It’s been quite rainy here in Portland, but I can’t pass up the opportunity to capitalize on frugality in the garden. This is one of the best times of the year to get something for nothing – or, in other words, dividing perennials. And we all know how I love free! The upper layers of my urban food forest have been thoroughly planted with fruiting
September Orchard Tour
Last year I went on the Orchard Tour at One Green World in October. This year I won’t be around for the October 11th tour, so I went on the September tour yesterday instead. I ended up going solo – just my travel mug and some motown music. It was a lovely drive to Molalla, Oregon, and I am glad no one could hear me
Orchard Tour this Weekend
My favorite local nursery, One Green World, will host their first of two orchard tours this weekend! I might bring a travel mug of tea with me, to keep fighting whatever lingering bug I have, but at this point I am just excited to attend. We went last year on their October tour and had a blast! According to their website, the tour this Saturday
Potato Tires: Final Stack
This summer I am trying out the method of intensively growing potatoes in old tires. I wrote about it back in this post if you want more details. Essentially the goal is to grow more potatoes in less space, and reuse some old tires in the process. So far, so good with the tires experiment. I am growing five different varieties of potatoes: Fingerling Russian
Summer Garden Transition
The garden is undergoing the late summer change. I am allowing the lettuce to go to seed, so I can attempt to save them for next Spring. The arugula and spinach were allowed to do the same thing, and I pulled them out to dry about a week ago. I have never tried saving seed from my greens before, so this should be interesting… The
Potato Tire Stacks: Progress
This past winter I decided to try growing potatoes in tires. I have never grown potatoes before, mainly because it seems they take up a lot of space. Living in a small urban lot, space is a premium. The method is basically planting 2-3 seed potatoes per tire. Once the leaves get high, you add another tire and fill with dirt, leaving about 4″ of
Backyard Permaculture Layers
The design for our urban landscape is based on the food forest concept stemming from permaculture principles. One of the several important aspects of designing a food forest means utilizing “layers” in the garden. Here are those layers: The canopy (large trees) Low tree layer (dwarf fruit trees) Shrubs Herbaceous Rhizosphere (root crops) Soil Surface (cover crops) Vertical Layer (climbers, vines) Last year I focused
Tree Generations
A local arborist said the lilac tree in our backyard was one of the oldest he had ever seen. It’s fun for me to think of that tree as a little sapling in the backyard, back in the day when our neighbor’s new house was an empty lot still attached to our property. The old lady who used to live in our house had her
May Sprouts
April flew by this year and everything seems to be growing along quite well. I took a turn through the garden and my currant shrubs are just covered with berries. This is their second year in my garden and last year I didnβt get a single berry. I remember one bush in particular started getting overrun with ants in the early summer. I am hoping