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Useful Gardens Website

It's time to harvest some healthy fresh foods!

Summer is harvest time in Hampton Roads! And it is the season to work sensibly, moving outdoor chores to the early morning or the twilight evening hours when the air is cooler.  It becomes harder to find a lovely time to clean out those weeds and pests to keep your gardens healthy.  But don't forget to sort through those remaining seed packets for second sowings of hot season veggies, spend more than you intended at garden center closeouts and local plant sales, and eat, eat, eat!  If you find you have more harvest than you can handle (yes, it happens!), check out the information on Plant a Row for the Hungry campaigns throughout Hampton Roads.  Share your garden wealth with families that don't have enough food.   Stay up with your garden at The Garden Notebook webpage for a run down of what's you can be planting throughout the seasons and what garden chores you need to accomplish now.

And it's time for helping Keep America Beautiful. Learn how you can recycle oil, batteries, electronics, whatever.... and what activities will be in your area from now through May at Keep American Beautiful.

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The Useful Gardens Blog

Follow one dedicated food gardener's joys and woes and share your own comments at the Useful Gardens Blog, www.usefulgardens.blogspot.com  Sometimes very useful, sometimes funny and sometimes just philosophizing about the things that keep us in touch with nature, especially our little piece of it.

This little website was created to help gardeners in the Hampton Roads, Virginia area share gardening tips, tricks and folklore, especially to help new gardeners get off to a good start.  There's a wonderful surge of interest in gardening as thoughtful folks design lives that are more environmentally and fiscally responsible and creative. We thought about calling this "recession gardening" - but, as any gardener knows, once you learn the delights of growing your own fruits and veggies, it won't matter whether you can afford high-priced items - no "store-bought" varieties will taste as good...