We have been busy this year  and wanted to thank you for all the good thoughts…

Our mission to get people “back to the garden” and living life simply and well continues.  

In fact it is often the simple and small things in life from those we love that we remember the best.  That is  why we think the gift of a ‘garden of seeds’, while small and simple is most memorable.  Is there someone that you know who would understand the gift of a garden?

It’s not to late and we can help.

 Send your favorite gardener a wonderful seed starter kit . Packed in an egg carton-start them  like your grandparents did…

They look so pretty you won’t need wrapping paper!

You can’t go wrong with our Herb Garden Box or Incredible Edible Flowers. How about a Teapot Garden? All filled with heirloom seeds and great selections-we promise you that the gardener in your life will love them.

For the younger gardener we also have  The Fairy Garden and The Dino Box

Order now and we will get it to them in time for the celebrations.  Visit our website http://inthekoop.com/store/garden-boxes/ or send us an email at info@inthekoop.com  Let us help you chose.

it’s all in the dirt…

So this year at Garden In The Koop, we are beginning our Seed to Seed garden.  We start with a seed and will harvest the seeds and next year those seeds may be in your garden.  For us it’s all about the celebration of the garden and what better way than to keep the garden growing.  Garden to garden seed to seed, it gives more meaning to celebrating the garden and the food we eat.  Heirlooms and incredible edibles-that’s our gift.

Every year, year after year, it’s a learning process.  Too wet, too cold, to dry, too late- all of it happens, but the garden keeps growing.  Less tomatoes, more lettuce, earlier turnips, but still a garden;  lessons a lot like everyday life-continuing, growing, changing and accepting-all part of life’s garden.

This year, according to the almanac, we will have a “drier spring and a cooler summer” (at least for the Southeast) we shall adapt- more beans? Less watermelon?   See never a dull moment.  All I know is that this year the garden has been more fun, more creative, more like popcorn-always new ideas.  We have the Giggling Garden growing this year-Tiger melons, Casper Eggplants, Leprechaun lettuce, green zebra tomatoes, it all here.  See why we love what we do?    So check back-it will be a wild and wooly ride this year, but at the end we can promise you a feast!

garden surfer

“He looks for them in the garden. He looks for them in the store. He looks for them everywhere...He even looks in the refiger-a-tor...Please don’t laugh because you see, it’s always been true, Harry is a carrot lover through and through!” ~Excerpt from 'Harry Loves Carrots'

Laura Baldwin’s recent book will have children and the young at heart saying “Harry Loves Carrots and I love Harry. Please pass the carrots.”

Hillsborough, NC—In Laura Baldwin’s new hardcover children’s book, Harry Loves Carrots, children go on a playful journey in and around the garden as they follow Harry, a very silly dog with one obsession: carrots.

“He looks for them in the garden. He looks for them in the store. He looks for them everywhere…He even looks in the refiger-a-tor…Please don’t laugh because you see, it’s always been true, Harry is a carrot lover through and through!” ~Excerpt from Harry Loves Carrots

While fun and engaging, Harry Loves Carrots has a much deeper purpose: to combat child obesity and teach children from an early age that making healthy choices is not only the right thing to do, but it can also be fun.

This is a book that will have children and the young at heart saying “Harry Loves Carrots and I love Harry. Please pass the carrots.”

Laura has dedicated her life to this purpose, also running In The Koop, a seed company specializing in colorful, heirloom vegetable seeds. The pride and joy of In The Koop is its child-friendly project, The Giggling Garden, which features heirloom vegetables with names like Cosmic Purple Carrots, Green Zebra Tomatoes and Dinosaur Kale.

Laura lives in Hillsborough, NC, in a renovated barn with her dog, Harry, husband Tim and a yard full of animals in their very own Giggling Garden. Harry can usually be found in the garden, digging up carrots to eat whenever he has a chance. He is the real-life inspiration for ‘Harry Loves Carrots.’

While Harry’s message is clear to children, the book’s whimsical illustrations by Andy Marlette engage children’s interest and show them that carrots, whether orange, purple, white or green, are always fun and tasty.

Andy Marlette is a Florida-born editorial cartoonist and illustrator for the Pensacola News Journal. He is a practitioner of the noble Marlette tradition of cartooning, as taught to him by his uncle and Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, Doug Marlette.

