Matt Lehman, the Kansas college student who is growing vegetables in his dorm room, has posted an update on his blog, Dorm Room Garden.

I wrote about Matt in my garden column in The Sun, describing how he had been inspired by a book on square-foot gardening.

When he returned to college in the fall, he brought with him a garden in a 3-foot-by-1-foot wooden box and planted it with cukes, beans and tomatoes.

So far, he's had cherry tomatoes to eat -- and three beans. But he pretty much drowned his cucumber plant.

Check out Matt's update.

Posted by Susan Reimer at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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For today's Tool Time post, Garden Variety is going back in time.

Way back in time.

Through the courtesy of Barbara Wells Sarudy's blog, Early American Gardens: A museum in a blog , we learn about John Evelyn, a wealthy English aristocrat and his 40 years long project to catalog the horticultural information which was changing so fast in front of him.

Much of what he wrote was, of course, about garden tools, and he included a long list of what he thought were the essentials. Read his list on this blog post by Sarudy.

She was the executive director of the Maryland Humanities Council for nearly 10 years, retiring in 2001. She wrote extensively about early Chesapeake gardens and her work was published as a book, "Gardens and Gardening in the Chesapeake, 1700-1805."

Sarudy told me in an e-mail that she finds her investigation of the history of gardens "endlessly fascinating."

Posted by Susan Reimer at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Susan Harris, Takoma Park garden writer and one of the four faces behind the successful Garden Rant blog, has officially begun blogging for Homestead Gardens, the nationally known lawn and garden center in Davidsonville.

Harris, who also writes the Sustainable and Urban Gardening blog, says she will "be covering national gardening news, features about interesting people like the stars of HGTV and PBS gardening shows, author interviews, book reviews, fun websites and blogs, great public gardens in the region and across the U.S., videos, and whatever strikes my fancy."

Also writing for the Homestead blog, which went on line Wednesday, is Gene Sumi, Homestead's "answer man" for any and all garden questions, and Rita Calvert, founder of Buy Fresh, Buy Local Chesapeake.

Check out Susan's first post and get more information about her partners in this enterprise.  But come back to Garden Variety when you are done!

Posted by Susan Reimer at 3:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
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Susan Harris, one of the four women behind the highly successful Garden Rant  gardening blog, will be blogging for Homestead Gardens in Davidsonville soon. Susan, who lives in suburban DC, also writes the Sustainable Gardening blog.

Susan told me she will be blogging about national garden trends and issues, and will share the blog space with Gene Sumi, Homestead's very popular garden education coordinator, and the  Rita Calvert of Buy Fresh, Buy Local, which examines Cheapeake Bay food issues.

Word is the blog will start up in the next few days.

Keep an eye out on Homestead's Web site.

Posted by Susan Reimer at 7:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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Looking for organic food sources in your area?

Check out the Local Harvest Web site.

Plug in your zipcode, and a list and a map will pop up, showing you where small farms, restaurants or farmers' markets are located. It will also help you find CSAs, co-ops and on-line stores.

I punched in my zip and got 54 listings. There are reviews of some of the listings as well. It appears to be pretty accurate for my neighborhood.

This is how the Web site describes its origins:

'LocalHarvest was founded in 1998, and is now the number one informational resource for the Buy Local movement and the top place on the Internet where people find information on direct marketing family farms. We now have about 17000 members, and are growing by about 20 new members every day. Through our servers, our website and those of our partners serve about three and a half million page views per month to the public interested in buying food from family farms.

LocalHarvest is located in Santa Cruz, California, and was founded by Guillermo Payet, a software engineer and activist dedicated to generating positive social change through the Internet."

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Posted by Susan Reimer at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
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The green movement goes to the dogs!

Thanks to Kerry Michaels of Maine, aka containergarden, for posting this fun picture on Twitpics. Notice to topiary puppy!

Kerry writes about container gardening at About.com.

Posted by Susan Reimer at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Check out this article at Dave's Garden, one of the best Internet sites out there for gardening info.

Sally G. Miller writes about installing an old mailbox in her garden. It not only looks cool, it holds stuff you might need while gardening, including:

• Pruners
• A trowel
• Gloves
• Pencils, markers, paper to make notes
• String or garden wire, measuring tape
• Plant labels, a produce bag for harvesting and a paper bag for seed heads.
• And maybe a bandana or a hat     

Posted by Susan Reimer at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
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Susan's garden/Photo by Susan Reimer

Just when my tomatoes are about to ripen, I am leaving on vacation. Happens every time. I swear, I could vacation in May, and my tomatoes would come and go while I was gone.

I will be away for two weeks, beginning July 12, and I am looking for someone to harvest my tomatoes and water the plants on my deck while I am gone.

I am also looking for guest bloggers here on Garden Variety.

