Growing Vegetables? Take This Survey

If you've grown some of your own vegetables or herbs within the past five years, in a dedicated veggie garden, in containers, or spotted amongst ornamentals, George Weigel and Steve Bogash want to hear from you. George is the garden writer for the Patriot-News in Harrisburg, PA, and Steve is a regional vegetable specialist for Penn State's Extension Service. They want to hear about newbies' vegetable-growing experiences from all around the country, not just Pennsylvania.

Was all this veggie-growing a fad born out of the recession, or will it last, because people are really concerned about what goes into and on their food? Once the reality of vegetable growing sinks in, are people still willing to put in the time and effort? Are most such gardeners growing organic, or do they buy whatever is on the shelf that promises to grow lots of food with few bugs? These are the kinds of questions George and Steve are hoping to answer.

Perhaps of most interest to me because of my work with Cultivating The Inner Gardener http://cultivatingtheinnergardener.blogspot.com , is how challenging gardeners find the effort to be and whether and why they will continue to grow vegetables next year.

We're not newbies, so I don't qualify to take the survey, but in case you're wondering, we grow herbs, tomatoes, mixed greens, cucumbers, and Galeux d’Eysines squash in pots and among the ornamentals and supplement with produce from the local farm stand. Yes, it's easier to buy everything there, but I like the veggie-growing experience, including the challenge.

How about you? Lend a hand by taking the quick, 15-question (easy-to-answer) survey at  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VS62KR2 . The survey closes November 19, 2010.

Popular posts from this blog

Detention Basins: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Image
In our area, stormwater sewers that serve housing developments and some businesses empty into the dreaded detention (or retention, or infiltration) basin, a visually hideous engineered method of holding large volumes of water until it can safely disperse to groundwater, natural streams, ponds, etc. (top photo). These are generally grass monocultures or rip rap which, if not properly maintained become weedy, overgrown maintenance nightmares. Suffice it to say that anyone who can get away with not maintaining one will continue to not maintain it. Frequently, the town ends up owning and maintaining such basins, meaning that all the taxpayers pay. When grass is used as the only groundcover and pesticides and fertilizers are applied, they can contaminate the runoff. Regular mowing of the basins is difficult because of the steep sides and wet floor. This maintenance adds contaminants to the watercourse, as well. Grass basins also attract undesirable wildlife, such as Canada Geese, which ...
Keep reading

Please Garden Responsibly. Because What You Spray in Your Garden Doesn’t Stay in Your Garden

Image
American Lady caterpillar on licorice plant. Photo: Courtesy Missouri Botanical Garden Scores of their silky tents covered the licorice plant in the container on my porch. Inside the tents, something was gobbling up the leaves faster than I could pick them off. The plant must have been infested when I bought it. As I reached for my organic insecticide, I thought, “Wait, you don’t know what kind of caterpillars these are!” I recalled an article on pest management by a friend who cautioned: “Sometimes, the best treatment is no treatment at all.” It took the better part of the afternoon for me to identify the miniature mowing machines. In the meantime, half of them had started dropping from their perches and wriggling off into the underbrush. I hoped I had made the right decision. The licorice plant was devastated. But then I noticed that the caterpillars had not eaten the leaves all the way down to the stem. Possibly, secondary buds could sprout and still provide a silvery...
Keep reading

Musings on the Relativity of Time and The Arithmetic of Overpopulation

Image
I celebrated my birthday recently. Beyond a certain age, birthdays become a double-edged sword. You’re glad you made it to the next one, but realize that there are far fewer years ahead of you than behind you. The list of absent friends grows ever longer. Colleagues grow grey; everyone else looks like they just graduated from middle school. I used to console myself by calculating that I still had at least 2 5 more years to go, which made the end point seem very far off. But, now that would mean I’d live to an unrealistically old age, a concept supported by neither family history nor actuarial tables. I’m reminded of Einstein’s summary of his Theory of Relativity: "When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour." I guess I’ve been having too much fun. But that can’t go on forever. My immortality would not be good for the planet. It’s not sustainable. At the same time that medical advances have...
Keep reading