Vegetable Gardening Series Starts This Weekend!

We’re teaching a three part series on vegetable gardening at the Hutington Library and Gardens starting this Saturday and there’s still some room in the class. In the course of this hands-on series we’ll reveal the secret to vegetable gardening: it’s all about the soil! To that end we’ll show you how to build a compost pile, how to interpret a soil report, how to amend the soil, how to set up a drip irrigation syst...

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The Homegrown Revolution Broadleaf Plantain Pizza

For years a trade organization called the Verace Pizza Napoletana Association, has been lobbying the Italian government to create a “DOC” or d’origine controllata, to designate the proper form of Neopolitan pizza as a way of countering the indignities perpetrated internationally by the likes of Dominos and Wolfgang Puck. The VPN’s regulations include the following requirements: 1. A wood-burning oven: The pizza must be c...

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Rules for Eating Wheat

...g older forms of grain (soft wheat such as Sonora and ancient wheat such as Einkorn). If you can’t find something local, mail order your flour.  Consider growing grain at home as part of a rotational strategy in your garden. See Lawns to Loaves for inspiration. One source for interesting flour by mail order: Anson Mills If any of you know of other sources for heritage flours (either brick and mortar or mail order) please leave a comme...

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The Squirrel Menace

In our garden squirrels are a serious problem. Their worst offense is grabbing avocados off our tree, taking a few small bites and then dropping them on the ground for our Doberman to finish off. This year only five avocados made it into the kitchen. Today’s New York Times has just about the only effective solution. Anyone for squirrel tacos with guacamole? “With literally millions of squirrels rampaging throughout England, Scotland...

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The Barrier Method

...rticularly problem-prone situations. Nowadays protection is standard for every bed we plant, for our seed starting boxes, and often for new perennials in the ground. The result is peace of mind, better results…and fewer gardening meltdowns from Erik (Squash Baby excepted). We’ve written about all this before in various posts, but here’s some photos to give you an overview of some of the possibilities: Our seedling trays ar...

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Purple Sicilian Cauliflower

The Homegrown Revolution compound’s purple Sicilian cauliflower (Cavolfiore di Sicilia Violetto from Seeds from Italy) from our illegal parkway garden is now ready for the table after four months since planting from seed. Cauliflower needs some attention; it needs to be kept moist and it’s prone to aphids, but the little buggers can be blasted off with a hose fairly easily. While the plant takes up a lot of room and doesn’t yi...

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Saturday Linkages: Cheapskates and Controversy!

... … Controversy Is Michael Pollan a sexist pig? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/28/is_michael_pollan_a_sexist_pig/ … In Defense of Michael Pollan (Or, How Sexism Allegations Boost Web Traffic) http://huff.to/16ougcC  When Master Gardeners Break the Rule and say they’re Master Gardeners | Garden Rant http://gardenrant.com/2013/04/when-master-gardeners-break-the-rules-and-say-theyre-master-gardeners.html … Containers make lousy houses: http://lloydkah...

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Failed Experiment: Bermuda Buttercup or Sour Grass (Oxalis pes-caprae) as Dye

...can lay your hands on–hell it makes you want to raise your own sheep and spin your own yarn, so you can dip it in acorn, cabbage and fennel dye, sing some folk songs, dance a dance,  compost the solids and acidify your garden soil.with the spent dye. It sent me into fantasies of living in some groovy Sonoma-Portlandish nirvana where my house is clean and has plaster walls and wood beams in the ceiling (the wood beams are always in the fant...

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In August, Way Too Much Squash

...e awkwardly named Early Prolific Straightneck Summer Squash. It’s an open pollinated heirloom variety named as an “All-America Selection” in 1938 (AAS is kind of like a dog show for seeds run by the National Garden Bureau). We grew our EPS from Botanical Interests seeds we got at our local nusery. Our EPS squash has lived up to its name, having grown rapidly, producing tasty summer squash with a zucchini-like flavor and consiste...

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Bantam Returns

Homegrown Neighbor here: I’ve been busy in the garden and letting the neighbors focus on their book, so I haven’t been blogging in a while. But today something very special happened that I have to share with you, dear readers. My bantam chicken, Debbie, the lighter colored chicken in the photo, disappeared last week. She simply didn’t come in at chicken bed time. This is very unusual. The chickens usually all line up and go...

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