10 great garden ideas _ The Chicago Tribune photo gallery isn’t fancy, but it shows a bunch of do-it-yourself garden designs.

Garden is a seedbed for green cosmetics – A hand-tended, German garden provides the raw ingredients for an eco-conscious line of cosmetics touted by Hollywood-types as the bestest make-up evah. Interestingly, the company started focusing on herbal remedies.

Organic garden uses every sustainable trick – This eco-savvy garden shows how sustainable, organic gardening can look fit so seemlessly into conventional landscaped neighborhoods that you would never know it’s “green.”

Back to the garden – Author Michael Pollan suggests we all dig up our yards and garden not just for pleasure, but to sustain us in the “calamity to come.” He believes growing our own food we will make a bigger impact on slowing our destruction of the planet than the smaller things we are already trying.

The incredible, edible front lawn – Through the Edible Estates project, the Rodriguez family received a grant to plant a front-yard garden to feed their entire neighborhood. This is an amazing concept, and I really hope someone will create a foundation to help more people convert their lawns to vegetable gardens.

It’s seems silly to even mention the word “green” when talking about gardening, but it’s been all about the environment in gardening articles this week. With rising food costs, many people are growing their own vegetables. But even though vegetable seeds and plants topped the to-buy lists, many gardeners still don’t grow green. Guerrilla gardeners found their way into the mix, with their stealthy greening of public spaces. Checks these links for tips on what to plant and how to plant it to have an eco-conscious garden.

Growing concerned – The Boston Globe offers tips on eco-friendly ways to garden. Ideas iclude rainwater collection, native plants, and composting.

Survey shows many gardeners skip green gardening practices- A recent survey by the National Gardening Association asked gardeners about their green growing habits. In this article, The Chicago Tribune covers the results and why the practices folks aren’t doing are important.

Amid city streets, a growing trend – Gardening continues to blossom, especially among urban-dwelling folks. This article from The Boston Globe deals out the numbers.

Guerrilla gardening – Guerrilla gardening, where gardeners stealthily fix a blighted plot of land that doesn’t belong to them, started sometime in the 1970s. This New York Times article follows Richard Reynolds and his group of guerrilla gardeners as they tidy up public spaces around London. Reynolds just released the book “On Guerrilla Gardening,” which discusses the movements history.

Easy foods for beginners – With gas prices bumping up the price of food and yet another produce-related illness outbreak, many people are growing their own vegetables this year. This San Francisco Chronicle article outlines ways to ease into growing your own vegetables at home.

Used under Creative Commons license. Originally uploaded by Coffee Monster.

Further proof that urban gardening and farming have hit the big time:

• The New York Times has an article about an urban farm in Philadelphia.
• The Boston Globe shares a how-to about rooftop veggie gardening.
• Even money-focused Forbes has an article about the growing urban garden trend.

With a high-profile story in this week’s gardening section of The New York Times, urban agriculture has hit the mainstream media big time. With food shortages and rising food prices, it’s no wonder people are taking to the streets (or empty lots, as it were) and finding a place to grow not just what they need, but also a little extra to feed their neighbors. It’s good business that’s good for everyone.

The Times article follows a couple who moved from Jamaica to the rough-and-tumble Bronx. They, along with many other city dwellers looking for a way to save money and have a source of fresh produce, turned a once-vacant lot into a verdant, veggie-and-herb supplying plot. The couple now has several gardens around the city, where they grow vegetables and herbs for their family and to sell at market.

This market-garden-in-the-city trend accompanies an upswing in the number of people growing in community gardens, joining CSAs, and just plain gardening in their own backyard.

For more information about starting your own market garden or more about successful urban agriculture, check out:

• Growing for Market – News and advice for market gardeners. Currently, you receive the special edition “Extending the Season” with your subscription.
• Path to Freedom – Urban agriculture at its best, Path to Freedom is a family-operated urban homestead that offers outreach programs and resources, along with a row-by-row account of life on the urban farm in their blog.

I had to use up my garden produce for dinner tonight because we head out for a week-long trip in the morning. The garden has been pumping out the tomatoes and zucchini, so I really needed to find something to use a lot of both of them. This Baked Eggs and Zucchini Ragout recipe from Epicurious uses all the ingredients we had on hand. I just substituted freshly chopped, seeded tomatoes for the canned ones (and poured the ragout over pasta instead of using eggs). Delish!

