I spent a recent morning working in my garden back at our house in Portland, which we are renting out while I am in Eugene going through grad school. Summer is long gone and I wanted to check in on the permanent plantings. It was a mixed experience. It felt good to be back home, even though it’s not my home right now. The familiar
Fall Crops
There is a changing of the guard going on outside in the garden. The change is most evident in the powdery mildew creeping across the vegetable patch, telling our plants that it’s time to close up shop for the season. Powdery mildew can affect plants in the prime of summer as well, most often if you are watering at night and that moisture is left
Tomato Sauce = Fail
My eyes are still wet with tears and I can’t believe I am making myself write this post. I had a huge bucket of Roma tomatoes from the Urban Farm I have been planning to can into marinara sauce. I waited a week for them to ripen to the perfect level. You don’t want them overripe, but I wanted them really red. Finally, they were
Endless Squash
So much summer squash… so much zucchini… so many patty pans… Saturday was a really raining morning, the kind I actually prefer to work outside in. That meant fewer volunteers showed up, but the summer squash waits for no one – it still needed to be picked. If we decided to put it off a few more days, we would end up with baseball bat
Modest Harvest
I would use the term “grazing” to describe the way I have been eating this past week. That is how long it’s been since Jay moved to NYC. We’ll spend the next nine months having a long distance love affair and my meager backyard harvests turn out enough produce to feed myself. My teeny garden would seem very inadequate for a couple to feed from,
Beet Leaves
You can enjoy your beets before they are even big enough to pull from the ground. Their leaves are really high in vitamin A nutrients, along with vitamin C, iron and calcium with a taste similar to swiss chard. Although you can eat them raw, I prefer to saute them in a little olive oil. I also tend to drop them into most dishes I
Season Race
The race is on to turn my half barren vegetable plot into a success before the season ends. My transplanted tomatoes and peppers are doing very well. Of the seeds I planted, only about half actually survived. Partly that was probably due to a lack of consistent watering, or perhaps it was just related to the rock-hard soil I am trying to cultivate. After spending
Garden Planted
After only being in our new house about a week, with boxes piled high in every room, I already felt overdue for planting a garden. Finding our clean linens, food supplies and shoes could wait. The sooner I got everything in the ground, the sooner I could enjoy fresh produce from my backyard. I started by removed the cover crops that had not been turned
Updated Frugal Projects
Before leaving our house in Portland, I took a few snapshots of projects that have been allowed to grow. Remember when I found that ugly old brass dog kennel fencing? I took it apart and hung it on the outside of our house, hoping to the train the rose there to climb up the fencing. That post was written last Fall. After a few months
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