Tag Archives: gardening

Keep Pain Out of Your Back While Keeping Weeds Out of Your Garden

Spending time in the garden is always a welcome activity, as the sunshine feels good and the fresh air brings hope for many enjoyable summer days to come. However, gardening can be exhausting, and if we are not careful, it might even be injurious.

The following are a few tips to keep your back in top shape as you spend long hours pulling weeds, hauling mulch, and performing other yard-centered activities.

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Stand up often

Although it might seem like wasted time when you have a full day of yard work planned, standing up every five minutes will give your back a much needed break. When you spend too many hours slumped over your garden bed, it can be as bad for your spine as sitting slumped over in your recliner. So do yourself a favor and periodically stand up and stretch. (more…)

Posted on June 28, 2023 by Jill

5 Ways to Make Your Community a Healthier Place to Call Home

One of my favorite books is The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest. Author Dan Buettner looks at areas in the world, dubbed Blue Zones, with large populations of people who live past 100.

He’s taken their life lessons to create The Power 9. These nine habits create a “blueprint” to living a longer and healthier life. The interesting thing is none of the people he studied consciously followed these Power 9 or set a goal to live to be 100. They just did. Their lifestyles and communities were set up to make long life possible.

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Would you say the same of yours?

My community is working on it. We are working on taking the Power 9 principles and making Springfield, MO a healthier place to live. There are a lot of exciting ideas floating around, especially after Buettner’s visit to our fair city this month. In his presentations, he gave us examples of work in other towns (and almost the entire state of Iowa) using the Power 9 to create an environment that supports overall healthy and longevity.

Do you want to make your community a healthier place to live? Here are great ways to get started from his talk: (more…)

Posted on June 27, 2023 by Pamela

A Public Edible Fruit Forest Will Soon Be a Reality in Seattle

Imagine a park where you don’t have to say to your kids, “don’t put that in your mouth!”. In fact, imagine one where you encourage them to do the opposite. Well, it’s happening! Seattle will soon be home to the nation’s first-ever edible park.

A seven-acre plot of land in Seattle’s Beacon Hill area will soon be the Beacon Food Forest. The area will be planted with several types of edible plants. Walnut and chestnut trees, berry bushes, fruit trees, even exotics like pineapple and lingonberries will grow in this new park. The best part? It’s open for public picking and plucking. All are invited and encouraged to eat up the nation’s’ first food forest.

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Posted on June 14, 2023 by Lacy

Food Blogger Spotlight: Diane from The Canning Diva

The Canning Diva has a slogan, “Food is Art. Canning is my way of Preserving Art.” And boy, does she ever! Diane Devereaux the Canning Diva, may use a mason jar, but her idea of canning goes way beyond your grandmama’s jams and jellies.

Diane is a Michigan native who developed a love for gardening and canning in her early teens. The Canning Diva website is stylish and vibrant, providing all the information on food preservation you could ever want, plus, recipes, ideas for meal stretching and, if you live in the Michigan area, you can see Diane in person where she frequently hosts classes and provides live demonstrations. We asked her to tell us about her blog and she eagerly obliged.

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Posted on June 9, 2023 by Dani Stone

Food Blogger Spotlight: Laura Wright of The First Mess

In a sea of healthy food bloggers, Laura Wright of The First Mess has carved a niche all her own as not only a gifted writer and photographer, but an unstoppable force in the kitchen. Her recipes can be described as healthy, rustic and always adventurous.

Every time she announces a new post I rush to begin poring over every word, taking in the breathtaking photos and then finally skipping down to the recipe to savor every ingredient she lists. If you stop by Laura’s blog, I have a feeling you’ll do the same. She simply never disappoints.

I’ve been following Laura’s blog for about a year now and have always wondered where she draws her inspiration from. This week I finally got my chance to ask. We recently had the pleasure of speaking with Laura about how “The First Mess” came to be and how she approaches food, health and life. Here’s what she had to say.

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Posted on March 3, 2024 by Dana

Girl Scout Troop Raises Money for Edible Garden Instead of Selling Cookies

Last month, we vocalized our distaste for Girl Scout Cookies in a highly read article, Why You Should Never Buy Girl Scout Cookies. It’s not that we don’t like the troops, many of us worked hard for those same badges. What we don’t like is the message these cookies send, the ingredients they’re stuffed with, and missed opportunity to do something so much more with these young minds.

When we were tipped off to what Girl Scout Troop 2753 is doing in California, we were thrilled. Why isn’t every troop doing this, we wondered.

One of the troop’s members, Alicia, dons her Daisy uniform and says, “My Girl Scout troop is not selling cookies but we are raising money for our fruit and vegetable garden at our school.” (more…)

Posted on March 1, 2024 by Natalie K

“To Get Kids Healthy, Let Them Lead the Conversation” Michelle Obama Tells The View

Michelle Obama appeared on “The View” Tuesday to discuss a number of important issues regarding our nation’s health. From gardening to nutrition in schools to how she hopes the Let’s Move campaign will paint a better tomorrow for our nation, the first lady opened up about how she created a healthy environment for her own family and how she hopes to empower other families to do the same.

