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PLEASE NOTE: In the autumn of 1995, we hatched the idea for a free, local gardening publication. The following spring, we published the first issue of Michigan Gardener magazine. Advertisers, readers, and distribution sites embraced our vision. Thus began an exciting journey of helping our local gardening community grow and prosper.
After 27 years, nearly 200 issues published, and millions of copies printed, we have decided it is time to end the publication of our Print Magazine and E-Newsletter.
Michigan State University Extension:
Each year, the Michigan State University Horticulture Demonstration Gardensevaluates hundreds of new annuals grown from seed or cuttings. Trial selections are supplied by private breeding companies and the plants are grown in MSUgreenhouses and transplanted into either ground beds or containers after the last frost has passed which is late May or early June.
New York Times:
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The idea of building a year-round public market to tie the city’s skilled chefs to the region’s big complement of young farmers had already attained an air of inevitability by the time this Midwestern city held its first Restaurant Week three summers ago.
Next year, just in time for the fourth annual Restaurant Week, Grand Rapids is scheduled to open the $30 million, 130,000-square-foot Downtown Market, a destination that is expected to attract 500,000 visitors a year. The three-story brick and glass building, under construction in a neighborhood of vacant turn-of-the-20th century warehouses, is intended by its developers to be a state-of-the art center of commerce for the culinary arts and fresh local foods.
NPR:
An apple a day might keep the doctor away, but what do you do when there are no apples? It’s a question western Michigan’s apple growers are dealing with this season after strange weather earlier in the year decimated the state’s apple cultivation.
Michigan is the third-largest apple producer in the U.S. after New York and Washington, but the state’s apples will soon be in short supply. Now in the middle of harvest season, growers are picking only 10 percent to 15 percent of their normal crop.
NPR:
Most mornings, NASA space engineer Adam Steltzner wakes up at about 3 a.m., and before he can coax his tired body back to sleep, his mind takes over. And he starts to worry.
Eventually Steltzner gives up on sleep and heads into his garden where, just as first light reveals the sky, all that thinking can turn into doing. And finally, a little peace.
It’s amazing what some will do just to keep a lawn green…
Associated Press via NPR:
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — When this summer’s drought turned her prized lawn brown, Terri LoPrimo fought back, but not with sprinklers: She had it painted green, making her suddenly lush-appearing yard the envy of her neighborhood.
The Staten Island, N.Y., resident and her husband, Ronnie, hired a local entrepreneur to spruce up their yard by spraying it with a deep-green organic lawn dye. By Monday, the couple’s property was aglow with newly green blades of grass and no watering needed to sustain it.
“It looks just like a spring lawn, the way it looks after a rain. It’s really gorgeous,” said LoPrimo, a 62-year-old retiree.
So, why do store-bought tomatoes lack the taste that many of us remember as kids? Blame aesthetics according to a recent report in Science Magazine:
The next time you bite into a supermarket tomato and are less than impressed with the taste, blame aesthetics. A new study reveals that decades of breeding the fruits for uniform color have robbed them of a gene that boosts their sugar content.
The finding is “a massive advance in our understanding of tomato fruit development and ripening,” says Alisdair Fernie, who studies the chemical composition of tomatoes at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Potsdam, Germany.
William Saxton, the second generation owner of Saxton’s Garden Center in Plymouth, passed away on June 4, 2012 at the age of 86.
Born in Hazel Park, Michigan on March 14, 1926 to Dean and Margaret Saxton, Bill graduated from Plymouth High School, where he met his future wife Valerie, in 1944. He served honorably in the U.S. Navy during World War II and went on to study business management and engineering at the University of Michigan, graduating in the late 1940’s. Bill and Valerie married in the summer of 1947.
Taking the reins from his father, Bill became the owner and operator of Saxton’s Garden Center, an 83-year-old family business in Plymouth, Michigan. A cornerstone of Plymouth’s downtown, the former Saxton’s Feed Company once served as a stop on the Underground Railroad. Under Bill’s leadership, Saxton’s Feed Company transitioned from farm-supply and livestock feed to Saxton’s Garden Center as farms gave way to suburbs.
Bill is survived by his wife of nearly 65 years, Valerie and his children Alan, Craig and Christopher. Saxton will be remembered as a dedicated husband, father, grandfather, veteran, businessman, philanthropist, community leader and friend. Alan Saxton, third generation owner, operates Saxton’s Garden Center today.
NPR’s All Things Considered:
Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny, France, draws half a million visitors a year, but for the next several months, you won’t have to travel farther than the Bronx to get a taste of the artist’s green thumb. The New York Botanical Garden has recreated Monet’s horticultural work for an exhibit that includes photographs, videos, rare documents and two of the impressionist’s paintings.
The New York garden is scaled down to be sure, but in some ways its abundance of flowers and colors makes it even more riotous than the original. You enter by stepping through a facade of Monet’s house, with its salmon walls and green shutters, and out into a long corridor of flowers.
Most of us in Michigan that plan on growing tomatoes this season have already planted. But, in the event you still haven’t or want to take notes for next year, here is some good information in the quest for a tomato with optimal taste.
The Salt at NPR:
It’s tomato time here in the mid-Atlantic – the critical moment when those of us eager to pull fat, bright fruit off our own backyard vines in a couple months are scurrying to get tender little plants in the ground.
But as anyone who’s spent a few summers of kneeling in the dirt can tell you, healthy-looking vines will not necessarily get you a mind-blowingly delicious tomato. And why?
Well, it turns out that scientists still don’t know exactly what growing conditions are responsible for the supertasty tomato. But they have a few inklings, which are worth keeping in mind as you try to coax sweetness and tartness from your seedlings.
As you are planting your tomato plants, it’s worth revisiting a problem that hit our area several years ago. That problem is late blight. Given the drier conditions so far, late blight isn’t expected to be that much of an issue in 2012. This video by NPR’s Science Friday is a good primer on what blight is, how to identify it and what is done to combat it.
Check out the USDA Late Blight website which traces outbreaks around the U.S.
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