Okay, Log House Plants, I’m in. This Oregon nursery has developed a line of grafted tomato plants that they have branded “Mighty ‘Mato.” As I understand it, these tomatoes are available online this year and are starting to be distributed at independent garden centers. The idea is this: Commercial tomato farmers already graft their tomatoes [...]
Read more in: Eat ThisPlants have evolved unique and sophisticated immune systems to defend themselves against insects and pathogens. Plant hormones called jasmonates play. […]
Declines in the biodiversity of pollinating insects and wild plants have slowed in recent years, according to a new study. Researchers found evidence. […]
…and Buffalo. And Brooklyn. See you there? As always, please check with the venue before heading out to confirm details. Also, there are lots more e. […]
If you wondered why Prince Charles was here in DC just 5 days after the really big show in London, it was to speak to a conference about food. And if this report is accurate, his views are awfully sympatico with my own – except he's been saying all...
Read more in: Eat ThisOkay, it's one thing if you are growing a cash crop like marijuana in the guest room and need super high-intensity light to bring the crop in before the cops arrive. Or if you live in Alaska and morale depends on growing peppers in the house. But what if...
Read more in: Eat ThisBecause my next book involves plants and booze, I am required to spend a lot of money at liquor stores buying unusual spirits. It's terrible, I know, but this is the sort of grueling research writers must put themselves through. My husband is no help: as a rare...
Read more in: Garden Rant Cocktail HourWhy am I still writing about onions? Because at this time of year, when I'm grumpy about the seed-starting thing…Why won't those peppers and eggplants germinate? Why am I spending all this time in my dank basement, where some previous owner covered over all the windows with plywood? Why...
Read more in: Eat ThisIt's blizzarding today. It's beautiful, but it's late winter. I'm ready to stop shovelling snow and to start eating the mache in my garden that germinated last fall but is now hidden under snow. High Mowing Seeds, a Vermont-based seed company that is unusual in that it only sells...
Read more in: Eat ThisMy friend Carol Maxwell and I are about to embark on our third season as heads of the Lake Avenue Elementary School Garden Club. We have an ideal division of labor. Carol does all the organizational stuff. In addition, she does most of the requisite charming of obstinate adults...
Read more in: Eat ThisThe Northeast Organic Farming Assocation of New York had its winter meeting in my town of Saratoga Springs last weekend. Seems like a great organization. The meeting was focussed on helping new farmers. One of the resolutions they were voting on was whether "organic" chicken should mean chicken fed...
Read more in: Eat ThisI spoke at the Connecticut Horticultural Society's monthly meeting last night Lovely people. And definitely one of those situations where I learned more from them than they learned from me. At the end of my talk, which revolved around soil management, with detours into parasitic worms, sanitary conditions in...
Read more in: Eat ThisWhen I moved to Eureka, the first order of business was to buy an apple tree. We may not be able to grow tomatoes in the fog, but we sure can grow some apples. I didn't know anything about apples. I called Raintree Nursery and was treated to a...
Read more in: Eat ThisMerry Christmas! 2010 was a great year in my vegetable garden, and the third year in a row that I have managed my garden with almost no irrigation, not even bothering to set up my sprinkler on a timer. But, unlike in 2008 and 2009, it wasn't raining buckets....
Read more in: Eat ThisHere’s my favorite provision of S-510, otherwise known as the Food Safety Modernization Act, and just approved unanimously by the Senate Sunday: it allows the FDA to recall foods linked to illness. We would no longer have to depend on the kindness of corporations to do the right thing...
Read more in: Eat This, Ministry of ControversyLook, we’re trying to get into the holiday spirit, we really are. But it’s hard. When the EPA decides the P in its acronym means poison, we get discouraged. And then there’s this from our friends at Pinnacle Foods. Birds Eye® is on a mission to inspire a love...
Read more in: Eat ThisMuch will be said in the coming weeks and months about Michele Owen's amazing new book Grow the Good Life, most of it by me. (With that link I send you to IndieBound, the website of independent booksellers, in hopes that you will pre-order a copy through your local...
Read more in: Eat ThisHere's a brief introduction to today's guest ranter Gordon Clark (from the Advisory Board info on the Montgomery Victory Gardens website). Gordon Clark is the founder and Project Director of Montgomery Victory Gardens. A lifelong activist and organizer, Gordon served as the national Executive Director of Peace Action, the...
Read more in: Eat ThisGuest Rant by Gordon Clark, Project Director, Montgomery Victory Gardens When will access to affordable, fresh, healthy food, including the ability to grow it or know the people who grow it, be recognized as a basic human right? Seems like a no-brainer, doesn't it? And in the midst of...
Read more in: Eat ThisMy mother-in-law steered me to this outrageous story: California is now allowing its strawberry growers to use an all-purpose fumigant on their crops that is linked to cancer and thyroid disease–something so poisonous, it is injected into the soil only by specialists and treated areas have to be covered...
Read more in: Eat ThisLike many gardeners in this land-rich country, I often wake up on a weekend morning to see a graceful herd of deer grazing beside my vegetable garden, browsing my young fruit trees to a nub. I am increasingly troubled by one thought: Why aren't we shooting and eating some...
Read more in: Eat ThisOr at least use some of your lemons for limoncello. There’s something about limoncello. It’s not exactly a subtle or complex taste. But—for many of us, anyway—everything about a bottle of limoncello radiates a hot day in Amalfi, where you’re surrounded by jasmine, wisteria, lemon trees, and stores that...
Read more in: Garden Rant Cocktail HourThanks to our commenters for your lovely stories about someone who influenced your gardening style. I asked our guest ranter Susan Heeger to choose the two winners of her book with Jimmy Williams From Seed to Skillet. It was a tough decision, but she settled on Laura Bell and...
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Commented on Trees by the numbers { The calculators generous estimates include the assumption that every tree is perfectly placed to provide maximum shade and that storm run-off water gets absorbed instantly,... } – May 24, 2:33 AM
Commented on Plant Ideas Needed for Biodiverse Lawn { You make a good point -- before sowing flowering plants such as clover into a lawn, I make a point of asking the client if... } – May 23, 10:09 PM Commented on Plant Ideas Needed for Biodiverse Lawn { Fine fescues are certainly not drought-proof, but they perform better without summertime irrigation than most other cool season turf grasses (turf-type tall fescues are more... } – May 23, 10:07 PM
Commented on Plant Ideas Needed for Biodiverse Lawn { The next occasion When i understand the weblog, Lets hope that it doesnt disappoint us just as much as this place. I am talking about,... } – May 23, 12:55 PM
Commented on Got Gnomes? { I'm with the gnomes. Those plastic chairs were especially ugly. Maybe they were reacting to the buying-plastic-stuff-made-in-China over actually gardening and communing with nature? } – May 23, 11:01 AMWe are:
perfect
magazine
gardens.
Gardening
our
asses
off.
Having a
hell of a lot
of fun.
