I know you. We have a lot in common. You have been doing some reading and now you are pretty sure everything in the grocery store and your kitchen cupboards is going to kill you. Before Your Healthy Eating Internet Education: I eat pretty healthy. Check it out: whole grain crackers, veggie patties, prawns, broccoli….
Recent Posts
How To Turn A Mason Jar Into A Fermenting Crock
You can spend a lot of money on specialized pickling crocks. Go ahead, be my guest. You’ll learn all about how your $25-$200 is buying you an ideal anaerobic environment in which to nurture your precious anaerobic bacteria…blah, blah, blah. Me? I don’t need another unitasker in my kitchen. I like to be able to use a…
Lacto-fermented Cherry Salsa
It’s been cherry-palooza around here. I’ve dried, frozen, canned in lime-almond syrup (fabulous, by the way), given away and eaten (and eaten and eaten and eaten) fresh cherries by the pound. We’ve even got my 2 year old saying “cherries make ya poop a lot!” which seems far more adorable when it’s coming out of…
Add An Outdoor Tic-Tac-Toe Board To Your Garden
I saw a photo on Facebook yesterday of an outdoor tic-tac-toe board with stone markers. It was so adorable, and so totally do-able that I immediately ran outside to make my own garden tic-tac-toe game. This project was super fast and easy, required only stuff I already had kicking around, and the kids love it. Gather…
Giveaway: Honeybee Democracy – For Beekeepers And More
Thomas Seeley’s fascinating Honeybee Democracy has received press in some unusual circles for a book about insect behavior. Everyone from homemade mead-makers to The New Republic has weighed in with glowing reviews on this study of honeybee swarms. The reason for this broad appeal is simple: Seeley does an excellent job describing the how and why of honeybee group decision-making,…
The Personality of Perennials
The very first garden I planted was an ornamental shade garden. I was very eager. I put in a little pond and a little waterfall powered by a cheap pump. I had some Big Tree people plant three mature birch trees for privacy, and in the partial shade beneath the birches I planted pink Japanese…
The Ugly Side of Urban Homesteading: Screening Storage Areas with Pallets
Perhaps your garden, like mine, has a dumping ground area. Some place where random bits of lumber, useful but not in-use buckets and lengths of rebar mingle with weeds, neglected tools and a compost bin that’s seen better days. That’s the Ugly Side of Urban Homesteading – it’s when a focus on reuse and the…
To Do In The Northwest Edible Garden: July 2012
Beginning of July and everything is soggy with occasional gloombreaks. Typically, Pacific Northwest gardeners are feeling really cheated right about now, having made it through Juneuary and confronting a July that’s not yet delivering summer. Try not to worry – this is all about expectations. Every year we expect summer to run from June to September, and…
DIY Concrete Mesh and Rebar Trellis
Last April 2nd I took these photos of my newly-constructed Half-Ass Hugelkultur Beds. Today, just shy of three months later they look like this. Can I get a woot-woot for hugels? Other than the massive attack of greenery, one of the biggest changes in this planting area are the twin concrete mesh trellises we installed…
The $332 Fantasy Facial (Or: An Anthropological Expedition to the Mall)
“If you get nothing else, please, please just get the moisturizer,” the overly plumped and overly plucked sales-cultist implores me. “You know, these are the years that really count for your skin.” The moisturizer is $75 for a two-ounce jar. The jar, it must be said, is a very pretty sandblasted green. It’s worth at least…
The Garden In June: Photo Tour
In a garden, some years things go smooth(ish) and some years things are a little bumpier. The biggest bump I’ve run into this year is cabbage maggots which decimated a full bed of nearly-sized-up broccoli and did a number on a few other spring brassicas around the garden. The root maggots, combined with a few…
How Not To Buy Flowers For A Gardener
So, last week the content was a little sparse here on NW Edible. That’s because I got in a collision last Monday morning while driving the kids to the bus stop. Everyone is safe, no major injuries were sustained, the car is in the shop with substantial boo-boos, and we are all moving back towards…