The star of the last few weeks, both on the rooftop and in my home garden, is the fava bean, resplendent now in its floral display.  In fact it’s the flowers, more than the beans to come, that interest me.  Here they are blooming profusely on sturdy stems – handsome flowers on handsome plants.   And here’s why […]

Imagine that it’s a sunny Sunday morning in late spring.  The temperature is perfect.  The sun is brilliantly illuminating a crisp, blue sky.  As you wake feeling perfectly refreshed, you realize that some mysterious force for the good, perhaps spouse, lover, or some disembodied angel has both made coffee and put on waffles, and now […]

If you had to choose between weeding patch A and patch B in your garden, which would you  tackle first?  If you had asked me when I was a novice gardener, I’d have sided with the most weed-choked, which in this case is clearly patch B.  This kind of a mess screams for attention and, […]

Look at this photo and tell me from how many different plants you think I took these leaves.     Well, if you are behaving like I expect you to, you should say “three” because these are three very different looking leaves, one with an intact surface, the next showing some lobing at the tip, and […]

And they said unto him, “Speak to us now of leeks,”And he spake thus:“What is first together must be drawn apart,And what is shallow must be made deep.That which is green should be made white,And if summer be a time of working, winter will bring feasting.”And the people looked at one another with amazement and […]

You might toast someone’s health with a mojito in hand, but the mint that’s bound for the drink does not look so healthy. On the rooftop of the Noble Rot, we’re conscious that not all of the produce makes it onto the plate…and for good reason.  Talk to any restauranteur and he or she will tell […]

Spring “surfed” chard in my home garden Catching the first real heat of spring in the garden is like surfing a great wave.  OK, to tell the truth, I really don’t surf, but apparently neither did Bryan Wilson of the Beach Boys, and he/they made a career singing about it, so permit me some creative license here.  […]

  Here’s the feeding trough, so to speak, on the rooftop garden, alternatively called fertilizer alley.  I keep six galvanized garbage cans stocked with the following goodies: fish bone meal (phosphorus), feather meal (nitrogen), greensand (potassium), basalt rock dust, azomite, and kelp meal (minor and trace minerals).  In spring I mix up a “how-do-you-do” combo […]

As a grower, or, as Aristotle would say, even more basically as a knower, I want to have a sense of what is the best or the excellence of any particular thing.  A prize-winning performance from any kind of vegetable or fruit may come from the care and technique in growing it, but there is […]

March is here, the weather is getting milder, and for all early comers the garden is waiting and ready.  Being out in the garden transplanting or seeding at this time of year can feel positively giddy and can lead to the peculiar excess of overplanting.  Here’s how it works for me.  Winter’s grip is relaxing, […]