In an effort to expand our garden ecosystem, we've gone the way of the farmer, adding backyard chickens to our list of on-site resources. This
is the story of how we got started. We intend to share the process in hopes of making it easier for others who plan to do the same.
We spent two years researching and being skittish about getting them, while everyone with chickens kept saying, "Just get them!" 2012 rolled around, as did ...
It's time to harvest those cabbages that have been growing over winter. As readers may remember, we planted a newly discovered variety of open
pollinated Vertus savoy cabbage from Bountiful Gardens this past fall, and now we're reaping
the benefits. It's hard to find an open pollinated or heirloom variety of savoy cabbage, so we were very excited to test this one out.
The results are in, and they ...
The latest post from Mar Vista's Bounty Hunter is ready for your viewing pleasure. Check out this great way to refill your home and body products:
Reduce, Reuse, Refyll
...
After seeing Vegucated, the vegan documentary that shows the underside of our country's meat
and dairy industry, I was highly motivated to find organic milk products from truly trustworthy suppliers. Many of our organic dairy manufacturers like Horizon and Organic Valley still utilize
confined feedlot techniques and, without going in to details, they don't treat their cows very well. I wanted control over my dairy ASAP.
I did ...
Growing new varieties each season keeps the garden interesting. Since we focus on heirlooms and open pollinated varieties here at Gardenerd,
our choices are not new, but rather newly discovered. After a slight seed debacle last year where we grew seeds from an (unnamed) seed company that purchased Romanesco seeds from an
untrustworthy supplier, resulting in Romanesco that looked nothing like Romanesco, we tried again this year with guaranteed seed.
What ...
The latest post from Mar Vista's Bounty Hunter is live and ready for your perusal. Feast your eyes on some great legumes and find out how to
cook them with a delicious recipe or two:
Sun Coast Farms has its Finger on the Pulse (of
Beans, that is)
...
Paneer is an Indian cheese that could be considered the gateway cheese to cheese making. It's so easy and uses readily available ingredients, so if
you are interested in trying cheese making, here's a good one to start with.
This recipe comes from an old Indian cookbook I picked up in a discount bookstore about 15 years ago called Step by Step Indian Vegetarian Cooking by Louise Steele. It has some great ...
Growing up, my parents had orange trees and stone fruit trees that I swear were planted in unamended clay soil and were never - ever - fertilized.
They thrived. My three citrus trees, on the other hand, which were planted with good drainage, plenty of compost and lots of care, are sad, sad, and more sad. What gives?
Our top New Years' Resolution was to figure out what was wrong with our ...
One of the wonderful and often surprising things about being a blogger is that every once in a while companies send you free stuff. They hope
that you'll review their product and spread the word. Let it be known, if it isn't already, that I never promote things that I don't completely believe in, and I don't get paid to wax rhapsodic
about them.
That said, I was delighted to find ...
It's January, and one might assume that tomato seed-saving should have happened in ...oh...September, but when one puts a couple of tomatoes in
a Snaplock container in the refrigerator, way in the back, and is afraid to attempt to save the seeds for the first time, January is a good time to get over the fear. Thus we begin our
adventure in saving tomato seeds.
It presents itself as a task ...