Displaying items by tag: gardening

Lynn Geddes’ gorgeous garden was the site of this month’s IE meeting. It was a learning experience where members, Lynn Geddes, Kerry Mentzer and Cindy Hertneck, shared gardening know-how, food and foul stories and, discussed ways to engage our community in this sustainable living effort. We have become dependent on food that is prepared for us, quick and easy but costly to ourselves and our environment. Many of us have lost the skills we need to nurture ourselves and our families with healthy locally produced food and we want that to change – to give people the skills and information they need to take control of their lives, feed themselves well and prepare our younger generations for the future. Since June Incredible Edible Merchantville has provided more than 150 bags of community grown produce to the Grace Episcopal Church food pantry. Join this effort. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.!

Cindy Hertneck, member of Merchantville's Garden Club & Incredible Edible, will often be seen elbow deep in vegetation spots around town working hard to keep our community sustainable and beautiful. Every year Garden Club volunteers plant, weed and water an abundance of foliage around town including planters throughout the downtown, at Borough Hall, along the bike path, the Merchantville Circle garden, Morrissey Park, and adjacent to Cigar Alley. Please consider contributing your time to helping the Garden Club keep our town beautiful during this busy time of year. Contact Cindy Hertneck at (609) 472-4626 if you would like to join the Garden Club.

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, Rutgers Cooperative Extension announces its webinar series “Earth Day at Home”. This series will focus on steps everyone can take to protect the environment. Join us on Mondays at 6:30 p.m. to learn from experts at Rutgers Cooperative Extension. These live, interactive sessions will be 1 hour. To join you need either a computer, tablet, or smartphone with speakers. Every week we will cover small actions that together reduce negative impacts on the environment. Monday, May 11th join us for Home Vegetable Gardening for Food, Fun and Stress Management. We can all do our part to take actions that make our homes more sustainable, from environmentally friendly lawn care, to composting, to reducing plastic waste. These actions, more than ever, start at home.

Freezing maintains the natural color, fresh flavor, and high nutritive value of fresh foods. The objective is to bring foods to the frozen state quickly. When properly done, fruits and vegetables are more like fresh than when preserved by any other method. Best of all, freezing vegetables and fruit is fast and easy. You don’t need a lot of time or years of experience to preserve garden-fresh fruits and vegetables. Organized in a friendly, food-by-food format, readers will find “The Beginner’s Guide to Preserving Food at Home” by Janet Chadwick an invaluable reference. Freezing, drying, canning, and storing instructions are available for each vegetable, fruit, and herb, and in many cases, several methods for freezing fruits and vegetables or canning food are described.