Tag Archives: Mary Puckett

Short of ideas for your Grow Your Own Garden? Recently moved into a condo with no available garden area? Living in your van? You might want to drive or stroll over to the located on Superior Street near the IFAS center http://duval.ifas.ufl.edu. Started decades ago, the IFAS garden provides a limited number of plots for folks who are sans soil. For folks who have both soil and sunlight, but might lack ideas, the garden is a creativity incubator. At a recent open house, Master Gardeners, under the leadership of , Veggie Gardener Wizard, informed novices and pros alike about bowl …

  Before 1820, individuals didn’t need to zip line over alligator pits when they could just  eat a tomato for a whiff of fear induced adrenaline? Yes, there was a time in agricultural history when North Americans assumed tomatoes were poisonous because they were members of the nightshade family. According to , associate professor of Kinesiology at J.U., in 1820 a fearless man ate a tomato on the steps of the Salem, N.J., courthouse to prove tomatoes were harmless. Maybe he was embarrassed that we were so far behind other folks. Europeans had been chomping tomatoes about 300 years before …

Want a great reason to spring into gardening? In addition to eggplant, okra and homegrown tomatoes there’s homegrown happiness. According to , gardens may provide the new Prozac.  Mycobacterium  vaccae, a soil microbe, has been found to mirror the effect on neurons that antidepressant drugs provide. Check out www.discovermagazine.com/2007/jul/raw-data-is-dirt-the-new-prozac for more information. This does not come as a shock to most gardeners who find their garden a natural happy spot. Indeed, Robert Rodale, founder of the Rodale organic empire, says, “In almost every garden, the land is made better and so is the gardener.” And an anonymous someone added, “Gardening …