Gardening
Ginger Garlic Purple Sauerkraut
Fermentation is another traditional method of preserving food for winter. It’s also an important source of probiotics. If I could only ferment one thing, this is it. And since I grow all the ingredients in my garden except salt and ginger root, it is essentially free.
Dehydrating Summer Vegetables
Our conserver lifestyle is underpinned by preparing food from the garden harvest to enjoy during the winter. Normally right now I would be creating soup bases and tomato sauce to store in the freezer. But time is tight so I turn to the simplest way to put food by.
Why Not Try Tetragonia?
I’d like to introduce you to a plant that is a hard-working staple in my food garden, but was a complete stranger to me a dozen years ago. Commonly known as New Zealand spinach, this plant has so much to offer that it’s the only “spinach” I grow these days.
A Radish Revelation
Vivid red and white balls of crunchy spiciness. Plant them early in the spring and eat them twenty-eight days later. Plant them again in late summer as a quick succession crop. But there’s even more to know about why to grow radishes.
Growing with Nature
I’ve decided that I am a nature gardener. I’m getting older yet still want to grow as much of our food as possible. Don’t want to overthink or overwork. Hence my new code words for using strategies from nature to simplify my gardening for ease, efficiency and economy.
Harvesting and Drying Herbs
Herbs are a valuable resource for the urban homestead. Most are easy to grow, and need very little attention once they are established. They offer a myriad of benefits, both in flavour and in health-giving properties. Learn how to conserve them for use all year round.
Chive Flower Apple Cider Vinegar
Chives are one of the easiest herbs to grow and one of the earliest you can harvest. It’s satisfying to pick a few leaves from your chive plant and snip them up for a garnish. When the chives are in bloom, my favourite thing is to make Chive Flower Apple Cider Vinegar.
My Priceless Ping
As a urban homesteader, I rely on my grow lights to get a head start on the growing season. Space is at a premium and every plant is precious. My indoor lights and trays are hard at work all spring. And so, it seems, are the little flying insects. Every year.
Urban Food Growing Books
These sun scarce months give us time to dream and plan next year’s gardens. Do you have even a pocket of land you’d like to convert to growing food? To help you turn small spaces into food gardens, here is a shortlist of books I highly recommend.
Seed Saving Skills
For most of my gardening life, I’ve merrily gone along browsing instore seed racks and pouring over seed catalogs to plan my food growing. I never gave seed supply a second thought. But … what if one day there weren’t enough seeds to go around?
Chard Not Cabbage Rolls
A few years ago, as often happens at the garden, I was chatting with a stranger. When I told her I had no use for Swiss chard and didn’t grow it, she was shocked. “It makes the very best cabbage rolls,” she told me. Turns out she was right.
Peace Tea Garden
In pain? Jittery? Anxious? Restless? Out of sorts? There’s a plant for that!
I have discovered many plants with known soothing properties that are easy to grow in a small space. This might be the time to consider creating a peace tea garden.
Saving Seeds
Food security. What can we do to make sure we’re not completely dependent on business systems to provide our food? Growing some our own vegetables brings us a little closer to the goal. Saving seeds is the next step to additional self-sufficiency.
Starting Seeds Indoors
Do you want to maximize your garden space and grow even more fresh food? Do you want to grow varieties you can’t find as bedding plants? Start seeds indoors to get the most out of your vegetable garden and the local growing season.
Foraging
From Horse Chestnuts to Laundry Soap
Did you know you can make laundry soap from horse chestnuts? They contain saponins just like soapberries. Free, all-natural, easily available laundry soap is on the ground waiting for you.
Purple Dead Nettle
I thought I was familiar with all the common edible weeds in our area, but it turns out that I was wrong. Here’s a new one for me, and these notes are the result of my studies. In early spring, when almost no other wild edibles are ready to harvest, this one is a...
First Nettles
On February 26, I harvested the first nettles of 2020. One of the first wild edible greens to appear and full of vitamins and minerals, nettles have long been used as a spring tonic. My patch is just beginning to sprout, so this first basket is a token, a promise of...
Lime Mint Purslane Salad
Purslane is one of the marvelous volunteers in my garden plot. While others see it as a weed, I encourage it, and harvest a bag or two every week during its growing season. I've been eating purslane in cooked dishes for years because it's so nutritious, not to mention...
Welcome Purslane
This time of year, if I had to depend only on what I plant, I would carry home much less food from my garden. The promise of abundance is there, but very little is ready to eat just yet. Thankfully, the wild edibles that volunteer in my plot and its periphery are...
Eating Nettles
In the spring just as the tree buds are becoming leaves, it's time to start looking for nettles to harvest. If you find a patch, it will likely be abundant. Nettles, Urtica dioica, are wonderfully good for you, high in nutrients and with many health benefits. (I won't...
First Bites of Spring
After an unnatural cold snap that would not go away, my first visit to the community garden last week was pretty bleak. Even my kale leaves had been destroyed by day after day of below freezing temperatures. It's not what we're used to here in the Pacific Northwest....