While today is rainy and chill, but there is no doubt that the planting season is in full swing. I have planted the celery, cabbage, swiss chard and cauliflower. The peas were planted too, but as they took their sweet time rising from their beds, I think they will need to be pulled and composted. Such is the life of a vegetable, mulched for laziness.

But the peas need to be pulled so that I can make room for the American Idols of my vegetable garden, the tomato. Sorry folks, no phone in on who gets voted in or out but I will share the likely candidates for Hanna’s Tomato Tastings 2008. Drumroll please…

Among the nameless seedlings that I grew myself:

• Marmande
• Japanese Black Trifele
• Cosmonaut Volkov
• Homesweet
• Hillbilly
• Kimberly
• Winsall
• Green Moldovan
• Celebrity
• Wayahead
• Russian 117
• Manitoba

Hopefully, I can match the tomatoes back to the name when they grow.

I also purchased a few more from my very favorite tomato seller, Alainia (aka TomatoGirl) of http://www.tomatobabycompany.com/. Those tomatoes are:

• Bear Claw
• Believe-It-Or-Not
• German Red Strawberry
• Heinz 1439
• Omar’s Lebanese
• Chocolate Stripes
• Blue
• Noir de Crimee

All together, I will be growing 20 different tomatoes, which is a few less than last year but still a lovely number of new flavors to look forward to.

I bet you now have tomato envy. I bet you are looking down at your Better Boys and Beefmasters and wondering if there is a world beyond the Britney Spears of pop tomatoes. Disappointed because it is just too late to start tomato seeds now and your local nursery sucks like ClearChannel sucks. Well, I am here to tell you that there is and there is no reason why YOU can’t experience it. But first a segue…

Last year, I sent Alainia a packet full of the Clementine seeds from the plant I grew last year. She grew them this year, so that she could add it to her list of tomatoes she sells next year. But, she has some extras. Return to main point…

If you order some heirloom tomatoes from her, and tell her you are one of my readers, she will include a free Clementine tomato plant with your order. I am giving this recommendation without receiving anything in return. I am only making it because she is an awesome (very affordable) heirloom tomato seller and I do think that you have not had a tomato unless you have tried an off the wall heirloom tomato.

Tomatoes from the garden are not just food, the are something that should be experienced. Whether you buy from Alainia or find your own source, I urge you to try growing something a little different this year. No matter the outcome, your life and tastebuds will be a little richer for it.

In case you have been wandering the outer fringes of Antarctica lately, you know that we Americans may or may not be, but certainly soon will be, unless a stimulus package miracle of biblical proportions happens, otherwise, we really will find ourselves in the midst of a good old fashion recession. I live in Cleveland, OH though. We have been in a recession for the past decade so, really, so not too much has changed here.

But gas prices are up, food prices are up and it is spring and there are empty flower beds to be filled. While I don’t mind missing a few meals to cover the cost of new plants, my husband and children are not in agreement with me on this. (Sheesh, haven’t they ever heard the whole feed the soul saying…)

So, since skipping meals is out and siphoning gas is illegal, I will just have to take other measures to ensure I have a plant filled spring.

• Plant Swaps - You probably have some extra plants in your yard (mostly uber-invasive ones if you are like me) that can be traded for something different. And, chances are, there is a plant swap in your area here soon. Check you local garden clubs, libraries and newspapers. Can’t find one? Organize one. Most local parks or libraries will happily let you hold them there for free and there are plenty of gardeners in need of new plants.
   
• Check the internet - Places like Freecycle, Craig’s List and eBay are great places to score cheap or even free plants. Check them regularly for deals. Feel free to post a wanted ad as well. Also, keep your eyes open for compost, gardening tools and décor as well.
   
• Become the local Trash Fairy - Trash picking is an ancient and well respected art (at least in some third world countries). You would be amazed at what people will throw away. Don’t be afraid to pick up what you see in the trash. If anyone asks, just tell them you are saving the planet. They don’t have to know that you are just trying to save money.
   
