Community Contest 6: Love your plants!

Happy May, everyone! Frank N. Foode™ here to announce the start of a new community contest here on the Biofortified Blog!
Spring is an exciting time for a plant such as myself. Farmers and gardeners everywhere are planning and planting, tilling and drilling, and hoping for a good summer grilling! Around the hemisphere, plants are popping up from the soil – aided by our human friends. Being a domesticated plant has its benefits, but we depend on people to plant us, weed our beds, protect us from pests, and make sure we have the moisture and nutrients we need. I try to help when I can, digging my roots deep in the soil, and jousting with caterpillars ad beetle larvae, but my tassel’s off to the hard work of people who love plants.
If you read this blog, you probably love plants. You might be growing plants right now, or have tried to. If so, this contest is for you. We want to hear about your gardens! Those labors of love between you and your plants and all the successes and failures that come with it. And we’ve got some special prizes just in time to make your gardening even more awesome this year (or to help heal the wounds of past attempts)!

The Rules:

• This contest is open to everyone – you need not have ever commented on the blog before the day you enter in the contest. But, you will need to be registered for the blog to enter. Even editors and contributors can get in on the action!
• Go to the Forum and start a new topic in our new Gardening section.
• Write about your garden. What did you grow, and what are you growing this year? What kinds of plants do you grow, and why? Are there certain genetic considerations that you make when you garden, such as varieties, hybrids or OPs, Do you save your own seeds or do some of your own breeding? Do you garden organically, do you compost your vegetables, buy starts or sprout your own seeds? Are there plants you wish you could grow where you live, but can’t? Do you buy your seeds from certain companies, avoid certain seeds on principle, or wish that some seeds were available for you to grow at home? Why do you garden, or garden the way you do? The list goes on.
• If you do not have a garden, you can still enter. Have you wanted to garden but could not? Have you dreamed about row upon row of blackberries and raspberries, or every kind of tomato imaginable? Or, perhaps you have tried to garden and it didn’t work out. What kinds of challenges have you had to deal with? Tell us about your dreams, and your successes and failures.
• If you can, upload a picture of your garden to your profile and display it in your Forum post so we can see what your garden looks like. Don’t be afraid!
• Drop a comment here to show off your entry, and if you are on twitter, if you send a tweet my way I will tell my over 750 followers about it!
• Stick around for the comments, give helpful suggestions, and see what everyone else is growing.
• The contest is open until the 31st of May, 2012 3rd of June, 2012.
• Biofortified’s Editors will decide on a winner and announce the results the first week of June. (They will recuse themselves from voting on their own entries, of course.)

Prizes:

The top ten entries will get a 2 oz tin of homemade hand salve made from beeswax, almond oil and coconut oil! The perfect thing to moisturize and protect those dry, cracked hands that have been working in the yard – or protect them before you do. I also hear it softens men’s beards. Just by entering in this contest, you stand a very high chance to get something that companies really charge a lot for. And guess whose bees the wax came from?
For our winner, we have an official Biofortified Blog tote bag, and your choice of a book from our prize page. If you are in the gardening book spirit, you might consider these titles worthy to shoot for:

• The Conscientious Gardener, Cultivating a Garden Ethic, by Dr. Sarah Hayden Reichard
• The $64 Tomato, How one Man nearly lost his Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden, by William Alexander
• Growing a Garden City,  by Jeremy N. Smith.

If we get a lot of entries, we might add more prizes!
There you have it, so snap some shots, and tell us how you love your plants! Good luck with your gardens, and with winning the fame and glory of all your peers! Me? I think there’s a planter somewhere I’ve got to hop into. See you after the next rain!