Healthy Eating Without Having to Weed My husband Ken and I have killed more plants than we have kept alive. Every orchid he has brought me has turned into a stick in a pretty pot. We have managed to keep some houseplants thriving over the years, while others returned to compost. We got the idea during COVID-19 to try growing sprouts in our kitchen, while everyone else was … [Read more...]
40 Acres Not Necessary: Utahns are Homesteading in Urban Backyards
Utahns are known for their food storage and preparedness methods and have been encouraged for years to acquire food storage and a 72-hour kit in case of an earthquake or other emergency. For those who did, that storage came in handy during last year’s woes. While many of us had a difficult time believing that we were, in fact, experiencing a pandemic during our lifetime, … [Read more...]
Gardening in Pots: Anyone Can Grow a Garden
After gardening virtually all of my life, and later teaching gardening classes through West High School’s Community Education Program, I have concluded that almost anyone can grow a garden. The only real requirement is about six hours of direct sunlight for any location. It could be a small corner of your yard, a patio, or even an outside deck on the east side of a high-rise … [Read more...]
Urban Homesteading: Divest from Wall Street, Invest in Local Food
Big tech is censoring us, tracking us, selling our personal data to corporations to advertise to us more efficiently. We buy everything on Amazon, book our hotels on Expedia and rooms on AirB&b, get around on Uber and get all our news from YouTube and Facebook. We make Silicon Valley executives and Wall Street investors insanely rich, while our local small businesses and … [Read more...]
Urban Gardening: Self-Sustaining Lifestyles
Around dinnertime, Adriana Brandt hands her husband Wally a bowl. “Go get me some onions and tomatoes,” she says, as he happily follows her directions. The Brandts have created a gardening paradise on a third of an acre in Central, Utah. During the COVID-19 pandemic, self-sustaining lifestyles are increasingly being brought into the spotlight. “It’s definitely a factor,” … [Read more...]
How To Trim Your Rose Bushes
Craig England Jr. is the horticulturist for the floral gardens and the arboretum at Red Butte Garden. Many varieties of roses grace the gardens, and England is in charge of a crew that maintains three gardens, preparing them for events, including weddings and concerts, as well as for everyday visitors. England and his crew’s meticulous care is the reason the gardens are so … [Read more...]
Winter Gardening — Why Wait for Spring?
Why Wait for Spring? Most gardeners believe the only way they can grow vegetable plants during the dead of winter is in some type of greenhouse. However, I have successfully grown cold-hardy plants such as spinach, lettuce, arugula and even carrots, beets, radishes and Swiss chard right through the coldest Utah winters for more than 30 years without any protection from the … [Read more...]
Z is for Zucchini
Zucchinis—Oh my! It is the end of summer, the time for gardeners to meditate on one of life's most perplexing questions—what do I do with all these zucchinis? It seems miraculous that one seed planted in the spring can produce a gazillion vegetables. Seed companies create this quandary when they put a dozen zucchini seeds in a pack. "If I have a dozen, I guess I should … [Read more...]
Urban Gleaners from Green Urban Lunch Box
Green Urban Lunch Box The painting by Jean-François Millet, known as "The Gleaners," was not popular when it premiered in 1857. The French middle and upper-classes were unwilling to admit there was hunger and poverty in France; they were afraid that working-class citizens might revolt against those who controlled the empire under Napoleon III. The contemporary idea of … [Read more...]
Three Nontraditional Home Gardens in Salt Lake City
Sugar House Joakim Orton moved into his Sugarhouse apartment in 2016, and since then he’s been cultivating a garden in an unlikely spot. Even though traditional gardening space is limited around his apartment building, he got creative and chose to utilize a long, thin strip of earth that lines the driveway—a spot most others would overlook. Before he began … [Read more...]