It’s the end of the harvest season, and although a great deal of my mind and energy is turned to enjoying the fruits of this year’s produce (today I’m canning applesauce and freezing pureed sugar pie pumpkin) already I find myself dreaming of the spring garden. Part of this impulse, I realize, is inspired by [...]
Entries Tagged as 'garden'
Seed Saving for the Faint of Heart
October 16th, 2009 · 2 Comments
Tags: canning/preserving, garden, Uncategorized, urban farming
A New Way to Freeze Cherry Tomatoes: Tasty Herb-roasted Bites
October 3rd, 2009 · 18 Comments
We’ve had a great tomato year–about as good as it gets in Seattle. A hot summer, and warmth into the beginning of October (last year the green tomatoes practically withered on the vine in early August). But autumn is truly with us now, and as I pick tomatoes this Harvest Moon morning, it is with [...]
Tags: canning/preserving, garden, recipes
Mammoth Sunflowers/Homegrown Birdfeeder
September 11th, 2009 · 5 Comments
We planted several Mammoth Sunflowers in our garden this year. Clearly, they don’t call them “mammoth” for nothin’, though this is the only one that grew to truly mutant proporations. It’s gorgeous–I want a whole forest of them. And once again we stand in awe of that perennial gardening miracle: how did such a thing [...]
Heirloom Tomato Tart
August 30th, 2009 · 5 Comments
It’s the peak of tomato season in Seattle–the plants are covered with the most beautiful shades of green, orange, yellow, red, and burgundy. We are canning tomatoes, drying tomatoes, making salsa, carrying baskets of tomatoes to neighbors, concocting tomato recipes, and of course eating cherry tomatoes like they’re potato chips. Last night I made this [...]
Tags: garden, recipes, Uncategorized
Permaculture Happens: Adapting the Three Sisters
July 31st, 2009 · 1 Comment
While puttering in the garden the other day, I noticed that a couple of the Kentucky Blue Pole beans has escaped their proper pole, and were vining about the mammoth sunflower planted next to them. I leaned over to gently unwrap the beans, and return them to the bamboo teepee I’d constructed for them and [...]
Tags: garden, permaculture, urban farming
Stubble Planting: Hidden Worlds and No-till Gardens
July 17th, 2009 · 3 Comments
I’ve been perusing a beautiful new book by Barbara Pleasant, The Complete Compost Gardening Guide. Pleasant invites us into the rich underworld of our backyard soil, asking us to see it as a living food web, rather than a simple input-output system. In one of my favorite sections, she discusses the microscopic fungi that live [...]
Tags: garden, permaculture, urban farming
Lazy Seattle Tomato Farming and The First Tomato: Don’t Pick it!
July 5th, 2009 · 3 Comments
My favorite farmer’s market tomato grower is Billy of Billy’s Organic Farm in Tonasket. He assured me that his San Marzano start–an Italian, open-pollinated heirloom plum tomato–would bear a ripened tomato by the 4th of July. He was right! Here’s our first fruit on June 30th. BUT. Though we were tantalized and tempted, we didn’t [...]
Tags: garden
The Summer Solstice Garden
June 20th, 2009 · 7 Comments
Remember the mounded earth raised beds that looked like a graveyard and made me cry? After some sun, rain, and a fair bit of work, this garden is now one of my favorite places in all the world. February above, June below: Here’s today’s view through the chicken coop door: We grow only what we [...]
Tags: fruit trees, garden, urban farming
Soporific Salads and Lettuce Opium
June 15th, 2009 · 3 Comments
Remember when the Flopsy Bunnies ate so much of Mr. McGregor’s lettuce that they fell into a deep sleep? Mr. McGregor was able to pick them right up, put them in a gunny sack and take them home, where Mrs. McGregor vowed to cut off their heads, skin them, and use them to line her [...]
Tags: garden
Pretty, Practical, Hippie Herb Spiral: A Permaculture Inspiration
May 28th, 2009 · 2 Comments
In their fun book, The Urban Homestead, Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen encourage our gardening efforts by telling us that “Nature is standing by, ready to help.” Just as often, though, I resonate with Michael Pollan who, in his literate meditation Second Nature, writes, “Nature abhors a garden.” Permaculture offers a gardening philosophy and practice [...]
Tags: garden, herbs, permaculture
