by Geoff | May 4, 2010 | Gardening
Noel recently gave a presentation on his raised bed gardening system at the University of Wisconsin Medical School. The UW videotaped the presentation and have made it available to the public here. The video is in a cool dual format that shows Noel talking side by side with the images from his slide presentation. The presentation is about an hour long but it is indexed so that you can easily jump to topics of interest. Interesting and inspirational! # Posted By MB...
by Noel | Apr 16, 2010 | Gardening
I picked the first harvest of asparagus, yesterday. Only nine small spears, but there will be lots and lots to follow in the coming weeks. Judy served it up with egg noodles sautéed with some shiitake mushrooms picked from our logs a couple days ago and fresh spring onions from the herb bed. Just delicious!
by Geoff | Mar 23, 2010 | Gardening
After enjoying a wonderful dinner of roasted parsnips, mixed with other root vegetables, we’ve decided that it is now our mission, at least for this month’s newsletter, to promote this wonderful vegetable. Roasted Parsnips with Other Root Crops Michael Schael, potter, gardener and friend, stopped by and gave us about a dozen of these roots that he had recently dug from his garden. Since Noel never got around to getting parsnips started last year, we...
by Geoff | Mar 22, 2010 | Gardening
Two years ago I picked up a copy of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, by Toby Hemenway. The author packs the book with intriguing ideas. I am trying to adapt many of them to my yard in Austin, Texas. One idea is that of fruit tree centered “guilds”. Hemenway defines guilds as interdependent communities of plants with synergistic properties. He goes on to lay out some ideas for an apple-tree centered guild. I took a few of these...
by Geoff | Feb 19, 2010 | Gardening
Yesterday I decided that it was time to empty the bottom tray of my worm bin and mix up some potting soil. When I managed the greenhouse at the Tsyuhehkwa Center on the Oneida reservation I would make a potting mix that consisted primarily of one part worm castings to two parts sphagnum moss. I am now trying to avoid sphagnum and use coconut coir in this mix. Here is the recipe that I used for this batch: 1/3 five gallon pail worm castings 2/3 five gallon pail...
by Noel | Jan 17, 2010 | CobraHead, Gardening
It helps to have a plan. For business, for life in general, and certainly for growing plants to eat, planning gives you some control of the future. January is planning month for lots of northern gardeners. My planning includes going though several favorite seed catalogs and ordering seeds to replenish any in short supply in my seed inventory. I also start looking at what is going to be planted where. In January, I print out two new charts for my south and north...
