After a week of heavy rain, the garden was about as soggy as it gets--just right for extracting tenacious parsnip roots from the earth. So between showers I put on my muck boots and tackled the row. Last year's foliage has all died back now. Little fresh green shoots are just thinking about sprouting from [...]
Author: Gary Rondeau
Keeping our Bees Alive
UPDATE 1/30/12: Yet another study implicating Neonicotinoid insecticides. This time the study looks at sub lethal levels of imidacloprid fed in spiked pollen substitute patties on the susceptibility of newly emerged bees to nosema infection. There is clear evidence that although the bees themselves have an undetectable level of insecticide present, the ones fed contaminated pollen had higher levels of nosema spore [...]
Wealth and Inequality – Pareto, Gini and Contingency
The nature of inequality is a topic that is getting a lot of attention these days. It's worth taking a careful look at how inequality arises in our economy. In fact, inequality is built into capitalism and it perpetuates itself, steadily increasing, even in the absence of greed. Inequality naturally arises whenever future wealth is contingent upon the wealth you [...]
The Biggest Gift
It's the giving season, so I was reflecting back on all I gave and received this year. In America, the size of stuff matters, so let's talk about big stuff! Forget the little boxes with glitter and shine, even the biggest box under the Christmas tree can't compare. I'm quite sure I got a bigger [...]
December Salads
As November closed in on the garden this year, I provided a little protection for a couple of my salad beds. Many salad plants are cold-hardy to well below freezing temperatures, but unprotected plants get battered by winter cold, wind and rain, and just never seem able to maintain enough vigor in the cold months [...]
Europe – Into the Abyss
Cover photo from the Economist about a year ago -- now all too true. As we watch the ongoing train wreck in the European Union, we can't help wondering where it will all end up. I search in vain on the internet for a discussion about the logical conclusion to this catastrophe, but few venture to put [...]
November Gardening
The summer gardening season is really over now. The big Douglas fir trees in my yard that I complain about because of their shade also keep the frost away. Most of my neighbors have had a killing frost, but my tomatoes are still slogging along. The other summer crop still in the garden is my [...]
The Next Economic Crisis
It is becoming clear that the Europeans will not get it together to save the Euro and avoid a major debt crisis. I guess we can hope that the next major crisis intervention meeting will produce results that prop things up for more than two days, but I'm not holding my breath. The European approach [...]
Bean Genes
The mysterious black beans continued to play on my mind last week. Two things still needed more clarification. First was the question of origin of my purported Gramma Walters variety, and the second was how bean seed colors work when you do a cross. I talked with Andrew Still a bit more last weekend, and he is [...]
Mystery from the Tunnel of Beans
This story starts a few years ago when I picked up a few pretty bean seeds at a seed swap. They were colorful oval beans with maroon and white splotches and were labeled as pole "pea beans." Three years ago I planted the seeds and discovered a bean with a very vigorous habit, happily bounding the poles and [...]
Squash Practice 