• Buy wisely - Sometimes, especially when it comes to annuals, you just have to purchase. Do so wisely. Check the base of the plant before you buy. Is there one stem or more sticking out of the soil? Chances are at least a few pots will actually have more than plant in it, so you can get two plants for the prices of one.
   
• Buy plants you can propagate - Some annuals, like impatiens, petunias and Coleus, are dead easy to propagate from cuttings. Buy the largest, leggiest plant you can and take cuttings from it. Stick the cuttings in water, and in a a week or two you will have a whole new mess of plants.
   
• Grow from seed - I suck at this one (though I do still have 30 surviving nameless tomato plants with T-minus three weeks to planting), but some people are really good at it. Grow your own plants from seeds. Much cheaper.
   
• Buy small - You know when you see the gallon plant and the quart plant sitting next to each other and one is marked $20 and the other is $5 and the gallon one just looks so damn pretty because it is huge and you think maybe it is worth the $15 extra… It’s not. That gallon plant is probably only 2 months older than the quart plant. Buy the smaller one and it will fill out before you know it.

So after you lose your job and they foreclose on your house and you can no longer drive your car because of rising gas prices and your children starve because eggs and milk now cost a $1 more than they did before, you at least know that you will still be able to get your hands on some plants to cheer you up.

Actually, gardeners in general tend to be a frugal and fiscally creative bunch anyway, and most of these tips are standard practice for me and other gardeners each year, regardless of recession fears. But blogging is now a form of accepted media and what kind of media would I be if I did not latch on to a potentially scary subject, blow it out of proportion and use it for my own ratings?

The pride of my garden, the jewel of my yard, the magnolia tree in my back yard that is bigger than my house has burst forth in a brilliant explosion of herbavarian sexuality.There is no grander sight than an ancient magnolia in full and unfrost scathed bloom.

And I can truly use the word ancient here, because while my magnolia is simply a few decades old, her ancestors date back to the Triassic period. Before we mammals were a twinkle in Mother Nature’s eye, these trees were serving as a tasty snack for some giant beast that now lives on only as a fuzzy fossil x-ray. My children are forever lamenting the loss of dinosaurs from our world. Little do they know that we have a direct descendent of their version of a Happy Meal in our back yard.

While flowers on my magnolia display are magnificent to behold, they are in fact outdated flowers. You can kind of think of them as the ’57 Chevy’s of the plant world. They don’t have those fancy features like petals and nectar. Instead they have the tepals and a super sweet smell that is designed to attract pollinators as old as themselves (which do not include the bee, butterfly and wasp pollinator trifecta of the modern world). They are pollinated by beetles.

Magnolias have an odd history. Thanks to the devastation of the Ice Age which wiped out magnolias in
Europe, magnolias developed on continents, The Americas and
Asia, that are oceans apart. Asians have revered them for centuries, using them as decoration, food and medicine. Europeans, with their usual lack of cultural awareness, “discovered” them in the
Americas and brought them back to
Europe where they became an instant hit.

But magnolias are more than just Asian herbal lore, decor and salad. Early studies show that it carries compounds that may fight cancer tumors. Who would have thought that something that evolved long before we did could one day save one of our lives?

Super drug or dinosaur fodder, it does not really matter to me. Really, all I care about is that this year, the frost did not cheat me out of my magnolia display.

It’s Earth Day again… The day on which I feel I am compelled by internet peer pressure to post something (thank god they are not pressuring me to drink, I do enough of that already). Which makes me unhappy. I don’t like that gardening and environmentalism are supposedly tied hand in hand.

Gardening is a hobby and environmentalism is a cause. One should not be thought linked to a cause simply because one is participating in a hobby.

So, in honor of Earth Day and because it has been on my mind lately, I have a rant about environmentalism… again.

Since when did being environmentally friendly require attempting to max out your credit card?

Buy a Prius, buy a green house, buy bamboo shirts (never mind that cotton has been a renewable resource for centuries) and, for gods sake, buy organic foods. Ignore the fact that none of these really follows the old mantra of Reduce Reuse Recycle. Anytime you are buying something new, you are adding to the overall problem, no matter what you buy.

