Posts from — May 2008

In our neighborhood, with its mostly 100 year old houses, many of the yards host spirea bushes. This time of year, the spirea bushes bend toward the ground, their branches loaded with clusters of tiny white flowers. They seem ready for a dozen weddings.

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We garden in part because we’re frugal. We have a longtime commitment to being careful with our resources, like money and food, as well as being wise stewards of the natural resources of the earth. I’m not to saying that we don’t waste anything, but that we work hard at being conscious of our consumption and waste, and that we make regular efforts to curtail both.

Today’s New York Times article about food waste was nonetheless an astonishing wake-up call. The idea of that much food — 27% of the food available for consumption in the US — ending up in the landfill is utterly nonsensical. As a society, we can do better than that.
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We planted the peas today which worked out to a nice 20 minute task. About a week ago, we’d scraped away the mulch from the soil where we intended to plant. The sun was able to warm the soil up to a pea-friendly 50 degrees F (10 degrees C) We were able to check the soil temperature with this fancy soil thermometer we got years ago with our CompostTumbler. [Read more →]

Today, I finished setting up a tub planter at the corner of the barn. It used to be the temporary home to the rhubarb but since they’ve been transplanted to a more permanent home, we wanted to use the tub for “something else.” This change allowed me a chance to review some tub planting basics. [Read more →]

What’s that? A snake in the garden??

No, it’s only the afore-mentioned cloche snake, Jim’s clever way of storing our homemade cloches. We hang the snake in the barn when not in use.