Spring has sprung here in Montana. My computer is telling me it’s 57 degrees outside, and the sun is shining, and it’s making it very difficult to come indoors. Especially since I’m going to be returning to the Big Corporation part time, probably next week. So, I’m taking advantage of the weather, and the sunshine, and my last few days where I don’t have to be tethered to the computer indoors for specified hours. Which means blogging might be a little slow this week. On the other hand, I’ve been gardening up a storm. I added a second hoop house…
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It’s that time of year, when we’re all buying seeds, and I just want to put a plug in for reading the labels. Seed saving is something I only came to a few years into keeping a garden, and I pretty much just save tomato seeds at this point, but with Monsanto being investigated for monopolizing seed stocks, it seems that seed saving is one place that backyard gardeners can really have an impact. But the thing is, you can’t save seeds from hybrid varieties. So when you’re perusing the seed racks at your local garden stores, if it’s something…
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Ever since last fall’s episode of food poisoning, I’ve been meaning to finish enclosing the garden. However, I had to wait for the ground to thaw, and well, the freelance life means that finances have been just tight enough that I didn’t want to go out and buy copper pipe. But this weekend, I finally got it done. I tried to come up with some solution other than more expensive copper, but since I’d done the rest of the trellis/fences that way when I built the garden (this is summer number eight — how did that happen?), well, I just…
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It was a big weekend of gardening here at LivingSmall. The temperatures were in the mid- to high-fifties, and so I decided to see if I can jumpstart the season a little bit. I’m deathly tired of eating other people’s vegetables. I want greens of my own again. So I built a little hoop house over one of my beds. I bought four ten-foot lengths of 1/2 inch pvc pipe, and since wind is a perennial problem here, I ran one lengthwise, with the other three crosswise. I planted some arugula, spinach, Japanese mustard, mache, and escarole — just half-rows…
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According to the BBC, the town of Mouscron, in Belgium, has 50 pairs of chickens it plans to give to residents as a way to decrease the waste stream. I have to say, my chickens have both significantly lowered my household and garden waste, and here in the arid west, they’ve exponentially sped up the composting process. Composting is a real problem here, because it’s so dry. Because there was an 8×10 concrete pad in the back part of the yard, that’s where I built the chicken coop. And because the compost heaps were already in that part of the…
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These are the chives that overwintered in my mudroom — they started coming back about two weeks ago, which makes overwintering them totally worthwhile. Although it’s warm here — nearly 60 degrees yesterday! And the sun is beginning to shine again, the ground is still frozen, and the garden chives and parsley have only just begun to think about greening up. Yesterday I got the seeds out, and started organizing them again. I usually start tomatoes and peppers around the fifteenth of march, under lights in the basement. But it’s always an adventure deciding what to plant this year. I…
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Seems we’re all still reacting to the Flanagan piece slamming school gardens. Here’s a piece from Civil Eats that quotes Booker T. Washington on the value of physical work. The contempt shown by so much of the middle and upper-middle classes for people who work with their hands is, I’m convinced, partly responsible for the devastating loss of manufacturing jobs here in America. When you believe that work is only something other people do, and when you believe that those others, because they work with their hands and bodies must necessarily be inferior to you in your nice clean office,…
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Caitlin Flannagan’s latest article at the Atlantic has folks up in arms. We all know I’m not Alice Water’s biggest fan, but I am a big fan of interactive education. Here’s a good rebuttal to Flannagan: REAL Gardens: Why school gardeners reap more than they sow : Super Eco.
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I was picking tomatoes this morning when it occurred to me that part of my problem with seed saving is managing to remember which tomato is which. I planted nine varieties this year, and many of them are a lot alike — Perestroika and Grushovka, for example. And I tend to pick in a big basket, where they get mixed up. So tomorrow, I have to pay more attention, because it’s time to start putting some seed aside for next year. This morning I did Galina, this yellow cherry that I love, and Mountain Princess, which gets mangled by the…
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Here are the first tomatoes of the season. Yes, I realize it’s the end of August. It’s been a long cool summer here in Montana, and the tomatoes have only just now started getting ripe. Just in time to be swathed in plastic sheeting. The romas are looking good — I planted two kinds, Borghese and Milano Plum, both from Seeds of Italy. They’re just starting to pink up, but I’m beginning to see homemade sauce and salsa in my future. The Siberians are coming in nicely. I couldn’t remember the difference when I was planting between Perestroika and Grushovka,…