Sustainable Gardening News

Coming soon - a new website about better lawn types, eco-friendly lawn care, plus ways to reduce or eliminate your lawn.  Launch date - Monday, September 14!

In Your Garden Now

• What almost everyone needs to do right now but probably won’t? Overseed the lawn.  Without it, lawns fade away, and homeowners are discouraged - or they hire ChemLawn to force that lawn to green-up, fast!
• AND it's time to feed your lawn, the second thing that most people should do but don't.  Scroll down to "Fall" here.
• And what do you know?  It's also the best time to start a new lawn.  

In the News

• At the state's urging, towns along the Passaic River in New Jersey are lining up to limit the use of landscape fertilizers.
  
• Casey Trees (a terrific nonprofit here in DC) shows how trees can be cared for by bicycle.  They call it the Water-by-Cycle Initiative.
  

Found on the Web

• Got a sprinkler?  Is it as efficient as it could be?  Billy Goodnick to the rescue.
  
• Vote for America's Favorite Flower - and note that rudbeckia's in the lead.  Its competition?  3 Petunias, a penta and a vinca!
  
• Is rubber mulch safe?  According to Linda Chalker-Scott, not so much.

On the Sustainable Gardening Blog

• Sustainable Gardening for Florida, or Anywhere is a shout-out to Ginny Stibolt for a great review of her new book, but explores what the heck sustainability IS.  Ginny's got answers we don't often see.
  
• Does Cash for Grass make Sense (or Cents)? is a guest post by Tom Hawkins suggesting an alternative to paying people to rip out the lawn - Buffalograss.

On GardenRant

• What Native-Plant Gardens Need by guest David Schmetterling, the Montana Wildlife Gardener, is a dose of reality.  Any garden needs maintenance, even one filled with native plants.
• Greenmapping cities helps them in untold ways.
  
• On Growing Vegetables in Containers reports the findings of this first-timer.
  
• Getting the Lead Out covers the controversy over lead in the White House kitchen garden soil's, and commenters weigh in. 
  

Recently on Sustainable-Gardening.com

• A new section about Urban Gardening!  Visit and send me more good links, great programs, awesome stories about school and community gardens, CSAs, park renovations, farmers' markets, backyard-sharing and container/rooftop/balcony gardening.
  
• Renee Shepherd joins the website as its newest contributor.  I asked her:  How do veg-gardeners go wrong?  Her answer? Veg-Gardening: What Works, What Doesn't.
  
• Growing Vegetables in Containers is a summing up of everything I learned doing it for the fist time this year, with some consulting with Renee to fill it out.

Second Career News

• Sponsors actually stepped up to pay me to attend a Urban Gardening conference and write about it!  The first of my stories covered Bette Midler's community garden group and its colorful executive director.  The Greenmapping story was another one.  More coming.

• And da-da! I have a steady gig as a writer - blogging for a bunch of indie garden centers.  New blogs are coming soon at Homestead Gardens and on the websites of some of their fellow garden centers around the U.S.  Ooh, this'll be fun.

Visit Sustainable-Gardening.com.

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