Sweet Potatoes, Yams, and other Thanksgiving plants by Vicky Spelman

Courtesy Iowa State University

Are sweet potatoes and yams the same thing?  No, sweet potatoes and yams are different plants.  

Soldiers Gardening During Wartime by Nancy Shepard

 

Ukrainian soldier planting potatoes in a trench in the 2022 war zone. Photo: Pravda Gerashenko 

This Friday, November 11^th, is Veteran’s Day for honoring military veterans of the United States Armed Forces. I found a Jeffco CMG blog written in 2010 by Elaine Lockey that featured a book, “Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime” by Kenneth Helphand. In the book, gardens prove to be an invaluable inspiration for people in war time. Besides the highlights of the ghetto gardens and the barbed-wire gardens of the prisoners of war and internment camps in the World Wars, soldiers themselves planted gardens in conflict war zones: the trench gardens built during WWI, Gulf War gardens built in Saudi Arabia, a base camp garden in Baghdad, Iraq, and now in in the trenches of Ukraine.

Leave Ornamental Grasses Alone Until Spring by Nancy Shepard

 

Ruby Muhly Photo: Plant Select

As we see plants in our garden die off, some of us might have the urge to tidy everything up. One of the plant categories that can benefit most from a hands-off approach are the ornamental grasses.