My hat’s off to the chefs at Noble Rot, especially this time to sous chef Joseph Hickey, whose creativity extended far beyond the kitchen when he came up with this brilliant and bold use of the hand railing in the emergency stairwell.  The urban agriculturist has to be constantly on his or her […]

Since the hot weather has come on and basically I’ve been left high and dry by chervil, my favorite herb, I’ve since taken to nibbling tarragon, and that would be French tarragon to distinguish it from its tasteless cousin Russian tarragon.  Like chervil, tarragon has more than one flavor dancing around its taste profile, and I […]

I love collecting seeds.  I love the fact that in this modern, hyper-complexified world where even the simple act of drinking a cup of water seems attended to by a thousand technocrats, I can plant a crop, harvest and be nourished by it, and then (depending on the crop, of course) save its seeds to […]

That, my friend, is the title of a book that focuses on heavy-duty farm implements.  Harrows, plows, discs -heavy stuff that is pulled by powerful tractors and that reduces acres and acres of wild, weedy, lumpy earth to soft, neatly leveled, furrowed planting media.  Since I garden on a rooftop, whose surface area is approximately one twentieth of […]

Sadly, great effort is not always rewarded with success.  Thoughtfulness, the ability to anticipate problems, and willingness to learn from mistakes are powerful allies to sheer effort and often make the difference between whether that effort is wasted energy or fruitful and purposeful.Take these beans I transplanted. I hubristically thought I had a system here that would bring […]

Look at this photo and tell me what you see:   Yes, clearly a raised bed, and, yes, those are leeks.  But there is also something else there that is crucially important to the backyard gardener: space.  Do you see it now that I’ve marked it for you?   Many years ago I read a book […]

In a culture that glorifies individual achievement and coming out on top, second can often be interpreted as “first loser”.  But I’m here to say that at least regarding mustard greens, second is just as good as, if not better than, first.  I’m not making any claim to having invented a new technique.  I’ve been reading about […]

One of the fascinating things about parables, stories, and fairy tales is that one can find parts of oneself in all the characters.  Today I am taking the side of Jack’s mother (of Jack and the Beanstalk), who became irate at Jack’s apparent ineptitude with commerce.  Jack traded a valuable milking cow, which was the […]

These days I am loving coconut fiber, otherwise known as coir.  I’ve been potting up tomatoes for sale and making my own potting mix of 1/3 worm compost, 1/3 pumice, and 1/3 coir.  The coir comes in solid, yet lightweight blocks, but you wouldn’t want to build a house with these because as soon as […]

We’re hitting our first real heat in Portland, heat like summer, highs in the 80s for days straight with no rain in sight, and I am scrambling to give everything a drink. On the rooftop we have an automated watering system, drip hoses and timers and all, and thank goodness we do, but at the same time […]