A Temporary, Edible Lawn

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]