garden & food
Farmers Market Diary 1
I’ve considered building out a plan for what we’d purchase from the market, but this isn’t terribly realistic as we don’t always know what’s going to be available, thereby making a pre-packaged menu a bit unreliable. This is where Keri’s great idea came into play: she suggested that we go to the market each week with a pre-set budget that we have to spend –not just a budget that we can spend. This is the key difference: we are forcing ourselves to purchase goods at a set dollar amount ($30) each week –so we have to come home broke…
Garden Diary 6
…I’m a big fan of the Garden Claw; it enabled me to very easily blend-in the Black Forest soil conditioner to a tomato plot while breaking up less-desirable chunks of soil… The reason the Claw works so well is that it lets you accomplish a relatively high degree of tilling without a gas-powered rototiller –all while standing. Additionally, the Claw offers much more control over where and how deeply you till. For urban gardens, I think this key benefit is essential. A gas-powered rototiller is ideal for preparing large plots –trust me, if I had a 50′ by 100′ plot, I’d rent a gas-powered rototiller to save time. As it is, we don’t have a garden plot anywhere near that large, so the finer control potential of the Garden Claw make it ideally suited to our garden….
Garden Diary 5
Keri really rose to the challenge today, cultivating the remainder of the primary garden space we planned out for this year’s expansion. As stated in my last garden diary entry, we now have a plot inching ever close to 800 square feet, with more than 500 of that dedicated to rows. I feel bad that [...]
Garden Diary 4
I finally finished my cold frame so the seedlings can transition to the great outdoors. We’ve had such beautiful weather as of late that I’m confident we’ll likely not encounter any freezing for the remainder of Spring. I’m pleased with the cold frame, which is essentially a combination of 5/8″ cedar panels attached to 2×4″ [...]
Garden Diary 3
It’s been a month since I planted my veggie seeds for this year’s initial garden starts. After garnering good quality seedling growth, I fell a bit behind in transplanting my seed starts to larger pots. Whatever the case, I started the transfer process a couple of days ago. I’ve moved several seedlings from their trays [...]
Garden Diary 2
We spent a couple of hours yesterday prepping the yard for our new garden expansion. As stated in my first garden diary post, last year represented a big break for us as we cleared 1/3 of our existing back yard for garden space. This year we plan to clear an additional 1/3 for more crops. [...]
Garden Diary 1
No better way to celebrate Valentine’s day than planting seeds for the 2009 Towsey-French garden. :) We’re a bit behind schedule in terms of planting, but still well ahead of our progress this time last year. In planting our seeds, this time of year also signals the start of our work to expand the size [...]
Milk for the Masses
Back in the summer of 2005 we moved to a new home in NE Portland. Almost immediately after moving in I took note of a unique weekly visit to our neighbor’s home by a lanky, gray-haired man driving an enormous unmarked truck, which obscured my view of his activities across the street. This fascinated and [...]
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