Eat The Yard

The Butternut, Pink Banana, and Table Queen Acorn Squash has had several weeks of robust growth.  Vines burst through the netting that covers my raised beds, climbing and unfurling 15-inch-wide leaves of deep green, the vines healthy with flowering female fruit. But the squash that grew rapidly to the size of a sneaker have all [...]

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A few days ago we picked and ate our last Gala apple.  I left it hanging on the tree a while longer than I should have, sacrificing the flavor, because I knew that not only would it be the last apple of the season, but it would be the last anything.  We have no harvest-ready [...]

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There’s something to be appreciated and despised in finding a caterpillar munching the baby beets in my raised garden.  There’s also some futility wrapped up in there.  And curiosity, because it’s a cool-looking bug (even 30-year-olds have their five-year-old boy inclinations).  It’s an emotional moment, apparently. This particular insect stretched about three inches long and [...]

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While checking the progress of my winter crop yesterday morning, I watched as a breeze caused the leading end of a Pink Banana Squash to brush against the netting of a neighboring raised bed.  The one-inch-square pattern of the netting forms a perfect lattice for the grasping tendrils of a squash vine to latch onto [...]

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There’s room for cautious optimism regarding the cold-season crop developing in my yard.  Snaking vines of Waltham Butternut, Pink Banana, and Table Queen Acorn Squash dominate the three raised beds I recently built, which have successfully kept the young plants out of reach of most pests.  Bull’s Blood Beets share space with Autumn King Carrots.  [...]

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One reason it can be so hard to accomplish the ends of sustainable-small-organic-green-ecofriendly-slow-local eating is just that: It’s not clear what we mean when we mean it.  At least for those trying to live responsibly outside of an organization, group, club, or some other coordinated_activism.org.  This lack of clarity is part of the problem in [...]

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Apparently “winter” squash does not refer to the season in which it is grown.  There are cool season crops, like Little Gem Romaine Lettuce and Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard, and warm season crops, like Beefsteak Tomatoes and Georgia Rattlesnake Watermelons.  Those designations clearly denote when the something should be stuck in the ground.  This I [...]

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