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My Book!
I wrote a book about preserving food. The same step-by-step instruction and full-color photos you find in my blog. Buy it at Yes, You Can
Yard Birds
Adorable, handcrafted, folk art. Yard Birds add whimsical flare to any garden, yard, or entranceway. Click here to find a Yard Bird for your kitchen garden.
Links to planters at selected vendors:
Sprouts
Amazon.com is a terrific source for certified organic seeds intended for home sprouting. Dress up salads, stir-fry, sandwiches, spreads, and other dishes with homegrown sprouts of all kinds. Follow this link to order your sampler or to find home sprouting kits.
Small Kitchen Garden Store
Find the perfect gift for any kitchen gardener--or find products to help get the best from your own small kitchen garden. To save you time, we've selected products from Amazon.com that received the best customer reviews. Click here to visit our store and pick up the perfect gifts for any small kitchen garden enthusiast.
Posts Tagged ‘store’
Essential Gifts for the Small Kitchen Garden
December 14, 2008 | 
Author 
If you’re shopping for the custodian of a small kitchen garden, perhaps you’re overwhelmed by your options. Here’s a list of essential gifts any one of which is appropriate for a kitchen gardener. For each gift, I’ve included thoughts about why the kitchen gardener in your life will be happy to find that gift under the tree.
Sprouts: an Indoor Kitchen Garden
Anyone with a home kitchen garden will appreciate a complete kit to grow fresh salad sprouts indoors. This is especially satisfying where winter forces gardeners indoors: watching your sprouts emerge and eating them in salads, sandwiches, and garnishes provides a mid-winter lift. If you’re splurging, give the Deluxe Sprouting Starter Kit. If you’re on a budget, your gardener will be thrilled with the Sprout Garden 3-Tray Kit (below).
Indoor Kitchen Garden on a Budget
If the Deluxe Sprouting kit is a budget-breaker, then give the Sprout Garden Family Sprouting Kit. It’s a great starter kit for a modest budget.
A Hydroponic Small Kitchen Garden
For the winter-bound kitchen gardener, home hydroponics offers a gardening adventure. Hydroponics is the science of growing plants without soil and it leads to healthier plants with higher yields than you get from traditional gardening. The AeroGarden hydroponic system is one of the most often-reviewed gardening items available through Amazon, and reviewers are enthusiastic! Provide your gardener with a season-stretching scientific marvel: the AeroGrow AeroGarden.
Compost Helpers for the Small Kitchen Garden
No matter how rooted in tradition a gardener might be, he or she will come to love a compost tumbler. This is the high-technology of garden composting. A lightweight, easy-to-turn barrel can convert kitchen scraps, garden waste, and lawn clippings into compost in four-to-six weeks. Get the popular Tumbleweed Composter here.
Compost Helper on a Budget
If a compost tumbler is out of your price range, you can still find a great gift for anyone who already has a compost heap, bin, or tumbler: a kitchen compost bucket. This bucket is attractive and functional: it sits on the counter to collect cores and peels until it’s convenient to carry them outside. A good compost bucket includes a tight-fitting lid and charcoal filters to limit odors. This one has been rated well by Amazon.com customers.
Most Outrageous Gift for a Gardener
Want to give a home kitchen gardener a gag gift that’s actually useful? Imagine the look on the face of your loved one when the wrapping paper comes off to reveal a worm farm! Purists call these vermicomposting systems. Such a system can sit on your kitchen floor, in a closet, or in virtually any convenient place. You fill it with worms, cardboard, and kitchen scraps! The worms eat the cardboard and kitchen scraps, leaving behind rich castings: organic gold for a vegetable garden. Few gifts will elicit more dramatic reactions than a worm composting system.
Outrageous Residents for the Outrageous Gift
When you order a worm composting system, make sure you order some worms as well. And, when you click over to Amazon.com to place your order, read the reviews; one reviewer had a particularly creative sense of humor… or was it?
Super High Tech for a Home Kitchen Garden
You don’t need a reason for this one; it’s just too cool to pass up: it provides an interface between your garden and your computer! The EasyBloom Plant Sensor sits in your soil and measures temperature, sunlight, and moisture. Then you plug it into a computer’s USB port and it guides you to ideal plant selections, or it helps diagnose problems with whatever you’ve already planted. New this year, the EasyBloom has enthusiastic users. The EasyBloom web site includes a plant library with information about just about anything you’d want to grow. Give an EasyBloom Plant Sensor to you favorite gardener who is also a geek.
Reduce a Small Kitchen Garden’s Water Bills
Most serious gardeners I’ve asked about it have said they either have or want to have rain barrels. Of course! A rain barrel collects runoff from the roof of your house so you can use it later to water your garden. Installing and using a rain barrel reduces water bills and reduces a garden’s (and a house’s) impact on the environment. Give your gardeners rain barrels and they’ll think of you every time they water their gardens.
Watering Convenience for a Small Kitchen Garden
Except in a very wet climate, or an unusually rainy growing season, all gardeners water their gardens. At the very least, you must add water immediately after planting seeds and seedlings. When you’re running a garden hose, it is crucial to have a good nozzle to control the flow when you’re away from the shut-off valve (the faucet). A nozzle that can produce several spray patterns is especially handy. This set includes three high-quality nozzles your gardener will love.
Digging in a Small Kitchen Garden
Who gives shovels and pitchforks as gifts? People who understand gardeners do. This particular garden fork has received only five-star reviews from customers. It looks nice, it’s inexpensive, and it’s the pitchfork I’d like to replace the one whose handle snapped last spring. Score big points by getting one for the gardener in your life.
Posted in home kitchen garden, small kitchen garden | 
Tags: compost, gift, gifts, rain barrel, store, worm | 
6 Comments »
Small Kitchen Garden Gifts
Do you know someone who cares for a small kitchen garden? Let me help find the right gift for them. I’ve spent hours digging through Amazon.com to find stuff I’d like to have. I’ve tried to select items with decent customer reviews, and I’ve categorized things and (to some degree) put them in order by price. While the small kitchen garden store already offers a variety of items useful to gardeners, I’ll continue to add things in the coming days, so please check back often. If you’re looking for something specific, post a comment and I’ll try to track it down. Follow this link to find a perfect gift for the gardener in your life.
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