Here are our top five takeaways from her time on “The View.”

You can garden anywhere. If you don’t know by now that the first lady loves gardening, you’ve been living under a rock. In her book “American Grown,” Mrs. Obama shares about her experience in planting a full-scale garden in the White House lawn, and how it’s helped she and her family not only eat healthier, but more fully appreciate whole foods.

By maintaining her own garden, Mrs. Obama became an advocate for gardening everywhere – in schools, at home, in communities – and hopes to educate Americans about the importance of planting and growing their own food, knowing where their meals comes from, and how doing so can play a key role in improving our nation’s health. (more…)

Posted on August 16, 2023 by Dana

Michelle Obama Tells of White House Honey and Beer in Her Book ‘American Grown’

The first lady is getting a little more famous today at the release of her long-awaited book, American Grown: The Story of the White House Garden and Gardens Across America.

Inside this inspirational tale, Mrs. Obama shares what she’s learned about growing a vegetable garden in the White House Lawn in her years as first lady of our nation.

In a recent interview with NPR, Obama said that spring is one of her favorite seasons in the garden because everything is bursting. She says the family eat lots of broccoli, fresh greens and lettuces of all kinds; and even plenty of sugar snap peas, much to her oldest daughter’s disapproval as it’s one of her least favorites.

But one of the most intriguing parts about the White House garden is the beehive, which has been fully-functioning since its installation in 2024.

The first lady says she uses the honey almost exclusively, and especially enjoys it in her tea. In fact, one of her favorite snacks is White House honey over organic green apples. ‘Tastes like sunshine doesn’t it?’ she asked a reporter in a recent interview. This description has us longing for a taste of our own. (more…)

Posted on May 29, 2023 by Dana

Central Park’s Edible Urban Garden is Ripe for the Picking

By Abra Pappa for Nutritious America

Living in an urban environment one can frequently go for long periods of time without getting intimate with nature. Maybe even a lifetime. It is rare to see urbanites digging in the ground or planting a garden. And when envisioning a Mecca of wild edible plants, most likely a concrete jungle does not come to mind.

Think again.

As it turns out, Manhattan’s Central Park is home to more than 100 species of wild edible plants. Edible and free!

It takes an expert in what is called foraging, searching for food sources, to point out which species are edible and which are not. I met a foraging expert this Earth Day, his name is Wildman Steve Brill. He has been offering foraging tours of Central Park for nearly 30 years.

I joined Wildman for one of his four hour Central Park tours where around 30 participants plucked plants right from the ground and popped them in their mouths, and sampled flower buds off of a low hanging branch to savor their flavor profile. Spring is the season of greens, and small budding flowers. In four hours we all consumed plenty of wild greens and small budding flowers. (more…)

Posted on April 25, 2024 by Nutritious_America

Carpenter Place and DietsInReview Had the Best Earth Day Ever

It’s safe to say that we had the best Earth Day ever yesterday! The day started bright and early (and chilly!) at Carpenter Place, where we gathered with a generous team of volunteers to plant vegetable gardens.

Last month, we learned that we’d be receiving a $1,000 grant from Kalso Earth Shoes to fund an Earth Day project. We chose to plant vegetable gardens at Carpenter Place, a local organization in Wichita, KS that provides residence and rehabilitation for young girls and women. Their budget doesn’t often allow for fruits and vegetable beyond those in cans, so by planting two gardens full of a variety of produce, we can ensure they’ve got healthy food all summer!


We had about 20 volunteers, including Carpenter Place residents, friends from the Wichita community, Brownies from Girl Scout troop 40693 in Andover, Kans., and a few of us from DIR. The wind was sweeping down the plains yesterday, but armed in hoodies and warm cups of coffee, we got to work, and in less than three hours gave the ladies of Carpenter Place more food than they’re going to know what to do with. We promised to take some off their hands if they get too much! (more…)

Posted on April 23, 2024 by Natalie K

Earth Day Garden Plans are Ready for Sunday!

We are less than 48 hours away from planting our vegetable gardens at Carpenter Place, and we’re really excited!

Last month, we won a $1,000 grant from Kalso Earth Shoes to fund an Earth Day project. We chose to outfit a local organization with fruit and vegetable gardens.

A garden center that has been in the Wichita community since the 1920s stepped up and has been a tremendous help. Johnson’s Garden Center has provided a 20% discount on our purchases, as well as made their incredible staff available to us to answer 101 questions. They’re even delivering everything to Carpenter Place for us completely free. We got pretty lucky with those guys.

I was there on Wednesday this week picking up seed potatoes and a few vegetable seeds, as well as making a game plan with Marty, one of the owners. Yesterday, I chopped the seed potatoes, per their careful instructions, so that they are ready for planting on Sunday morning. We’ll be planting Yukon Gold and red skin potatoes for the Carpenter Place girls. (more…)

Posted on April 20, 2024 by Natalie K