The Fourth of July weekend brought beautiful weather for camping up the McKenzie River. Everything is late this year, including the mountain wildflowers. The meadows were carpeted with little pale blue flowers and deep blue larkspur, with paintbrush adding accent. Arriving home, the berries and peas needed picking. The strawberries are just about done, but there are [...]
Turning Honey Into Bees
In this part of the world, beekeepers want to have plenty of bees in the hives when the blackberries bloom. I saw my first blackberry blossom last week, so it was time to assess the status of the hives. Only one of my three colonies managed to make it through the winter. To replace the dead colonies [...]
Spring Seed-Saving Surprises
On the last day of May, I just harvested the first seed of the season. Last fall, I planted some mache (aka corn salad or lamb's lettuce) but it was too late, so there wasn't anything for the fall, and I forgot about it over the winter. This spring, I was cleaning up that section [...]
Magic Microbes?
[ Update 7/13/2010 Most of the plants in the beds have matured. Some did well, other not so well. I've come to believe that the differences in plant hight noted below have a more prosaic cause. The two beds were built similarly, and are similarly located in the garden, but I suspect that Bed B is slightly [...]
Inflation and the “Risk Free” Interest Rate
Two years ago, with the price of oil at all time highs, there was concern that we could start seeing run-away inflation again. A few months later, the financial system was on the verge of a total meltdown, credit dried up, and the specter of a deflationary spiral appeared on the scene as oil fell [...]
Tomato Futures
I invested in tomato futures this week end. Ellen and I rode our bikes to Saturday Market and I returned with the panniers filled with a dozen tomato plants. There are so many varieties of tomatoes that I'm always sure to find something new and different. This year I returned with Pineapple, Brandywine, Isis Candy, Black Plum, and Tula, [...]
Squash Planting
The middle of April is the ideal time to plant squash, according to Nick's Spring Seeding Guide. Squash like warm weather and warm soil to sprout, so the middle of April can be a bit marginal around here. In my shady garden, any extra time for the winter squash is a benefit worth going for. If we [...]
Vichyssoise – the Begining
This famous leek and potato soup starts with planting the leeks and potatoes. I did that on Sunday. Leeks have become a favorite garden vegetable, because they are edible, from the garden, for more than half the year. Long-season crops have a tendency to get big and produce a lot of food - leeks are [...]
The Growth Conundrum
The comparative luxury in which we live is the direct result of centuries of steady economic growth. But we live on a finite planet, so never-ending population and economic growth must eventually stop. We find that societies that have high standards of living have lower fertility rates, yet much of the world's population lives in [...]
Spring Beds
The sun was out on Saturday, some of my lettuce starts were crowding the borders of their six-packs, so it was time to transplant. In the past I would rototill virtually all of the garden. Lots of vegetables came out of the garden using that method, but as I've tried to garden more year-round, [...]
