I have become quite the joiner this past week! Although I love the virtual community of gardeners, I have been searching for ways to join a community of gardeners here in Portland. It’s proven more challenging than I first anticipated. I began the search with gardening clubs. To date, I have found only a couple gardening clubs and their members are mostly 60+. Probably the
Flops and Fertilzer
Unfortunately, I have to admit the first year of starting seeds indoors has been a flop. Not all is wasted. I learned some good lessons, like how long to keep the grow light on… I also managed to just direct sow a lot of my seeds when the indoor versions were taking too long. The only big disappointment has been the five varieties of tomatoes
Garden Pests
The last few days I have begun to notice some pest damage to my plants outside. This morning I took a nice long stroll with a cup of coffee and inspected the situation. Slugs have been munching on the collard greens and the raspberry bushes. I have also noticed holes in some melon and squash starts, which is another sure sign of slugs. There were
Spring Vegetables
“We come from the earth, we return to the earth, and in between we garden.” -Anonymous My grandfather had a good day today. He was lucid for most of the day, which was wonderful, and I was able to have a nice, short visit with him. We talked about our normal subject: how the garden is growing. Between these ups and downs, it’s a really
Birds in the Garden
Birds are an important addition to the backyard food forest. Although they will steal some of my berries and fruit, they give something back with their guano, insect-eating, and simple beauty. If the competition for my produce gets too severe I will cover the berry bushes with some netting. I am willing to take that risk though in order to give these guys some habitat.
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
Typical Spring Evening
I can see how my routines look awfully strange to people sometimes. When I recap my weekend, for example, it’s usually a stark contrast to other people’s weekends. My evenings typically stray this direction as well. So I thought I would recap my evening tonight as an example. First things first – I stopped by New Seasons on the way home from work to pick
May Plantings
A big highlight from this weekend was spending the day with my sweet nephew, Evan, on Saturday. Evan, Jay and I all went to check out Renn Fayre, which is an annual student celebration/party that happens every spring on the Reed College campus. The students build crazy tents, sculptures, etc and spend the weekend hanging out with friends, dressing in costumes, and most likely consuming
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 didn’t get a single berry. I remember one bush in particular started getting overrun with ants in the early summer. I am hoping
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