Well, last week didn’t really feel like it in the Pacific Northwest, what with the intermittent hail and occasional snow flurry, but spring is fighting the good fight. President’s Day weekend was the traditional time to put your peas in the ground, though in my area the soil was still a bit cold. Did you sow peas outside? Did…
Archives for February 2011
Turn Your Old Wire Hangers Into Garden Staples!
If you or a housemate work off the farm at one of those jobs that require clean, starched shirts, you probably have a lot of dry-cleaner’s wire hangers kicking around the house. We return our wire hangers to our dry cleaners for re-use (better for the earth and helpful to the small business owners who…
Heat Lovers in A Cool Clime: Tomato Dreams and Tomato Delusions
Forget sugarplums – at this time of year it’s visions of big, juicy, vine-ripe tomatoes that dance in the gardener’s head. Tomatoes are the quintessential garden edible. The tomato is so culturally ubiquitous – so representative of summer itself – that people not in possession of gardening gloves, a shovel, or the slightest desire to…
Curry Roasted Squash Seeds
Inside that tasty, tasty beast of a Sugar Hubbard squash was a whole other garden gift: squash seeds! Now I don’t bother to pick through and roast the seeds from every squash I harvest, but when you have a big squash you have some big, tasty seeds. So especially on your large winter squashes (squashi?),…
Don’t Be An Urban Homesteader Asshole
You ripped up your front lawn to plant kale and a heritage quince tree. You adopted as many chickens as your town will allow. You make your own bread, jam, cheese, pickles, yogurt and beer. Worms eat your garbage, beekeeping supplies are on the way and you’re wondering if the neighbors would notice a dwarf…
Seed Starting 101: Up-Potting
If you are new to growing seedlings, you might want the entire Seed Starting 101 series: Seed Starting 101: Key Components To Healthy Seedlings Seed Starting 101: A Step-By-Step Visual Guide To Growing Seedlings At Home Seed Starting 101: Up-Potting (this post) Occasionally your seedlings will outgrow their containers before you are ready to move…
Seed Starting 101: A Step-By-Step Visual Guide To Growing Seedlings At Home
If you are new to growing seedlings, you might want the entire Seed Starting 101 series: Seed Starting 101: Key Components To Healthy Seedlings Seed Starting 101: A Step-By-Step Visual Guide To Growing Seedlings At Home (this post) Seed Starting 101: Up-Potting New to starting seeds? You might want to start by reading yesterday’s post, Seed…
Seed Starting 101: Key Components For Healthy Seedlings
If you are new to growing seedlings, you might want the entire Seed Starting 101 series: Seed Starting 101: Key Components To Healthy Seedlings (this post) Seed Starting 101: A Step-By-Step Visual Guide To Growing Seedlings At Home Seed Starting 101: Up-Potting Seeds don’t ask much: give them some moisture and the right temperature and if…
Garden Inventory: February 2011
Here’s how the garden is sitting as of early February. Root Crops Beets We are down to just a few beets now. Carrots & Parsnips Down to a small patch of each. I started with about ⅓ bed of each, and last month more than half of that remained. We harvested a lot of carrots…