Not everyone has a Back 40. Many urban gardeners are working with aggressive space constraints (“Patio 4?” anyone?) but still want the joy of planting, harvesting and cooking homegrown veg. For these gardeners, container growing is sometimes the best or only option. Nearly every crop that can be grown in ground can also be grown…
The Time In The Garden Formula
I have developed a formula which I think allows us to estimate how much time and labor a food growing piece of land will take. Size of Land x Diversity of Plantings x Intensity of Management = Time and Labor required! Now, there are no units associated with this formula, so it’s not going to…
Will A Broody Hen Adopt Chicks?
Our Buff Orpington Goldie was broody. Really broody. I’ve had hens go broody before and they always seem to just get over it within about a week. Because I don’t rely on eggs for my income and the broodiness I’ve seen has been short-lived, I’ve never bothered to “break” a broody hen with a broody…
The Psychology of Limited Choices: Eat From The Larder Challenge Week One
“Mom, can we go to The Muffin Store?” asks my son, again. Visits to the local cafe he calls The Muffin Store – because the muffins are fabulous – had become something of a post-preschool tradition for us. A few times a week after I picked him up, we would walk the several blocks to…
The Hemingway Daiquiri
Ernest Hemingway is one of my father’s favorite authors. I grew up surrounded by The Old Man And The Sea, The Sun Also Rises and For Whom The Bell Tolls (about that last one – don’t ask). My favorite Hemingway piece has always been The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. Or maybe A Clean,…
Bee Friendly Gardening In The Pacific Northwest
Seems like some people insist on not knowing what they’ve got till it’s gone. And that’s kinda how it is with bees, and pollinators in general. Most of what we think of as food is highly dependant on our pollinating insect friends.* All fruit, tree nuts, squash, seeds for most vegetables, chocolate… Oh, never mind, I don’t…
How To Make and Freeze Guacamole
I was at the store to pick up milk before heading into the April Eat From The Larder Challenge and there was a screaming good deal on organic avocados. At $5 for 6 avocados I’ll admit I did sort of stock up. A dozen ripe avocados later, it was guacamole time. Even someone like me, a girl…
Eat From The Larder Challenge
In February I wrote a post called Food Storage For People Who Don’t Hate Food. Most of the feedback I got on that post was very positive, but a few readers seemed skeptical of my claims that eating from the pantry for six months was reasonable, even if one had the food stored. This floored me…
What Fruits And Veggies Will Grow In Shallow Soil? (Reader Question)
I have 1-foot high raised beds on my concrete soil. It’s really is that hard, filled with rocks and impossible to dig. I put in 2 grapes on a little arbor. What fruits and veggies will survive in such shallow soil? Thank you for any help you can share. – Sharon Hi Sharon. The quick…
Andean Root Vegetables for the Pacific Northwest and Beyond
Today’s post comes to you from Bill Whitson. Bill is the co-owner of Cultivariable Seeds, an independent breeder and supplier of seeds and plants, specializing in Andean vegetables and other unusual and hard-to-find edibles for the Pacific Northwest. He was kind enough to put together this incredible primer on cultivating oca, yacon, mashua and ulluco for folks…
Spring Pea Soup with Coconut Milk
I love early spring as a gardener, but I hate it as a chef. All the delicate flavors of spring we look forward to – the asparagus and rhubarb and tender greens – those crops tend to be ready for harvesting about 6 weeks after our tummies are ready to be eating them. Talk about…
The Gin & Ginger Cocktail
If one were really, truly stretching the definition of healthy, one might consider this cocktail medicinal. Fresh citrus combines with raw muddled ginger root, a bit of botanically infused gin and bitters and just enough sweetness to help the delicious medicine go down. The result is a bit spicy, a bit lip-tingly and undeniably delicious:…