Buy something new (even environmentally friendly new) and the chances are really high that it still uses materials that were mined or created from dangerous chemicals or transported thousands of miles. If your old car/house/shirt was still perfectly serviceable and than it is still contributing to the “supposed” problem, whether still in use by another person or filling up a landfill. So what exactly got fixed? You did not fix anything but now you look cool, ‘cause you are just so damn green.

I guess I am just wondering when people got to be environmentally trendy instead of environmentally friendly. Actually, I sometimes wonder if they ever were anything but.

I suppose it goes hand and hand with last year’s rant about not feeling good enough for environmentalists. The mindset seems to be if are not spending, you are not supporting. What was I thinking? I could spend everything I have and go out and buy my self into environmental compliance. Gee, like country, like citizen.

I am not sure when the phrase went from being “Reduce Reuse Recycle” to “Buy Brag Buy More”, but it is time to stop shopping and start paying attention. The environmental movement is now officially killing people. Perhaps we would be much better off using fully what we already have made and making less of what will supposedly save the planet (but only if you buy today for the low, low price of $19.95.)

My husband and I have always gotten our mowers out of the trash. It is not that we can’t afford a new mower, it is just that my husband tends to feel more manly when he can push a mower that a lesser man was unable to repair. I don’t understand it either. I chalk it up to excess testosterone.

A few months ago, Troy-Bilt asked me to review a mower for them. My thought was that there was still snow on the ground and it is really hard to mow grass in the snow. They said, “No, silly” (they didn’t say that, but I bet they thought that) “In the spring we want you to review one of our mowers. We will even send you one to try.” Well, who can say no to that?

So a new XP Series lawn mower arrived in a big box (which was later adopted by my children and transformed into a coffin. I just don’t ask) and my husband assembled it. He was able to put it together in under a half hour without reading the directions (it is apparently not manly to read directions). But I assume that those clever people at Troy-Bilt know that their product is meant for testosterone addled men and they have designed the product accordingly.

The mower was also easy enough for me to start. That right there is a miraculous feat of industrial design as I sometimes need to go get my husband to start the electric weed wacker for me. I have pathetic arms.

My husband felt that there were too many safety features (testosterone again). I, being the daughter of a man who had once removed the safety feature off a power tool and subsequently lost 2 1/2 fingers, felt there were probably too little, though I could not think of any I would immediately add. I am still fairly certain my husband could figure out some way to almost injure himself with it in the name of being manly.

Then we (and by that I mean my husband) took it out for a run around the yard.

This model is a mulching mower, which I love. Our last dragged from the trash mower was “Not a Mulching Mower”, which I think translates to “Pain In The Ass” in Swahili. I don’t like raking my yard more than once a year.

The XP mower also cut beautifully. Nice, smooth even lawn, which is saying something with my lawn. The dandelions did not have a chance.

Then my husband let me try out the self prolusion system. Hmmm… I am not so fond of that. At level 1, you are walking at a pretty good clip, faster than I would like though my husband does not mind. At the highest level (4), you are training for a marathon with a lawnmower in front of you. I am not joking on that. I was literally pulled off my feet. When you try to mow the lawn without the self propulsion, well, the XP mower did not take kindly to its features being snubbed and did not handle well.

Of course a safety feature kicks in when you let go of the handle while using the self propelled feature. It cuts the motor so that the mower does not go tearing off down the road. But my biggest concern with this is that I have a 12-year-old son (read free landscaping crew). I am a little worried about this mower being used by him. I have visions of the mower akimbo and the half unscathed remnants of my 60 year old hydrangea bush and my son sobbingly explaining how he panicked and just did not let go. Underage mowing with the XP will need to be supervised for a few weeks, maybe months before I feel comfortable with it.

But, my paranoid insecurities aside, it did do a sharp job on the lawn in no time at all. It is a great mower, just a really powerful mower.

I suppose the thing to say would be that this is a man’s lawn mower. More power and all that jazz. Which is okay with me. It gives my husband something to expend his excess testosterone on. He is less likely to injure himself that way.

When I was growing up, way out in the boonies of Clermont County, a stray animal would wander through my mother’s garden at least once a month. Which would explain why we never had less than 2 dogs and 6 cats in the house at any one time. Now that I live in the suburbs, I just don’t see stray dogs. We have a very efficient dog catcher. He points that out to me each time he returns my dog to me.

