Weekend Reading 2/23/24

Welcome to Garden Center magazine's Weekend Reading, a weekly round-up of consumer garden media stories meant to help IGCs focus marketing efforts, spark inspiration and start conversations with consumers.

This week: Turning trash into soil, the surprising benefits of snow in gardening, a guide to permaculture gardening, how gardening and growing food is a form of liberation for the Black community and a dispatch from a garden center in India.

Trash into Treasure: Laveen farm turning 300 tons of waste a week into gardening soil, Arizona's Family

Whether it’s food waste, tree cuttings or even drywall, the Arizona Green Guys grind it up and process it to create soil products, according to Neal Brooks, owner of Arizona Green Guys and Abby Lee Farms.

‘Teaming With Microbes’ podcast: The surprising benefits of snow in gardening, Anchorage Daily News

Snow stores a significant amount of nitrogen, sometimes referred to as “poor man’s fertilizer," according to Anchorage Daily News' "Teaming With Microbes" podcast.

Permaculture gardening – how to garden organically, Homes & Gardens

Writer Lola Houlton explains how permaculture gardening mimics nature so that you can garden organically, encourage wildlife and have a low-maintenance yard all at once.

Gardening and growing food a form of liberation for the Black community, TribLive

Shaylah Brown writes that Raynise Kelly and TaRay Kelly are owners of Soil Sisters House of Plants. The sisters grew up with their grandparents’ home, only a few blocks away from where their storefront is now, and would see her grandmother coming from the backyard to the kitchen with a basket in her arm full of vegetables. When Raynise Kelly had her daughter, she started to consider how food was being prepared, and how it was entirely different from when she was a child. She wanted her daughter to have access to those same healthy options she had growing up. But she didn’t know how.

A gardening dispatch from India, Vermont Public

Charlie Nardozzi travels in India and visits a local garden center there. Hear what he has to say.

Enjoy your reading, have a great weekend and we'll see you next week!