What if rather than trying to get the weeds out of your lawn, you could make a lawn out of weeds. Well, wead on, dear weader, and you shall see how. Besides its well-known medicinal properties, the common weed Broadleaf Plantain (Plantago major) is a nutrient powerhouse, and thus gardeners everywhere should incline their eye […]
Category Archives: Cold-Weather Crops
Little Gem Lettuces Race Out the Gate
Little Gems, meet your new view, the mid-winter Portland cityscape. Today, under winter’s cloudy skies, but reasonably warm nonetheless (snowless, too; sorry, NY, DC, etc), I planted lettuce starts on the rooftop…the very same that I started a mere 25 days ago in my January 1st ritual seeding to augur in a good new year. Normally […]
The Best Winter Tenants
I was thinking about cover crops the other day, and suddenly the property owner in me had a realization: cover crops are like tenants. I don’t know if you’ve ever rented property out, but I’m willing to bet that at some point on the arc of your adult life you were a renter. No matter which side […]
Well Wesearched, Woys Weaver
Lemon Drop harvest from 4 plants. Two quarts plus plenty left to ripen. My hat’s off to William Woys Weaver, the food historian and heirloom gardener (http://williamwoysweaver.com/biography/) whose 2006 Mother Earth News article on Lemon Drop peppers (http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/aji-limo-zmaz06fmzwar.aspx?PageId=2) has answered questions I explicitly or implicitly posed in my last post (http://www.urban-ag-solutions.com/while-other-peppers-flop-this-one-still-drops/). And please give […]
While Other Peppers Flop, This One Still Drops!
Backlit Lemon Drop chiles on a summery October afternoon. This summer was a wonderful season for hot peppers. I would even hazard to say exceptional and rare, except that I fear that the heat we suffered will become more and more the norm. Still if that is the case, despite the hardships such shifts may […]
Turn-update
Wow, when I wrote my last post about Hakurei turnips http://www.urban-ag-solutions.com/look-whats-turned-up-in-the-garden/, I threw down a challenge to all comers: impress me and do better than Hakurei. I had even put something new in the soil, a turnip variety I had never heard about before, just to see what it had alongside the master. Well the data’s […]
Look What’s Turned Up In the Garden
These are sexy, magazine-ready Hakurei turnips…probably photoshopped! These are honest-to-goodness Hakureis just out of the ground. Even though I’m a 20-plus-year gardener who rises to the defense of almost any vegetable, if you say the word turnip, my first thought is still a mustardy-tasting mash, sitting unwanted on a plate, probably having been […]
Dispatches from the Winter Garden
An apology: Something happened to this post whereby much of it got underlined and nearly deleted. At the risk of losing it entirely, I am keeping it as is. Sorry for the inconvenience of having to view everything as if it were a book title. Winter parsley is an exalted version of its already-awesome self. […]