I Say Tomayto, You Say Tomahto…

But however you pronounce it, tomatoes are among American’s favorite garden vegetables. I adore them, myself. But only ones grown in the summer, in gardens, locally. Those tomato-shaped and vaguely tomato-scented things in the grocery store that are as hard as baseballs and vibrantly colored as as insipid and watery in flavor as they ever [...]

Tamari, Miso and Honey Make Everything Sunny

Why the rhyme? I dunno. Except, that somehow, the combination of those three ingredients -does- taste like sunshine. Like warm summer sunshine in a garden filled with flowers and buzzing bees. Really. Put the three together and then cook it and slather it on anything, and suddenly, even if its midwinter, you’ll feel like you’re [...]

Growing the Three Sisters

They are the Holy Trinity of the First Peoples. Corn, beans and squash. There are many Native American tales, most of them originating among the Eastern tribes, about the Three Sisters. Some say that they existed as soon as land was separated from the sea. The Iroquois tell that they sprang from the body of [...]

My Current Favorite Vegetable Variety: Cascadia Snap Peas

While herbicide contamination in commercial compost seems to have stunted many of my plants, it hasn’t stopped my six raised beds at the Westside Community Garden from producing decent crops. Many of my radish plants have stunted, twisted roots, but I do have a big beet ready to pull from the ground, and other beets [...]

Persistent Herbicides in Commercial Compost = Stunted Vegetable Garden

The last time I had a large, in ground vegetable and flower garden would be back when I lived in Pataskala, Ohio, about seven years ago. When we amended the soil, since we didn’t know many farmers in the area–we had just moved there–we bought commercially composted manure, compost and top soil. And we put [...]