You know what a keystone is, other than a bad beer and a bad pipeline? It’s the special wedge-shaped center stone in an archway. The integrity of the arch depends on the keystone transferring the stress of a load out and down through the rest of the arch and, ultimately, to the security of the…
The Real Bounty of The Coop (Hint: It's Not Eggs)
Chickens have changed the way I think about gardening, and I’m not just talking about bull-rushing a garden bed to shoo the little cluckers out of my arugula. Again. No, something is happening to the way I think about garden inputs and outputs, and it all hinges on chicken shit. Before we got our hens…
Stop Ripping Up Your Lawn To Grow Veggies
It’s a badge of honor among urban homesteaders to say, “I’ve ripped up my whole lawn and put in a garden.” Stop doing that. No, seriously, I would now like to explain why you should not actually rip up your lawn, and I’d like to start with a little soil science. Bear with me, this’ll…
You Know You're A Veggie Gardener If…
You go to Costco and buy one thing – Sluggo in bulk – and ask for 8 large cardboard boxes to take it home in so you can smother more lawn. You frequent a horse stable even though you have no interest in riding horses. You have a ridiculous multi-component compost hierarchy to handle kitchen scraps and you assume…
Stumbling Over Chocolate Chips: Anti-Inflammation Challenge Week 3
Well as far as anti-inflammatory living goes, this week could have been better. It started last Saturday, with a catering event for some long-time clients. Now, I don’t wan’t this to come across as braggartly, but I make really good food. As a matter of professionalism, I do have to taste the really good food to ensure it…
How To Cull The Weak
Classic new gardener problem: you successfully grew a seedling. You planted it and nurtured it from a little seed and – life doing what it does – it’s flourishing, putting on layers of healthy leaves and growing up well. And now you have to kill it – on purpose. You have to murder your seedling so that other,…
How Can You Tell If You Have Inflammation? Anti-Inflammation Challenge: Week 2
Inflammation is your body’s natural way of healing itself when you’re injured. It’s actually a really, really good thing. If you slam your thumb in the car door your thumb will become inflamed as your body sends in the immune system to shut down any invading bacteria and begin to heal the wound. You can…
A Slightly Easier Way To Keep The Big Girl Panties Clean
Perhaps, like me, you spend far too much of your life doing laundry. Far too much. I have asked everyone I know if they have any tips or tricks to cut down the number of loads or number of hours involved in laundry and the consensus seems to be, you just have to put on…
Planning For A Year-Round Harvest: When You Need The Big Picture
The detailed month-by-month lists are great and all, but sometimes you need the overview, the synopsis, the big picture. This is particularly true at the beginning of the growing season, like now, when all the little details are popping up: what plants do I grow? How many? How long till I can eat them? Where do…
More Coop Improvement Projects: Sand Bed-Deep Litter Hybrid and More
I like working on the coop. This past weekend I swapped the raised hen house area of the chicken coop from a straw-bed floor to a sand-bed floor. When I bought our first two hens, who we acquired as grown layers, the owner kept an immaculate coop with a sand bed under the roosting area and swore…
Worst Soil Amendment For Tomatoes?
Rachel Shadoan is a writer of exceptional wit. I know because she posted a story of gardening loss on the NW Edible Facebook page that was both so terrible and so hilarious that I read it twice. I asked for her permission to share her tale of tomato-growing woe (and lessons learned) here. This story appeared originally on Rachel’s…
Assessing Your Health: Anti-Inflammation Challenge Week 1
On February 1st, we talked about journalling our health baseline and getting our anti-inflammatory plan together. Have you done it? If not, go do yours right now and then come back, or read on to see what my Assessment looks like if you need some inspiration. Need even more motivation to do this? Just in…