Harry Loves Carrots is the first book in the evolving “I Love My Vegetables” story. It is available for purchase from the publisher LightMessages.com, Amazon.com and other major book sellers.

To get in touch with Harry and Laura, or to start your own carrot-loving adventure, please visit www.inthekoop.com.

So we’re back, but we’re different…and that is good.  We are excited to show you our new adventure and share our mission: to bring you the best seeds, the most incredible edibles and the bigger picture.

It comes from our continuing passion to garden, our celebration of the food we eat and the desire to keep you, the children and our planet healthy.  Our new company Garden In The Koop is a culmination of all our years in the greenhouse, in the garden, but especially in your garden.   Everywhere you turn its heirloom vegetables and healthy living.  What we realized is there aren’t a lot of easy, fun how to vegetable gardens that really give you a garden with good taste.

you never know who’s in the garden

Our Incredible Edible Gardens in a box are egg cartons (what else would we bring you from In the Koop than egg cartons?!)   We spent a lot of time putting together great veggie combos to meet all the different needs.    Next month we will bring you the Tea garden and The Apothecary’s Box.  Check them all out on our products page.

Of course we also have our Giggling Garden Line of seeds made for the young and the young at heart-be sure and check out the Dinosaur Kale, The Tigger Melon, the Green Zebra Tomato and many more gigglers.

So we hope you will visit our site and enjoy our new product line and that you will continue to celebrate the garden with us.  Give them as a gift or grow them yourselves; we have picked seeds that will last all year long.

You will find our products online at some of our favorite stores.  We will keep you updated about where you can find us, but we always like to hear from you about places we might like.

As a special hello to our new and old friends we are offering free shipping for all products during the month of May. Just type in friend for the coupon code.

Wishing you good health, time in your garden and even some giggles,

Laura

Heirloom seeds for great tasting veggies that make you smile

The annual Egg Roll at the White House was greeted with sunny warm skies Monday and included in the event this year was a farmers market. The Giggling Garden, which is consistent with the efforts that Michelle Obama has been making to promote healthy eating to children, was included in the market’s products.

The Giggling Garden , fromGarden in the Koop Chapel Hill, NC brings attention back to gardening for families. The Giggling Garden products are garden kits that include the soil, heirloom or organic seeds and instructions but most importantly, they are interesting to children with names like: Green Arrow Peas and Dinosaur Kale.
Laura Baldwin, founder of Garden In The Koop, says “ In this time of economic uncertainty, people across the country have been returning to the garden. It allows one to grow food that is healthy and affordable, but importantly, time spent in the garden alone or with family is good for the soul. Being in the garden is therapeutic and a great way to connect with your children. We believe that our Garden boxes will make gardening fun and help people learn to grow the garden they’ve always wanted.”
30,000 attended this year’s event from all 50 states, and the highlight of the day was the giggling children.

Oh dear here we have these wonderful little garden kits that we are busily packing and shipping filled with lettuce and spinach and kale and sweet peas and it’s 90 degrees.  What’s a gardener to do?

great for containers

 My solution I check the Farmer’s Almanac.  They have an online resource that gives you two months of weather predictions and so far they have been pretty good. You just plug in your city and state and you get the scoop.  Try it http://www.almanac.com/weather/longrange   For my area, the Southeast, they are predicting a warmer spring (3 degrees warmer) and a cooler summer.  So it’s back to the packing because there are all those folks up north who keep calling and as for around here, there are all those tomatoes, peppers, watermelons and squash.  Besides, my favorite gardener Sue always planted what and when she wanted.  She told me her plants couldn’t read so they did quite well in her garden.  She put the cool loving ones in the cool areas and the heat loving ones right out in the sun.  This has been my philosophy ever since.  I grow lettuce late in the Spring-just in a more shaded area and I plant ones like Red Leprechaun or Freckles that are more heat tolerant. 

lettuces we love

The garden boxes are getting good reviews and it is so much fun when people send us pictures of their new gardens.  Feels very friendly and I like that…  Here s some pictures we’ve received and a few of our own.

seedlings waiting to move to the garden...seedlings day 2

seedlings day 2

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