Design

Fresh garlic needing to be cleaned I've been cleaning a lot of garlic, potatoes, and onions lately. Much is destined for fresh use in the next couple of weeks, rather than storage, but preparing vegetables for either requires work - removing dirt, extra foliage and roots, sorting out for drying, taking all of the clippings out to the compost pile, etc. I'm quite certain I didn't appreciate the effort required in producing a bag of onions in the grocery store before I started growing them myself. Maybe they bounce down a river of clean water in industrial agriculture, but someone still needs to trim their roots and stems and remove their tops (maybe this is a subject for a web search-- Hmm... check out this article about onion cleaning procedures on a small farm). Fresh onions are totally delicious, of course, being juicy and succulent when cooked.  Quite a different vegetable than the cured ones for long-term storage.  Ditto with garlic.  And fresh potatoes are exception...

A rainy June A quick trip back to the Piedmont to take care of some garden things -- getting a dead white pine removed and mowing the grass -- as well as taking Woody to see our vet, found lush growth in the garden. OK, it's good news that it's been rainy, and I was glad not to find a bunch of crispy plants. It was a bit daunting, however, to see HOW much pokeweed, Oxalis , Digitaria , Abutilon , and other weeds had popped up and grown in the vegetable beds in just a couple of weeks, not to mention volunteer redbud, sassafras, and black cherry seedlings elsewhere in the landscape.  The front meadow is ridiculously exuberant, too;  the common milkweed, planted for monarch caterpillars, has thrived and is falling onto the driveway, and all of the other meadow plants ( Solidago , Thermopsis , Helianthus hirsutus , Indian grass, etc. are huge). Eggplant in container (surrounded by crabgrass!) The Campsis radicans   on the trellises in front of the garage are thriving.  T...

To grow everything you eat (or drink) would be (and is) a formidable task, and we've got centuries of world trade routes to underscore the interest in tea, coffee, sugar, and spices for centuries, as well as the currently active shipping of produce, meat, seafood, and frozen goods around the world, in a global marketplace. Not to mention bananas, the cheapest fruit available in my supermarket today, but certainly not local or necessarily sustainably grown.  But, my gardening companion enjoys having a banana each morning with his cereal, and it's hard to think of a reason (in the grand scheme of things) why I shouldn't indulge his habit.  OK, maybe I shouldn't support the small-scale (or big scale companies) that produce bananas throughout the tropical world, but ... I had a delightful time at a Locavore potluck yesterday evening, but was amazed at how few folks had homegrown veggies in their dishes -- for example, lettuce, greens, or peas (or early strawberries) to offe...

I'm just about finished revising a piece about vegetable gardening for beginners.  This isn't a easy topic in 2500 words (my assignment). Vegetable gardening IS easy, but...there are some basics - sun, good soil (created usually), plenty of water and nutrients, and a willingness to weed and harvest often. So I enjoyed playing around with the Gardener's Supply Kitchen Gardening planner , to see how a 4' X 4' plot looked for a summer layout.  They're a great company, and I enjoy their e-newsletters and website, along with their products. Gardener's Supply Kitchen Garden program result This is what it looks like, but in the program, the names of the vegetables are shown -- very nice. Another e-newsletter I received today from VegetableGardener.com had a story about Planting Pricey Produce .  Most vegetable gardeners can relate to this -- they want how much for a bunch of kale or red mustard in the farmer's market?  This is usually about when I'm tired ...