Eat The Yard

I have tried many things to keep safe this latest round of edibles, so it’s hard to say which of the many worked best, which was the bellwether of our current good fortune.  Likely, our flourishing garden results from a confluence that would be hard to parse. Insects have ceased to be a serious threat, [...]

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In the spirit of the listing that this season entails — the New York Times has no fewer than 11 book lists to guide what readers read and buy — and the good reading weather the cool season brings (though it is 77 degrees in San Diego as I write this), I thought I’d jot [...]

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This past weekend I found myself with a free moment to finally trim back the Bougainvillea that has grown with abandon for some time.  This vine thrives along the fence between our yard and our neighbor’s, and I have hated it for years and avoided dealing with it.  But this plant had gotten so tall [...]

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I could have planted 125 square feet of Calabrese Broccoli.  And 30 square feet of Jiu Cai Garlic Chives.  And 25 square feet each of Correnta Spinach, Marvel of Four Seasons Butterhead Lettuce, and Q’s Special Medley Mesclun. Put another way, I could have grown 400 White Lisbon Bunching Onions, 300 Yellow Sweet Spanish Onions, [...]

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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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What does it mean to have harvested and eaten 1,000 calories of food from a yard?  It’s a dubious milestone in the context of my overall objective.  Why?  Because it took most of August to get there, and to be on track we should have consumed somewhere in the neighborhood of 19,065 calories by now [...]

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We had my folks over for dinner a few days ago.  I served up a Caesar salad with Husky cherry tomatoes from the garden, which went well alongside my wife’s excellent meat loaf and baked mac and cheese.  But my mom one-upped us with her homegrown contribution: a pie stuffed full of Anna Apples from [...]

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My wife and I moved into our first home about a year ago: A little 1950s Ranch that clocks in at just under 900 square feet and sits on an 8,250 square foot lot, which is right around the American median in terms of land.  Less than a fifth of an acre.  Great view.  Lots [...]

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