Eating home-grown vegetables is fine. But my favorite part of gardening isn’t at the end of the growing process, it’s at the beginning.
After the snow has melted and the soil can be worked, I get busy in our sunniest garden bed, heaving the soil a little with my forked spade. Then I get down on my knees [...]
Entries Tagged as 'garden'
I Love to Run Garden Soil Through My Fingers
March 9th, 2010 · 3 Comments · garden
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The Gift of Compost
March 1st, 2010 · 3 Comments · garden
I do a lot of foraging for compost ingredients. But sometimes compost comes from unexpected places.
Our friend Timothy and her housemates had been making compost in a Rubbermaid trash can using all their kitchen scraps. When it came time for them to move, Timothy asked me if I wanted their compost-in-progress. Yesterday, while they were [...]
Tags: composting
Can’t Kill These Greens
February 27th, 2010 · 1 Comment · garden
Our lavender plant was completely flattened by two and a half feet of snow. The rosemary was splayed all over the ground as well. But the greens we planted last fall were unfazed and have bounced right back. Like these “Champion” collards, which received another dusting of snow last night.
I am always amazed how certain [...]
We Were #3 At Garden Rant
January 17th, 2010 · 1 Comment · garden
The new year brought a surprising revelation: my guest post questioning the current model for community gardens came in third place for the year at the internationally renowned Garden Rant blog. That would be in terms of the number of comments the post elicited from readers. My reward: the “Top 10 Garden Ranter” badge you [...]
Tags: blogging·Blogging awards·community gardens·food gardening
The Radicalized Gardener
December 31st, 2009 · 4 Comments · garden, politics
I suppose this would be the place where I count up all the noteworthy events that occurred during the past year and list my resolutions for the new decade. But last night I watched a documentary about Howard Zinn, the radical historian, and it reminded me that what growing my own food here in the [...]
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“Healthy Schools” Pushes Food Gardening
December 13th, 2009 · 3 Comments · Sustainability, Wellness, garden, kids
“Healthy Schools” legislation introduced this week in the D.C. Council would, for the first time, establish a school gardens program within the Office of the State Superintenent of Education as part of a sweeping package of food and environmental initiatives. And while the bill ( read previous posts here, here and here) does not mandate gardens [...]
A Kids-Eye View of White House Gardening
December 11th, 2009 · No Comments · garden, kids
Much has been written about Michelle Obama and her White House vegetable garden. But not so much has been heard from all the kids at our own Bancroft Elementary School who’ve done so much to help with the garden. Sarah Bernardi, the art teacher at Bancroft who helps maintain the school’s edible gardens, has a great [...]
My Big, Fat Radish Harvest
December 10th, 2009 · 2 Comments · garden
It’s only because I had not been paying close enough attention that I was walking around with the completely mistaken impression that nothing much was happening in the radish patch. From a distance, it looked like all foliage, no radishes. But with a Polar Express bearing down, I was out yesterday pulling anything edible from [...]
Snow Harvest
December 7th, 2009 · No Comments · garden
We had our first snow this week here in the District of Columbia, a couple of inches of heavy wet stuff. A quick inventory of the garden shows that while some of our greens got knocked back a bit, most of our cruciferous vegetables were hardly fazed. Yesterday, in fact, with the temperature hovering around [...]
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, one mile from the White House.
