Nestled in our backyard micro orchard is one of my favorite winter fruit trees, mandarin, that we planted in 2000. At the time we planted it, my toddler son and I were going to two different farmers markets a week during peak mandarin season because we both loved them so much, eating as many as 4 or 5 at a time. Now a days, it is easy to find “Cuties,” in the grocery stores, but they are nothing compared to…
There’s a certain kind of fun in having the latest and greatest, but I’ve also learned that it’s often more rewarding to fix broken things, propagate, being resourceful, and making do rather than buying new. This is just as true in a modern day garden, as it was in a frugal or vintage 1940s home or victory garden. Use it Up – Don’t throw out old seed packets just because they say they were packaged for last season. Many seeds…
When my kids were little, I bought an odd gardening book from a used book store called The After Dinner Gardening Book, by Richard Langer.* I was curious and had to buy it just to see if it had some ideas for kid-friendly gardening projects that we had not already tried. It was an enjoyable narrative story about the gardening adventures of growing edible plants in an urban East coast apartment, but mainly from leftovers and seeds which were normally…
As most seasoned gardeners know, one of the easiest plants to propagate is the strawberry. It is possible to make only a minimal financial investment and buy just few strawberry plants when getting a bed started, and within a matter of a few short years, have a giant patch of strawberry plants, all clones of the original variety. This is because strawberries send out runners, or stolons, in order to reproduce. This time of year, at least here in…
..out of the 100,000+ member pages at BYC, one of my pages was featured on the homepage of BackyardChickens.com today. When I started out with chickens 4 years ago, there were few resources promoting gardening methods to happily co-exist with pet chickens, other than keeping the chickens locked up all the time. Lots of folks said a pretty garden with free range chickens couldn’t be done; chickens would eventually destroy everything. I learned that isn’t true. In 2009, I decided…
People usually either love Pickled Beets or hate them. My daughter and I love Pickled Beets. This summer B decided to plant beets just for pickling. She planted Detroit Dark Red, mainly because we had three packets of them on hand, but also because it is a good variety for pickling and canning, plus they are really sweet. They took about 60 days from sowing to harvest since they weren’t in full sun and we also forgot them for an…
Having a nice yard and garden as well as eating fresh homegrown produce is something many of us enjoy, including backyard chickens. Here are some of my favorite gardening practices for keeping happy free range chickens and still having a productive garden for the family. Don’t keep more chickens than you really need. The more chickens you have, the more damage you get. I can’t stress this one enough. Fence off the vegetable garden area with permanent fencing. Picket fences…
Loquats are one of the earliest fruits to ripen around here in the Springtime, usually around March and April, just before the first of the Baba Raspberries. Our Loquat tree is still pretty young, just having started its 4th year in the ground, but it was about 2 years old in a 1 gallon can when it came to live here. Although the tree is still small, we harvested many dozens of loquats this year, which was enough for us…
Have you ever gotten a weird egg? The first time we got one, it sure seemed bizarre. If you keep chickens long enough, you are bound to eventually get one, too. My neighbor came over and asked me last week “Why is her Easter Egger laying shell less eggs?” She is not the crazy chicken lady that I am, and has yet to read every chicken book she could get her hands on. This was her first chicken to…
Well, it turns out, I actually need to deal with it by DOING NOTHING. I was out weeding and deadheading on Wednesday afternoon and I was dismayed to find so many aphids on the new growth of my Mexican Flame Vine, Senecio confusus. My first instinct was to start squishing or get out the high pressure hose nozzle! But after taking a closer look, the vine was also covered in newly emerged tiny lady bug larvae. They discovered the problem…