So this past week, when an unfamiliar dog wandered into my garden, I was surprised. Not only was this a stray dog, but he was a starving dog. Which was strange. Frankly, dogs just don’t starve in the suburbs. There are just too many trash cans. Upon closer inspection, we discovered he had a collar and an odd temporary tag from a realty company in North Carolina, of all places.

The dog came with me easily enough and we fed him a bowl of food right away, to try to keep him from fainting from hunger right there. As I am with all strange dogs, I was a bit wary. But within a day or so, it became obvious that this was the biggest teddy bear there ever was. My 4 year old was dragging this dog, who is nearly as tall as he is, around by the collar and the dog willingly goes.

The more the week has gone along, the more it has become apparent that this dog was once loved by someone. He may have been starved, but he had never been abused. So where does a dog starve in the suburbs but not abused? My husband and I have two theories. He came from the MetroParks or he came off a train from the nearby train yard. Either way, we are fairly certain that someone misses this dog a lot. And so the search began.

We posted ads in the Plain Dealer (free for found ads), CraigsList.com, FidoFinder.com. I started emailing every lost ad with a matching description of this dog. We took him to the vet to get him scanned for a microchip.

We even called Outer Beaches Realty to ask about the tag. It turns out they only give them to people who are staying in one of their houses with a dog. Cheryl at Outer Beaches was as concerned as I was. She pulled the entire list of clients from Ohio who had dogs and started making calls. (If you are looking to vacation in North Carolina I would highly recommend them. If they are willing to go to this length for a former renter, imagine what they will do for a current one.)

And the end result after a week of searching and answering emails? Our lost dog is still a lost dog. *sigh* Maybe we have the real life equivalent of The Incredible Journey but we have no way of finding him safely home to the people who loved him. The best we can do is find him a new home where someone new will love him as well. Right now, we have 2 people who would like the dog so there is no fear that he will not find a new home.

Well, the official start of Spring happened today. Though, that is a point of contention between my husband and myself. He thinks Spring starts with Opening Day. I think it starts when I feel the overwhelming need to weed a flower bed.

The air was warm today and the quackgrass was calling. I gleefully ripped it out by the handful and mercilessly attacked the wild garlic while I was at it. The just burgeoning dandelions did not have a chance as I wretched them out of the rain dampened soil. Chaos and destruction in the weed world is a good day in my book.

I find it kind of funny that I do not consider the appearance of flowers to be the start of Spring. The showing of snowdrops and Siberian iris are good signal flags that Spring is on her slow-ass way, but their appearance is not the start of Spring in my mind. The early flowers are more like the Secret Service of Spring. Making sure that all is ready and that winter has not laid a devious plot to assassinate her when she arrives.

But the fist time I fail to make it to my front door after coming home from the grocery store because I just wanted to pull one errant blade of grass… and 2 hours, one ruined pair of jeans and “groceries still in the car” later… this has got to be Spring.

My husband can keep his silly Indian Opener as the start of Spring. I know for a fact it snowed on opening day last year, so what kind of Spring start is that? I will stick with the tried and true method of “Oh, that should not be growing there. I think I will just pull it” as the real measure of when the Spring starts.

When I was a kid, I experimented with hydroponics (and not for the typical reasons teenagers do). I was sure that by the time I was an adult, this would be a valuable skill as we would all be living on the moon and maybe even Mars as my teachers had rather firmly told me that we would have decimated this plant due to our rapid deforestation of the rain forest. That didn’t happen.  I guess we just did not cut down enough trees to make it worth NASA’s while (don’t tell my sister I said that).

Which is probably a good thing as I killed everything I tried to grow in water. Hydroponics requires a little know how.

It was quite a few years later on a trip to Canada where I saw, from a distance, the hydroponic future of farming. There were many greenhouses in some of the colder parts of Canada where vegetables were (and maybe still are) grown for commercial consumption. It was always one of the reasons I never worried my pretty little head too much about the future of the vast amount of farmland here in the States. Using hydroponics, you can always go up.

