Back in winter, my friend Alex and I were planning on starting a mushroom farm on the property. Unfortunately our calls for logs (oak, birch, beech, etc.) didn’t produce any, and so the inoculation season passed us by. But all was not lost. In 2010 I bought and planted mycelium of King Stropharia. Stropharia rugosoannulata, …
Category Archives: garden
A New Approach to Water, Being More of the Same
From the beginning (2008), I have gardened organically – better than “organically,” actually. For instance, I always refused to use the hose, that is, tap water, in my gardens. Even as the garden grew larger and more labor intensive, I insisted on watering with buckets and watering cans. Some relief came when I installed drip …
Continue reading “A New Approach to Water, Being More of the Same”
What’s Growing?
A commenter asked if things are growing. Are they ever! Winter ended quite suddenly, with feet of snow melting away in a matter of days. So it was time to get growing. Here are the seedlings in the basement: If necessary (I’m also growing seedlings for friends and school gardens), I can add an extra …
Spring?
The day before yesterday was a cruel and beautiful day. Temperatures rose to 50 F and the sun was ablast. The perfect day for going out there in the garden. But the garden is still nowhere to be seen. You walk on/in this snow and one step you’re on top of it, two feet taller, …
Homeschooling, Chickens, Garden Plans
Homeschooling is going even better than I had expected. We are sticking to a strict schedule in the mornings, with a steady core curriculum in math and language arts. In the afternoons we do Latin and, after that, we launch into our history/science module. I’d say the last one is our favorite along with logic, …
New Patio
Here it is, finally done, the new patio! You may recall the old one, which was too small to be of use but, more importantly, installed so that with each flash rain that overflowed the gutter the rain was funneled into the basement. As a result, when the thing was demolished, we found a rotten …
Potatoes, Tomatoes and Peaches
Well, 17 lbs is not bad for one and a half beds (4’x12′ total), in the shade and without topping up soil (I ran out). The red fingerlings were a bust, the yellow fingerlings did well, the idahoes did best. All seed potatoes were supermarket bought (organic) or came as sprouted (organic) potatoes from a …
More Tomatoes
It’s getting a little repetitious, but there were again many more tomatoes. The warm weather continues and there are still many fruits on the vines, so this may not be the last of ’em. I’m looking forward to next summer, when I’ll have the super sunny front patio to grow tomatoes, peppers (can you spot …
Harvests
School has started up again, which might mean that I’ll be able to blog more. No guarantees. In the meantime, we get a harvest like this one almost every other day. I’ll have lots of elderberries to make syrup from, and the cukes and zucchinis will — be –pickled. The tomatoes are still going strong, …
Tomatoes
Ironic, that I didn’t intend to grow tomatoes – getting plenty of them from a local farmstand and from our CSA box – but that I put in just a few seedlings that a friend gave me, and some seedlings I grew to give away but never got to, and that now tomatoes are my …