After, “When do I plant?” the hardest gardening question to wrap you head around is, “How much do I plant?” Everyone, from high-rise gardeners with a few pots to big time farmers with thousands of acres, has to annually decide how much of their land they will allocate to each crop they want to grow….
Planning
Gardening Goals And Edible Expectations
My friend Fruit Lady is brand new to veggie growing. This spring she put in several good-sized raised beds, but doesn’t care how much she harvests. She grows vegetables so that she and her kids can learn about the process. Really, it’s mostly for the kids, and anything picked is bonus. That’s not how it…
Frugal Friday: What Farm Grandmas and Chefs Do (And You Should To)
When I was in culinary school, we learned how to filet salmon. Even if you are amazingly good (and we weren’t), when you cut the filet off a whole fish there is a little layer of salmon left against the bones. My instructor showed us students how to use a spoon to scrape the carcass…
Family Of Origin Organization (And New Downloadables)
My mom has a sticker up on her office corkboard. It says: “If I’m So Organized, How Come I Can’t Get Organized?” Now, if you knew my mother you’d understand how ironic this is. She is the Most Organized Woman In The World. You know those “after” layouts in Real Simple magazine that show pale,…
Birds Eye View: An Overview Of The Garden
I talk a lot about my garden, and if you are kind enough to read this blog, you know a lot about my garden. A reader asked me to put up a garden map or layout to make it more clear how all the parts of “my office” come together. It is still a great…
New Year, New Blog, New Seed Catalogues
It’s the beginning of January and everything seems fallow and sleepy. The garden is shivering through it’s second cold snap of the winter. The first came just before Thanksgiving and brought us temperatures in the teens and lots of snow (lots for Seattle, mind you: some places got 5 inches). The second we are enjoying…