In case you haven’t noticed, soil is one of my favorite subjects. The greatest event that takes place in our garden is not the vegetable harvest at the end of the season, but the day our food scraps and dried leaves and coffee grounds transform from “waste” into new soil, or what we call “compost.” [...]
Tags: compost·food films·soil
Farmers and gardeners alike must deal with the same fact of nature: crops draw nitrogen and other essential nutrients out of the soil. Those nutritients must be replaced in order to continue growing crops into the future. In bygone days, before the advent of factory-made fertilizers, farmers addressed the question of maintaining soil fertility by [...]
What you see here is approximately what the roots of my green bean plants looked like when I pulled them up this morning: covered in tiny white nodules. What could they be? They look like tiny egg sacks. Or perhaps a terrible root disease. In fact, they are little bundles of nitrogen, created by certain [...]
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House.
What's in your turkey? We killed and butchered more than 80 birds on the farm of Mike and Michelle Klein in Prince George's County. Thankfully, Michelle did the gutting. Unfortunately, Mike bought his turkey chicks earlier than usual and they did not stop growing. Our prize for helping was a carcass that weighed nearly 40 pounds. It barely fit in the oven. Here, Mike is subjecting a slaughtered bird to the "magic fingers," a machine with a nubby, rotating barrel that removes most of the feathers. 
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