Sometime in the next week, write to me at susan.reimer@baltsun.com and tell me about your garden. If you can, e-mail me a picture, too. I will put them together and schedule them to appear on Garden Variety while I am gone.

It will be like Christmas. You will have to check every morning to see if your post is up!

Write and tell me what you like about gardening, what you hate. Your successes and your failures. The tricks and shortcuts you have learned over the years. About the garden your grandmother had or the one you left behind when you moved.

If you have been reading Garden Variety, you know this isn't brain surgery. So relax, and jump into this blogging adventure.

Posted by Susan Reimer at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
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Our companion out here in the blogosphere, entomologist Michael Raupp of the University of Maryland, features the odorous house ant Monday on his blog, Bug of the Week. 

If any of you have seen this little ant make its way into your kitchen this spring, you will want to read his description of its habits and see the video and photos Mike has included, and take his advice on how to get rid of the ants.

And the ant's name? It comes from the bad smell the results from crushing it on the counter. Mike describes it as "fermented coconuts," but I have to say I haven't ever smelled fermented coconuts, so I can't attest to the accuracy of his desciption.

Here's a photo of the ants and their last summer, a sweet but poisonous bait.

Photo credit: M.J. Raupp.

Posted by Susan Reimer at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
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Today's lesson on Bug of the Week, the blog devoted to insects and written by the University of Maryland's Michael Raupp?

Millipedes don't have 1,000 legs, and centipedes don't have 100.

But they are great recyclers.

For more, including video (ewwwww), go to Bug of the Week.

Posted by Susan Reimer at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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This week's topic on our friend Michael Raupp's blog, Bug of the Week, is the Eastern tent caterpillar.

The University of Maryland entomologist says the blooming of the cherry, apple and crab apple trees means it is time for gardeners to inspect the limbs for the signs of the black egg pouches that will launch as many as 300 hungry larvae each.

The caterpillars build their tents to protect them from the elements and predators and then proceed to completely strip trees of young and tender foliage.

The caterpillars can be removed with a gloved hand on a cool day, placed in a bag and destroyed, Raupp writes. The old method of burning them out, he says, is not only a bit dramatic, but the flames can harm the bark of the tree.

For more on tent caterpillars, as well as more pictures and video, visit his Web site.

Photo courtesy of Michael J. Raupp.

Posted by Susan Reimer at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Professor Mike Raupp of the University of Maryland is talking about bees again this week in his Bug of the Week blog.

"In a few weeks many native bees will awaken from their winter respite and begin the vital work of pollinating a multitude of flowering plants," writes Prof. Raupp.

 "Before we learn more about our native bees, Bug of the Week makes one last stop in Belize to visit some close relatives of our domestic honey bee. While visiting a rest camp near the Mayan ruins at Xunatunich, we discovered several colonies of stingless bees occupying cinder block walls of buildings."

To read about the dramatic "attack of the stingless bees" when Prof. Raupp gets too close, check out today's blog post.

He has great pictures, too.

Posted by Susan Reimer at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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Better Homes & Gardens blogger Alicia has a fun post about the use of misprinted cans to create art.

It seems that VivaTerra is grabbing up misprinted soda, juice and soup cans that were headed for the landfill and making word art out of the colorful and patterned metal bits: words such as “garden,” “grow,” and “dream” to be hung on walls.

I am wondering what this word art might look like on a garden fence or the side of a shed? Or on the wall of a screened-in porch?

 Check out her post  on "From Trash to Art" for some more ideas about doing "recycled crafts" with your kids.

Photo courtesty of Viva Terra

Posted by Susan Reimer at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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University of Maryland entomology professor Michael Raupp noticed during the cicada mania of 2004 a remarkable desire on the part of regular people to know more about bugs.

With that in mind, he began "Bug of the Week," his Monday morning blog about, well, bugs.

"It is really kind of a blue collar approach," he said. "I simply get up in the morning, walk out of my front door and find a bug. If there is a silverfish in the bathtub, I photograph it and write about that.

"But what I am most likely to do is go into the garden or to a trail or a park. The focus is not on big showy, exotic bugs. Just the average-guy bugs."

Raupp follows the seasonal arch of bug-dom. He is writing about bees this week and last because they will begin to be active soon. Then he will probably begin talking about the Eastern tent caterpillar because you will begin to notice their nests as soon as the forsythia blooms.

He started with about 50 or 100 hits a week. Now he is up to 20,000 hits a month in the summer. It has become a part of many home-school science programs. He has a substantial archive of past bugs, too.

Raupp isn't into killing these bugs, as you might imagine. "Absolutely not."

But for the the particularly egregious ones, such as the yellow jacket, "I will tell you the environmentally responsible way to off those things."

Photo of boxwood aphid courtesy of Michael Raupp.

Posted by Susan Reimer at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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