Colleen Vanderlinden
Colleen Vanderlinden is the author of Edible Gardening for the Midwest and Vegetable Gardening for the Midwest. Her work has appeared in Mother Earth News and Birds & Blooms, and she's the organic gardening guide for About.com. When she's not gardening, she's teaching others how to do so. Which basically means she's obsessed.
In addition to gardening, she enjoys cooking, reading (usually about gardening....) and dreaming of keeping a few chickens. She's also the founder of In the Garden Online, where she writes about gardening, blogging, and everything in between, and Gardening in the Mitten, where she provides useful information for Michigan gardeners.
Latest Stories from Colleen Vanderlinden - Page 4
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Use Your Dandelions: Make Dandelion Jelly
I like dandelions, I'll admit it. I love the fact that they provide an important spring nectar source for beneficial insects. I appreciate their bright blossoms, which currently blanket several median strips in my
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Detroit Bike City
My hometown gets a bum rap sometimes in the green community. It's that whole car thing -- I know. We have crappy public transit. True enough. But what few people outside of Detroit know is that a passion for DIY, for hacking the everyday, for
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Turning Waste into Beautiful Green Jewelry: WoodWear by Andrea
This is the ultimate in sustainable business: one small business creating a product from the "waste" created by another local business.
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Garden Pots from Used Tires - Flat Tire Decor
In the United States alone, over 240 million tires are discarded annually. The overwhelming majority of these tires end up in landfills; less than ten percent of them are recycled.
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Extinct Plants of New York City
Of the 1,357 plant species that once thrived in New York City, only 771 are still found there. The main reasons behind the loss of most plants from the area are human-related: habitat
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What Your Garden's Weeds are Trying to Tell You
The best way to learn about your soil's health is to get a soil test through your local cooperative extension service or at a local nursery. However, there are a few simple things you can do to get a
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Vermicompost Right in Your Garden - Make a Worm Bucket
I am a big fan of vermicomposting. It can be done indoors or out, and it's still fun, even after all the time I've been composting with worms, to watch my apple cores and
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Garden Reuse: Make a Planter Wall from Discarded Cinder Blocks
My neighbors tore out their old cement porch last summer to install a wood deck. I eyed the stacks of discarded cinder blocks on their curb for an entire weekend, wondering what I could use them for. If I'd seen this
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How to Get More Veggies from Your Garden
In the quest to grow more of our own food on our 1/4 acre city lot, we've spent a bit of time bemoaning the fact that we are quickly running out of space. The good news is that there are plenty of ways to
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In Defense of Heirloom Vegetables
"Is gardening just a hobby or are we trying to do something a bit more serious, like reducing our 'food miles' and growing fresh food we know we have some control over? There are folk
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Creative, Colorful Fence from Old Road Signs
What happens to old aluminum highway signs when they are taken down, traded in for new ones with updated information? I assumed they were recycled, since they're aluminum, but the reflective paint most of them are painted with
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Encouragement for New Gardeners
There are so many questions people have when they start gardening. What should I plant? When should I plant it? How should I care for it? My last garden was a disaster, what did I do wrong? The underlying
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Easy Methods for Growing Potatoes
From giant, starchy baking potatoes to small, waxy fingerlings; from pale white to deep purple, there are almost endless options available to you when you grow your own. The
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Easy Garden Recycling: Wire Hangers as Garden Staples
Sure, you could go to the garden center and buy a package of metal garden staples to hold down your floating row cover or secure the plastic over your low tunnel. Or you could peek into your closet
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Get Your Garden Growing: Low Tunnels for Earlier Spring Harvests
We're a little over two months away from our last frost date, but I'm getting ready to sow a few seeds and plant cool season vegetables out in the garden. With a simple, inexpensive low tunnel, you can do the same, and
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No Green Thumb? Try Growing These Three Easy Vegetables
So you say you don't have a green thumb. You kill every plant you try to grow, including the so-called "unkillable" plants that everyone else on the planet seems to have no
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New Research Finds That Roundup Ready GMO Crops May Cause Animal Miscarriages
Here's another reason the recent approval of GMO alfalfa and sugar beets was a bad idea: researchers claim that Roundup Ready GE crops contain an organism, completely unknown until now, that
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Can You Trademark Urban Homesteading?
The Dervaes family of Pasadena is well-known for practicing self-sufficiency on their urban lot. They grow over 7000 pounds of food. They use very little power from the
