This is one of my favorite meals, not just because it tastes great, warms you up on a cold winter day, and is healthy, but because, except for the salt and pepper, I can grow each and every ingredient myself. Fry up 1/2 onion and all of the tough stalk of 4 large leaves of …
Category Archives: food (growing, cooking, preserving)
Of Calcium in the Soil – Part 6
O, that egg again! We’ve arrived at Part 6 if this extraordinary saga of how calcium arrives and behaves in the soil (if I’ve occasionally typed “soul” instead of “soil”, is it really a typo?). Click to catch up on part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4 and part 5. ~ 6. Soil …
Of Calcium in the Soil – Part 5
This is part 5 of a series on how nutrients, mainly calcium, get into our soil and vegetables (click for part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4). It is the longest and most difficult part of my expose, and the least “popular” one, judging by the fact that the issues discussed will not …
More Seed Purchases
The flower garden (to be). Yes, all the way down there. I ordered more seeds, for those plants that were on back order in my previous order, and lots of everlasting and perennial flowers, many of them beneficials. 2068RO-Atomic Red Carrot OG (A=1g) 1 x $1.80= $1.80 2512LY-Olympia Spinach (A=1/4oz) 1 x $1.00= $1.00 3228MZ-Early …
Of Calcium in the Soil – Part 4
We’ve reached part 4 of this riveting story of how calcium and other nutrients make it into into the soil and thence into our vegetables and thence into our own bodies (and into chicken eggs). We’ve had some cliffhangers already, so be sure to check out parts one, two and three. ~ 4. Solubility, carbonation …
Oh My.
Amie chooses flowers I put in my seed order. I may have gone overboard a bit, again. No, honestly now, not “again”: even more so, than last year. And these are seeds over and above what I still have left. To be honest I am ashamed to publish the list. Oh my. But, truth be …
Who’s at the Feeder and Hoop House Trouble
I enjoy nothing more, in winter, then sitting by the big window with a cup of steaming tea and a good book or chess game, and observing the birds at the well-stocked feeder. We have the usual flock of juncos, who love playing in the snow. They are having it out with a flock (the …
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Quick Notes on Stored Food and a Peek Inside the Hoop House
So I did all that canning last year and ended up with a little more than what you see in the picture above. So far we’ve eaten half the tomato sauce, a lot of apple sauce and blueberry jam (but not half, not by a long shot), a quarter of the peaches, and some of …
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Of Calcium in the Soil – Part 2
This is the second article in a series on how calcium and other nutrients end up inside our vegetables, and on how to interpret certain soil test results. You can read the first part here. ~ 2. The soil’s ability to hold on to this calcium: colloids and cation exchange capacity The soil needs to …
Of Eggshells and Calcium in Soil, Compost – Part 1
It was the combination of finding an eggshell in the compost and staring at our soil test results that did it. I started researching and one thing led to another. But I figured it out, the basics of it, anyway. The result is a long text, so I’m serializing it over the next couple of …
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