Let’s celebrate spring in style! One lucky gardener will win a Timber Press prize package just by entering.

The spring gardening prize package includes everything for your vegetable garden this season.

The winner will receive seeds, a fruit tree and five gardening books!

All you have to do is enter your email address at the Timber Press edibles contest site to be eligible to win this complete gardening prize package:

35 packets of organic heirloom vegetable seeds from Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply (worth $87!)
A bare-root fruit tree from Peaceful Valley
A vegetable gardening library from Timber Press, featuring…

The Beginner’s Guide to Growing Heirloom Vegetables
Fruit Trees in Small Spaces
The Edible Front Yard
The Kitchen Gardener’s Handbook
Sugar Snaps and Strawberries

Visit the Timber Press website and enter the drawing with your email address. The contest ends on Friday, March 23.

Here’s a fun way to turn a discarded carrot top into a spring centerpiece.

Growing old carrot tops into frilly new greens is simple and it’s a clever way to reuse the tops of carrots you’d probably toss onto the compost pile.

You won’t be able to grow carrots from the tops, but they can be used as a science project to show how a carrot top contains everything it needs for a new plant to grow.

Kids have fun watching these leftovers sprout new greens and then planting them in little containers. It’s a good indoor gardening experiment to learn about recycling, planting and how plants grow.

How to Grow a Carrot Top

1. Select fresh carrots (not baby carrots) that sport a little green on the top.
2. Cut off the top 2 inches from the crown of one or more carrots.
3. Place the tops in a shallow saucer, cut side down.

Post a comment for your chance to win a big gardening book for small-space gardeners.

In my review of this big book on gardening in small spaces, I shared some of the book’s secrets for growing vegetables, herbs, fruits, and flowers in small spaces.

The publisher sent an extra copy so I could share all the information Chris compiled on how to “reap a bounty of beauty and edibles in every square inch.”

There are 20 illustrated chapters filled with creative ideas for living with a little landscape, planting in petite plots, planting small-space theme gardens, using good gardening practices, and finding plants perfect for small spaces. If you have a container garden, balcony garden, patio garden or other small-space garden, you will love this book.

To enter the contest to win a copy, simply post a comment on why you like to garden in small spaces by Monday, March 12 at 5:00 p.m. Mountain time. One winner will be selected at random.

I spent a few hours on Monday volunteering at the City Greenhouse fulfilling part of my master gardener commitment. The weather outside was cold and windy, but it was warm and humid inside the greenhouse and the low rumble of fans drowned out the blustery day. The smell of moist soil was a nice reminder that gardening season is already underway.

Rows and rows of a new variety of Tropical Canna, ‘Bronze Scarlet’ and ‘Tropical Punch’, were planted from seed only two months ago, but they are already a foot tall. When the weather warms, parks staff members will be planting these in city park gardens throughout Denver.

More than 20,000 geranium seedlings are already growing strong, too. The seeds for these ‘Orbit Red’ geraniums were planted 10 days ago. Soon, they’ll be ready to transplant into larger containers–another good master gardener volunteer activity. Cocktail forks are the perfect tool to lift these tiny plants up and out of their trays.

Are you a new gardener–or know someone who is? Here’s your chance to win a copy of the new book called “Beginner’s Illustrated Guide to Gardening” by Katie Elzer-Peters.

Have you ever wanted to learn how to read a fertilizer label, fix a problem in the lawn, plant a perennial or prune a tree? Are you new to the wonderful world of gardening and have lots of questions?

Then you need this new gardening guide.

“Beginner’s Illustrated Guide to Gardening: Techniques to Help You Get Started” offers how-to tips for dozens of gardening tasks. This is a great book for anyone who is just starting out and has questions about what to do in the landscape and how to to do.

Katie Elzer-Peters wrote this book to help any gardener who has gardening questions, especially first-time homeowners.

Cool Springs Press sent me an extra copy of Katie’s book to give away to someone who could use a comprehensive gardening guide.

