine tasting – Fridays Five After Five. For $5 you get to taste five featured wines paired with tasty treats. They routinely get over 350 patrons to participate weekly from 5 to 7 P.M. Starting in the produce section and winding through the entire store it is a very popular weekly event. This week the theme was LOCAL; Ohio wines and local ingredients for the [...]

This is my place for many things. Gardening, cooking, creating, and “green” activities.

My poor, neglected garden at the park does not give up. It keeps producing all on it’s own. I set it up with a rain barrel and battery operated soaker hose timers, but still I only visit 2 to 3 times a week, spending less than 30 minutes each time. What a treat to visit this evening and come home with about 15 pounds of produce. The most exciting was my first two ears of sweet corn. I have not grown my own sweet corn [...]

Growing Some Good Thank you to all the gardeners that donated vegetables today. We had 3 car loads! Your produce will feed over 120 families in the Marysville and Plain City areas this week. We hope to have two harvest days next week; Tuesday to the new Worthington Food Pantry, and Friday to the Marysville Food Pantry. More details to come. As of 8/14/09 over 1,850 pounds of fresh vegetables from our gardens have been delivered to the Marysville Food Pantry. Your donations help to [...]

We had a wonderful harvest yesterday! It was very nice to see the wide variety of vegetables, especially all the first tomatoes of every shape and size. Once again Team R&D Red Shirts provided the largest harvest of the week. They donated 39.78 pounds of veggies from their 3’ x 6’ garden, bringing their season total to 227.24 pounds! More than 50 other teams added to yesterday’s donations for the Marysville Food Pantry, bringing the delivery to about 300 pounds. The two-carload haul included; zucchini, [...]

Several days ago I came home from work and was watering my container vegetable plants. I seemed to be missing a red tomato. A little upset that I had a tomato poacher, I was hoping that it might have been one of the kids in the neighborhood, and it felt good thinking that a child was eating a fresh tomato. A couple days later, I notice what appeared to be tomato shrapnel on one of the pavers. I was in a hurry and did not [...]

Today we took a wonderful carload of fresh vegetables from our Associate Gardens. The teams really were prepared and we sorted zucchini’s and summer squashes by size and variety. We ended up with over 200 lbs of just those types today. In addition, we had about 50 lbs of cucumbers, a basket of green bell peppers, two baskets of green beans, and a good variety of smaller quantities of the following; eggplant, cabbage, carrots, yellow onions, purple beans, swiss chard, basil, banana peppers, broccoli, and [...]

Last Friday, June 26th, we delivered over 30 bags of fresh produce from our Associate Gardens to the Marysville Food Pantry. This was double the amount the week before, and took two carloads to transport. They had even received fresh vegetables from several local individual gardens earlier in the day. The trend is spreading in a positive way! The variety of our harvest is quickly increasing. Friday’s colorful haul included broccoli, beets, hot peppers, beans, radishes, peas, lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, onions, cabbage, summer squash, [...]

On Monday a Twitter post by @LocalMattersOrg was offering to give half of the LARGE bunch of spinach they bought to any local tweep that was interested. I often am faced with a little extra, especially after visits to farmer’s markets, and don’t like creating expensive compost. I shared one of my solutions that works with a large variety of vegetables. My reply was this, “Why not freeze it? Blanch the spinach for a few seconds, drain & freeze in small bags for individual servings [...]

Yesterday, Margaret Roach of AwayToGarden.com posted a Tweet declaring that she is The Reining Queen of Leftovers, challenging us all to get a little creative. After a 12 hour day, I came home starving and rustled up the following this evening; Kung Pao Soft Tacos with Swiss Cheese (Prep and Cook Time 8 minutes) Leftover Kung Pao Chicken from P.F. Chang’s Whole Wheat Flour Tortillas Yoder’s Swiss Cheese Fresh Cilantro I warmed 2 whole wheat flour tortillas on my gas grill, turning often, just until [...]