So it intrigued me when, a few weeks ago, I was approached by a EasiestGarden.com to review their how-to video on creating a Hydroponic Lettuce Garden. Could I actually build a hydroponic system at home? So, I watched the DVD and read the manual to find out.

First of all, I do have to say that if you are interested in learning how to create a hydropnic garden, this is an excellent resource. The topic was thoroughly covered and every detail, right down to some darn handy tips and tricks, were explained in an easy to follow step-by-step manner. As a resource, it was great.

The video quality was so-so, but I was willing to forgive that. They at least used a tripod and the video quality does not take away from the content in the video.

The DVD and manual retails for $29.95, which is on the high side for a DVD and small paper pamphlet. Is it worth it? Well, I think that is up to you. This is a topic that is difficult to find really good, thorough information about and the DVD does make it easy for you to understand what could easily turn into a complicated subject. If you are looking for a great resource on this topic and you are committed to the project, than the $30 is worth it.

Now, to answer the question of whether I could build a hydroponic system at my home. Technically, with the directions outlined in this guide, I could but I have a small yard and the end contraption is not the loveliest thing in the world and I could easily see my kids confusing it with an oddly shaped jungle gym. So, my future career as a space station hydroponic gardener will probably have to go on hold. But it was fun to see how I could make such a garden, if I needed to… Say because we actually did go to Mars.

I saw my first robin of Spring today, hopping around in between the blooming crocus in my back yard.

It may interest some of you out there that when we Yanks speak about the first robin of Spring and the Brits talk about the robins at Christmas, we are talking about two different birds. It seems that a robin is not a robin is not a robin. Of course the question then becomes “What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen robin? What do you mean? An American or European robin?” Well, maybe that is a question for another day.

The American robin is a victim of memory moniker misappropriation. Apparently settlers who were brave enough to make a 3 month sea journey, face native populations of unknown hostilities and wrenchingly carve out a life in a wild land had no energy left over to come up with original names for the animals they saw. When the first European settlers dared to hazard these rocky shores, they saw a little bird who reminded them of their own red breasted robin at home. So, they just said, “Screw it, I am tired. We’ll just call it a robin.”

While the robin is considered the harbinger of spring when it “returns”, it actually does not leave the area in the winter. The little American robin has once again been mis-classified. They do not migrate very far and over-winter in pretty much the same places that they summer in. They simply hide more in the winter, preferring to gather in large flocks in the woods, perhaps for warmth and perhaps to catch up on gossip from the summer. The fact that robins can produce 3 different broods in a single summer means that there is a whole lot of juicy “who’s sleeping with who” gossip to catch up on when the weather gets cold.

When the weather warms up, the flocks break up and the robin returns to our back yards and we squeal in delight because the robin has “come back”. Yeah, that trip from the MetroParks must have been exhausting.

Robins eat all sorts of tasty things. Everything from worms to fruit. BTW, in case you needed yet another reason not to use Chem-the-hell-out-of-it-Lawn, the robins you see in your back yard eat the worms from your back yard. If you use pesticides on your lawn, it gets in the worms, which get eaten by the robins and the robins die from pesticide poisoning. Tell that to the ChemLawn guy, the next time you see him. Just scream “You are killing Spring, you bastard!” I am sure it will at least freak him out enough that he will leave the area immediately.

Even if the robin does not really “come back” and has been here all along, it is still nice to see her once again gracing my back yard. It is still a sign that warm weather is just around the corner.

Wow! What can I say… There were over 5,000 entries for the composter giveaway and I think that I had a record number of comments on that post.

The Composter Giveaway is now closed and a winner has been selected. Robert Fantom from New York is the proud winner of the Urban Compost Bin Tumbler. He had this to say:

I have been telling my 5 year old daughter the benefits composting and promised her that we would build a composting pile this spring. This will make it so much easier, and she’ll be able to maintain the compost pile with just a little help from us.

See, educating your kids on the benefits of composting and making effective use of child labor. I am convinced that this is the secret to successful gardening. Congratulations to Robert and thanks to everyone who entered.

You can now return to your regularly scheduled day.