Three years ago today I pressed “publish” on WesternGardeners.com for the first time. Since then I’ve written 386 blog posts, published hundreds of gardening images, and connected with thousands of gardeners. I’ve answered dozens of questions about insects, flowers and how to deal with the challenges of gardening in the West.

I’ve recommended gardening books to read, gardens to visit, and vegetables to grow (and recipes for using them in the kitchen). This blog inspired me to start a local campaign to Plant a Row for the Hungry and celebrate vegetable gardening with the Weird Veggie and Funny Fruit contest.

Let’s celebrate the beginning of my blog’s fourth year! Each week for the next month I’ll be giving away something to help gardeners get their 2012 gardening season growing.

Please stop by next week to find out how to win a copy of Katie Elzer-Peters new gardening book called “Beginner’s Illustrated Guide to Gardening: Techniques to Help You Get Started.”

Even though I was a panelist at a recent summit on food justice, I’m still shocked by the statistics on hunger in this country. Thirty-three million Americans, including 13 million children, live in households that experience hunger or the risk of hunger.

It breaks my heart to know so many people, especially children, go hungry every day.

That’s why I’m redoubling my efforts to get gardeners involved in our local growing-and-giving program called Plant a Row for the Hungry.

Plant a Row (PAR) follows the long tradition of gardeners sharing their bounty with others. Even if you’ve never grown a green before, now’s the time to start.

Vegetable Gardeners Unite!

Plant a Row is a national program of the Garden Writers Association that began in 1995. Since then, gardeners across the country have donated more than 16 million pounds of produce to local food service agencies.

Hanging strawberry pots meet gardening needs for growing up.

My third pick for a “Best Of” the new products at the 2012 ProGreen industry tradeshow is the Urban Garden Pocket Planter by NCV.

These light-weight plastic containers will make small-space gardening easier.

I can imagine a row of these clever pots hanging from a balcony container garden or a single one brightening a drab spot on the patio.

The pots can be planted to grow strawberries, but they would be great for other kinds of gardening, too. The company suggests planting them with themed herb gardens, like an Italian culinary garden with basil, parsley, oregano and thyme.

If you have a spot to hang a pot, you can fill it with herbs, baby greens, annual flowers, succulents and more. The top is open so taller plants, like peppers, can be planted there.

The planters are made of injected molded plastic and have a textured finish. They can be taken apart to make shipping and storage easier.

Another of my “Best Of” selections at the 2012 ProGreen tradeshow is a new idea for container gardening called Smart Pots.

If you’ve followed my blog, you know that every year I have a big container garden of vegetables. I’ve grown all kinds of vegetables and herbs and I’ve grown them in all kinds of containers.

But this year I get to try something new: a Smart Pot aeration container I picked up at ProGreen.

The Smart Pot is a foldable fabric container that’s said to be better than plastic containers because it releases heat from the pot, aerates the root zone and stops roots from circling inside the container. That’s because the container air prunes the plant’s root structure.

There are 4 different container sizes from 7 to 20 gallons. Gardeners can grow garlic, leeks, greens, herbs, beans and small annuals in the 7-gallon size; a 20-gallon Smart Pot is made to grow tomatoes, melons, pumpkins, sweet potatoes and winter squash.

My “Best Of” gardening selection at the 2012 ProGreen industry tradeshow is a new portable drip irrigation system called Watering Rocks.

There were a lot of new gardening products featured at ProGreen last week, but one of my favorites is a low-tech portable watering system called Watering Rocks.

Each Watering Rock is a self-contained drip irrigation system. Just place the rock in a part of the garden that’s difficult to water and fill the container with water.

Water will slowly seep from the rock into drip lines and adjustable drippers to water plants deeply. Watering Rocks are available in one-gallon, two-gallon and five-gallon sizes.

Gardeners fill the Watering Rocks by placing a hose in the holes at the top of the rock or they can connect an existing drip irrigation system for automatic filling. The amount of water can be adjusted to match plant needs.

Another handy feature is that liquid or soluble plant food can be added to the water for automatic fertilizing, too.