You could also substitute zucchini in any recipes that call for eggplant, and tomatoes taste great just sliced up, dipped in a little vinegar and sprinkled with salt. I am prepared for an onslaught of veggies upon my return, and will spend that next week quickly putting up jars upon jars of tomato-filled yumminess (I’ll then spend the time after that trying to get my house to stop smelling like salsa).

For those of you still looking for tasty zucchini recipes, I did find this fabulous tasting Vegan Zucchini Muffin recipe at K.C. Kitchen. I substituted whole wheat and all-purpose white flour, and also added one tablespoon of cinnamon, plus a teaspoon each of nutmeg and allspice. I’ve taken these to two parties this week, and everyone asked for the recipe because they are so light and tasty.

What are your favorite recipes to use up a lot of produce? I’d love to hear ‘em, so share some links or recipes in the comments.

It’s tomato time, and with the big influx of the delicious red fruit, a lot of people hold tasting events. We only grew two varieties because I am the only tomato lover in this house. If I had the chance, though, (and I hope to some year) I’d definitely add the Seed Savers’ Tomato Tasting and Seed Saving Workshop to my must-visit tastings.

This tasting and workshop will be held at the Lillian Goldman Visitors Center (3074 North Winn Road, Decorah, Iowa) on Saturday, September 1 from 1 to 5 p.m. The free event offers tasters over 50 varieties of tomatoes to nibble on and all the information you need to know how to save tomato seeds.

For more information about the Seed Savers’ Tomato Tasting and Seed Saving Workshop visit www.seedsavers.org, or call 563-382-5990.

I’m starting a new feature called Quick Links, where I’ll gather a few links about a topic for your reference. First up is edible landscaping, a great choice for folks with little space who would like to have plants that provide more than just pretty flowers or foliage.

• Design and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape Naturally by Robert Kourik – I’ve added this book to my Wish List because it looks as though it has a lot of information about designing your own edible landscape, including comparisons of different plant varieties and color pictures of example landscapes.
• Edible Landscaping and Gardening by Ben Sharvy – Speaking of plant varieties, Ben Sharvy has an excellent list of suggested edible plants which includes pictures and descriptions. I like that he included perennial herbs in the mix, since that’s my main focus right now.
• How to Landscape with Edible Plants by Marion Owen – Marion Owen offers excellent design tips for edible landscaping, including suggesting using a fruit-bearing shrub as a hedge rather than the typical privet and replacing dead or dying trees with a fruiting variety.

Zucchini not only rhymes with Houdini, it also has his same habit of materializing out of nowhere. In large quantity (the zucchini, not Houdini). Unfortunately, unlike the great magician, zucchini has a harder time vanishing.

To help you turn that zucchini bounty into a plethora of disappearing dishes, I give you six zucchini recipes from a variety of recipe sites around the ‘net.

• Zucchini Slaw from Robbie’s Recipes – I made this recipe the other night out of desperation. The heat made using the oven to make zucchini bread an unthinkable thought. So, I searched for some novel zucchini recipes, and this one came up within the first few results. It’s surprisingly delicious, and uses quite a bit of zucchini.
• Pickled Zucchini on Cooks.com - My mother used to pickle up the extra zucchini from our garden, and we all loved munching on them in the middle of winter. While zucchini doesn’t have the satisfying crunch of a cucumber, the zukes take up pickling spices quite nicely.
• Zucchini Stuffing by T’sMom at Recipezaar – I haven’t tried this zucchini recipe yet, but it looks tasty. I think it would be fantastic smothered in tomato sauce. Then again, what doesn’t taste good covered in squished tomatoes?
• Zucchini-Tomato Salad from Cooks.com – Speaking of tomatoes, if you have them in abundance along with the zucchini, why not toss them together in this simple dish? I think this would go perfectly with a burger and grilled potatoes.
• Zucchini Fritters at Basic-Recipes.com – These fritters go great with corn-on-the-cob and a big ol’ salad. You can also use them as a layer in lasagna, just go a little easy on the oil.
• Grilled Zucchini Pizzas by Kit at Allrecipes – Yum! I never thought those gigantic zukes were good for anything other than feeding the chickens. This recipe uses the large zucchinis in place of pizza dough. Genius!

What do you do with your extra zucchini? Cook ‘em? Donate ‘em? Stash ‘em in unsuspecting people’s cars? Share some ideas in the comments!