Vegetable Garden

I'd like to grow carrots, but I hear it's tricky. Any tips? Because carrots are roots that need to push through soil, having light loose soil is a big determiner of success. For carrots, a depth of 12 inches is ideal. Add compost to your soil structure. It is the Year of the Root Crop on Grow It Eat It, our all-vegetables. all-the-time site. Find us at our new url: extension.umd.edu/hgic. Our online newsletter starts off the year with a great article providing many tips for growing root crops in Maryland.

It was while she was serving dinner to her kids in 2008 and their dad was out campaigning for president, that Michelle Obama hatched a modest daydream: a vegetable garden on the White House grounds. She'd recently had a conversation with her children's pediatrician about their eating habits, and the poor health of children he was seeing in his practice. It shook her up — he was treating obesity and diabetes in kids — and she resolved to make better food choices for her family. She never said anything to Barack Obama about a vegetable garden (she told interviewers this week that she didn't want to jinx things with a "what if" question)

Baltimore, which sometimes carries a poor-cousin chip on its shoulder when it comes to the nation's capital, is about to trump the city to the south. Mayor Sheila Dixon is planning to turn the formal gardens in front of City Hall into vegetable gardens covering about 2,000 square feet. Michelle Obama's White House vegetable garden measures only 1,100 square feet. "This was being planned before the White House," said Dixon, firmly. "We are not copying!" The city will be planting decorative urns, about 70 window boxes and several formal raised beds with spring and summer vegetable crops that will benefit Our Daily Bread, which feeds 700 to 800 people a day and often finds itself, even in summer, relying on canned vegetables.

You begin to wonder if nature has a perverse sense of humor when the first perfect day for digging and planting coincides with opening day at the new stadium.If you weren't one of those multitudes who skipped the game to stay home and dig in the garden, you'll have more chances now. The beginning of daylight-saving time last Sunday now gives us a little bit of after-work gardening time in the evenings.As the weather finally warms, the chores multiply exponentially:* More crops can be planted in the vegetable garden.

When I brought my Thanksgiving cacti indoors, they produced many flowers, but one plant dropped buds. Pesticide didn't help. What's the problem? Bud and leaf fall in Thanksgiving cacti can be caused by too little water, too much water, excessive nitrogen, deficient potassium, rapid changes in temperature and drafts. Excess buds or flowers may drop naturally. Rotating a plant when buds are small may also cause sudden bud fall, possibly because buds turn to face the light and the effort weakens them.

Meade to get funds for road access Fort Meade will receive $3 million in federal funding to improve access to it and relieve area traffic congestion arising from the base closings and realignment program, Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski announced. The money is part of the 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act that provides $22 million to four Maryland transportation projects related to impacted communities. The 2009 bill also provides for Army Corps of Engineers projects for two county water-related ventures: $483,000 for maintenance dredging of Herring Bay and Rockhold Creek serving commercial fishermen seafood operations in Deal; and $1.1 million to complete engineering and design for maintenance dredging for Parrish Creek, which serves area marinas.

I'm worried about the effects of the recent warm weather on my landscape. My forsythia started blooming, my peach buds are swollen, and some of my daffodils are coming up. Will I have any flowers or peaches in the spring?Any exposed flowers and swollen or green buds will probably be killed by the return of colder temperatures. Your daffodils have tough leaves, however, and should be OK.The death of a small number of flowers on a large shrub (forsythia) or tree won't detract from the floral display in spring.

Think of Annapolis and you see Naval Academy midshipmen in their crisp whites, the spires of ancient churches and the masts of sailing yachts. The glittering dome of the state capitol and the rows of historic houses painted in lipstick colors. It is my town, and even I see it that way. I don't, however, see chickens. I will, though. More than 50 people attended a meeting at the Annapolis Library to learn more about a new city ordinance that will allow them to keep as many as five laying hens on their property, and some of them were my neighbors.

Margaret M. Hunter, a homemaker, mother and organic gardening enthusiast, died Saturday of a stroke at Friends House in Sandy Springs. She was 86.Mrs. Hunter graduated from Goucher College in 1928 with a double major in physics and mathematics.She was born in Harford County, where she lived until her marriage in 1930 to James Hunter. The Hunters made their home in Glyndon, where Mrs. Hunter enjoyed working in her vegetable and flower garden.They reared three children, including a son, James M. Hunter, who died a year ago.Mrs.

It feels like I am the only one not planting a vegetable garden this season. The first lady is. The mayor of Baltimore is. My friend Ron has expanded his vegetable garden, and my friend Jane, whose idea of gardening is walking all 18 holes on a golf course, is lending her yard to someone else so she can plant a vegetable garden. I scattered some lettuce seeds in a pot on the deck. And I will attempt again this year to grow a tomato plant that does not die prematurely from blight. But my idea of vegetable gardening is a regular Saturday morning trip to the farmers' market.