The Home Grown Food Challenge is a pledge to eat only home grown or local food for the month of October.

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Besides joining the HGFC here is a list of 10 great gardening communities worth checking out.

Collards are thought of as a Southern food without much reason. Here’s how to grow them in your garden no matter what part of the US you’re from.

posted 1 year ago / 9,544 notes / reblog

Growing spinach this year? Try these oven baked spinach chips for a quick snack.
wilddirt:

I think I might make some fo these for a weekend backpacking trip I have coming up here. - AK
destination-fit:

Oven Baked Spinach Chips
Ingredients• Bucket load of spinach leafs. I am talking about handfuls here!• A bit of extra virgin olive oil, to coat the leaves. You don’t need a lot - for 400 grams of spinach leaves, I used 1 tablespoon of oil.• Herbs. I used pepper, curry powder, red pepper powder, garlic powder and thyme.Directions1. Preheat oven at 120°C / 250F,2. Rinse and dry the spinach leafs,3. Place spinach in a large bowl, pour in some olive oil to coat the leafs,4. Add herbs, toss it all around,5. Place some baking paper on a tray, and lay out the spinach nice and evenly,6. Pop them in the oven for 15-20 minutes. Keep checking on them until they’re crisp!I could eat buckets of this stuff. Yum! Enjoy your crispy veggies. :)

posted 1 year ago / 1 note / reblog

No-Work Gardening

Gardening too high maintainence for you but you really would like to give it a try? Check out Earth Easy’s tips for a “no-work garden.”

posted 1 year ago / 17 notes / reblog

Tips for the New Gardener

Check out these helpful 5 tips for the new gardener

aliciablanchard:

Allow me to kill this myth right now… There is no such thing as a black thumb! Truly! Anyone can grow anything, with the proper planning and environment. Here are five tips that will help turn your thumbs into magical growing machines…

1.) Look at your neighbors plants

Take a walk through your…

posted 1 year ago / 10 notes / reblog

The California Homemade Food Act

The California Homemade Food Act will allow homemade food to be sold, saving many small sustainable food businesses.

posted 1 year ago / 794 notes / reblog

5 fun DIY seed starters
unconsumption:

5 biodegradable seed-starting planter-pots to DIY
Like many of us, the gardening plans of Michele Pacey (mentioned previously here and here) include growing plants from seed.
In a recent blog post, Michele describes her seed-starting setup: seeds planted in biodegradable newspaper “pots,” which are placed indoors on foam meat trays while the seeds germinate.
After seedlings have sprouted, the plants — pots and all — can be planted in soil.
To make your own biodegradable seed-starters:
Roll newspaper pieces around a jar and close the ends, as Michele shows in this short video, or roll pieces of newspaper around something like this.
Fold newspaper pages, origami-like, into pots. For folding tutorial, see the For Greenies blog.

Cut pieces of paper towel or toilet paper tubes, adding four slits on one end, then fold end pieces together to form a closed bottom. (Photo via girlgearstudio.) Ends also could be left open, as pictured in this earlier Unconsumption post.

Use eggshells, as mentioned here (with description for blowing out eggs).

Use citrus peels. (Found here.)

Another idea: Create mini-greenhouses from cut plastic bottles. Simply place bottle tops over plants. (Found on Poppytalk.)

What household waste do you use for starting seeds?

posted 1 year ago / 3 notes / reblog

Getting ready to plant your garden?

Organic Authority has 4 tips for planting.

posted 1 year ago / 8 notes / reblog

Don’t like the idea of pesticides, organic or not?

Then try out Mother Earth News’ tips for using good bugs to get rid of the bad ones.