Figuring out first-hand food
I have a horticultural mystery on my hands, and it’s weird, weird, weird. One of the plants that seems to thrive in our hydroponic system is peppers. Although they’re a little tall and weedy, they’re nice and green, with lots of flowers. Until about a week ago, I thought we were going to have a [...]
If there’s a garden jinx, I’m about to bring it down on my head. I’m going to say it out loud. As we head toward mid-summer, there are plants in our garden that actually look like they might, some days soon, yield food. The squash plants have blossoms. The pepper plants have tiny little proto-peppers. [...]
Anyone who believes that the earth was created for the benefit of us, the humans, clearly doesn’t garden. Every day spent trying to grow edible plants is a lesson that nature, of her own accord, has no interest in sustaining us with her bounty. The earth – at least my little section of it – [...]
Watering is a fact of gardening. Plants need water and, unless the weather is rainier than you want it to be, you have to give it to them. You can do this with a system of hoses and pipes, in which case your effort stops being watering and starts being irrigation. Or you can stand [...]
The problem with gardening is that you have to do it in the garden. This is our third season trying to bring our “soil” up to snuff, and there are so many variables, and so many opinions on what to do about those variables, that I feel like I’m just guessing. You amend to the [...]
Like just about every gardener in a 500-mile radius, we use winter rye as a cover crop. We sow it in the late fall, and sprouts before the really cold weather sets in. Then, miraculously, it stays green throughout the winter. It even grows a bit, if there’s a warm spell. Then, in spring, it [...]
It began inauspiciously. Every year, the Cape Cod Organic Gardeners, who patiently tolerate our presence on their roster, put in a bulk supplies offer through NOFA, the Northeast Organic Farming Association. The order consists of several thousand pounds of soil, seed starter, compost, fertilizer, and various other supplies. So far, just about all we’ve brought [...]
I know you’ve been looking forward to another in my gripping Agronomy Series, so you’ll be happy to know that I got my soil test results back from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst lab. Now that I’m an adult, I don’t take tests very often. Although I’m tested all the time, it’s in the [...]
It’s a mystery to me why anyone who actually knows something about gardening would bother following my misadventures here, but there is nevertheless evidence that I have an extremely well-informed readership. When I posted about testing my soil, the Starving commentariat weighed in with suggestions about raised beds, soil amendments, and no-dig techniques – complete [...]
Let’s face it. Our gardening efforts have thus far produced results that are, shall we say, less than spectacular. Last season, a good half of our tomato plants simply refused to grow. The cucumbers produced a few gnarled, yellow specimens. The collards were obliterated by some unidentified green-eating insect. I believe we totaled six butternut [...]
Tamar Haspel has been writing about food and health for over a decade. She recently moved from Manhattan to Cape Cod. She’s adjusting well. [Read More …]
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