Green thumbed-, Brown thumbed-, or black thumbed-gardeners alike can revel in a new trend in greener gardening. Papersoil is exactly what it sounds like: Soil made of 100% recycled paper. Papersoil is also colorful, pre-fertilized, and effortless to maintain.
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Have you ever weeded with a flamethrower, I mean, a garden torch? It’s safer than herbicides and yet so much more exciting!
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When life-size gardening is beyond your scope of interest, gardening on a tiny scale may appeal to you. Think bonsai and fairy gardens!
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Kickstarter promises to grow edible greens fast and effortlessly.
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Welcome to the first installment of what GeekMom Mel hopes will be a fun series of posts involving…you guessed it! Geeky gardening.
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How did you do laying out the fixed size garden? Did you maximize the vegetable potential?
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What’s the optimal way to build raised beds in our yard to best cover it with vegetably goodness?
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If you have your worms happily buzzing in your homemade worm bin, and you’re seeing some happy worms through signs of their reproduction, after about 3 months, you might be ready to harvest some of the worm castings for your garden. After all, this is the point of the exercise.
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For many of us taught in traditional schooling, science “lab” was about following directions and if you didn’t get the correct result, you were wrong. That is a great way to kill anyone’s curiosity or love of true science. Don’t let that happen with your kids!
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This week, we take a peek at projects that can improve your gardening skills and allow you to build a super-tiny skeleton.
Continue ReadingThe best way to keep basil tasty for a while, I’ve found, is pesto. If you can make a jar of pesto, you’ve got concentrated flavor and dozens of options.
Continue ReadingTonight’s big project was starting some flower seeds. While Mom was at class, the four mini-geeks and I set up on the dining room table and got to it. First, we amassed our supplies. Foremost, and I guess the reason …
Continue ReadingGardening when you’re distracted or in a hurry is a problem. You wonder if you planted rutabagas in two rows or three. You can’t tell if the newly emerging Brassica plants are cauliflower or broccoli. And unless you taste them, …
Continue ReadingYes, math really is everywhere. Having just spent the last few hours of daylight preparing containers for our eventual heirloom tomato harvest (Black Krims, Brandywines, Pears, and Baby Brandywines) I happened to swing by Etsy to check out their home …
Continue ReadingJust in time for you to order your plants and seeds for this growing season! This month the U.S. Department of Agriculture publicized their new plant hardiness zone map. This is the first update to the map since 1990, but thanks to incredible technological advances in weather measurements since then, users can expect a much […]
Continue ReadingSunflowers grow so easily where I live that the plants volunteer every year where the parents dropped their seeds the summer before. The variety in my garden springs up eight to ten feet with leaves bigger than my hands. They’re very dramatic, and I love them. But, early in the summer my sunny garden plot […]
Continue ReadingYou want the little darlings to eat what’s good for them — and like it. You know power plays, bribes, and other control efforts don’t lead to healthful eating habits in the long run. So what’s a parent to do? Here are some great sure-fire options. Shrink it. Kids tend to appreciate things on a […]
Continue ReadingSummer is here and the plants are probably starting to feel the effects of the heat. If you’re a gardener, you are probably trying to figure out what you need to add to make your garden grow best. What if …
Continue ReadingOne of the primary reasons I garden is to fill my pantry with canned fruits and vegetables that are free of bpa and pesticides. Of all the different things I preserve, tomatoes are far and away the most-used garden ingredient …
Continue ReadingSometime last week I saw a friend’s Facebook status: “crocus siting!” What a thrill to read. So, of course, I started looking for mine.
Continue ReadingI raided the GeekDad archives from two years ago for a quick weekend project with my boys. Sure, I could have done a mail-order compost bin. However, opening a cardboard box and plunking something down in the yard would have …
Continue ReadingAs part of our on-going hydroponics project (our lettuce is down to its last few leaves, but one of our tomatoes has just flowered) we tried growing sprouts. Like many technologies I’ve been playing around with the last couple years (vermiculture, hydroponics, solar and wind energy, toys made from recycled materials), it’s hard to find […]
Continue ReadingI sometimes wonder whether my nature and gardening posts are a little too low-tech for GeekDad. Not this time. A couple weeks ago the boys and I took a mini-field trip to a local hydrofarm. On a tiny family farm up a nearly impassable dirt (or mud) road on a secluded hilltop, we saw an […]
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