Eat The Yard

Getting to one percent feels like getting a point in a game that would have otherwise been a shut out — and despite the tasty food we’ve harvested sporadically in the past 10 months, there have been many times, even recently, that I’ve felt aced by the yard, certain that we’d come up not just [...]

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Last week I dug up ready potatoes that had been thriving in a small plot below our bougainvillea.  In the past two weeks the tops had turned yellow like straw and wilted to the ground.  I gave them one last watering, as recommended in various readings I’d read, and a few days later carefully scratched [...]

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To be honest, at first I hated the tree that grows like a weed beside the Silk Oak in our lower yard.  A gangly skeleton in winter and the plainest Jane at the height of spring, it called little attention to itself in any season.  Its three trunks testify to others having felt the same [...]

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With the end of January we reached the middle of our effort in terms of days, but certainly not in terms of calories.  The 7,568 calories we have managed to grow and eat from our yard since August 1 of last year represent .5 percent of our annual count, or about two days worth of [...]

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There’s little chance of growing 100 percent of anyone’s daily calories in a suburban yard.  It’s true for us, and our near fifth of an acre is a pretty good size as far as yards go.  It’s true for most people.  Beyond lot size, there are also light and soil quality concerns, not to mention [...]

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Despite winter’s rep as a food-less time of year, a season during which many home growers and their yards hibernate, waiting for warm weather and the common edibles that come with it — we’ve been having a good growing experience.  Our cold season crop has been a windfall compared to the pest-devastated warmer months earlier [...]

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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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We have been saving snow peas for three or four weeks, dutifully blanching and freezing them until a combination of preserved peas and fresh-picked measured out to two cups.  We got there this past Sunday and made vegetarian split pea soup with our harvest.  Our friends Paul and Amy, who are always game for a [...]

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If our production and consumption of calories had been even and steady throughout the year, then by the end of November we should have harvested and eaten 75,030 calories from our property, or about 5 percent of our annual calories.  It would be friendly but false to characterize our effort so far as either even [...]

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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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