~ firefly-dreaming a virtual home to learn (or teach!) alternative methods of solving problems we find facing us each day. By sharing ideas & knowledge on living with less stress, more joy & embracing tolerance & compassion we are working towards building a sustainable future for all living beings.
Welcome once again for another week's round-up of eco-foodie news, tips, links & recipes. Each week I glean tasty bits from the various blogs & sites I follow outside of the Kos-verse and bring them together here for your perusal. If you have a good tasty bit to share let us know about it in the comments!
And here is this week's culinary curiosity!
What is this?
Welcome once again for another week's round-up of eco-foodie news, tips, links & recipes. Each week I glean tasty bits from the various blogs & sites I follow outside of the Kos-verse and bring them together here for your perusal. If you have a good tasty bit to share let us know about it in the comments!
And your weekly "what is this?" for your guessing pleasure:
Welcome once again for another week's round-up of eco-foodie news, tips, links & recipes. Each week I glean tasty bits from the various blogs & sites I follow outside of the Kos-verse and bring them together here for your perusal. If you have a good tasty bit to share let us know about it in the comments!
This week's "What is This?" is a clever one that I have actually used:
And hint: it is related to one of the tasty bits below;)
Welcome once again for another week's round-up of eco-foodie news, tips, links & recipes. I hope you all had a good holiday weekend (if you're in the US)! Each week I glean tasty bits from the various blogs & sites I follow outside of the Kos-verse and bring them together here for your perusal. If you have a good tasty bit to share let us know about it in the comments!
Our "what is this?" for this week is a fascinating multi-purpose gadget from the days of cast iron stoves:
Welcome once again for another week's round-up of eco-foodie news, tips, links & recipes. Each week I glean tasty bits from the various blogs & sites I follow outside of the Kos-verse and bring them together here for your perusal. If you have a good tasty bit to share let us know about it in the comments!
This week's mystery kitchen gadget is something I have seen and used in plastic form but here is an older metal version:
Welcome once again for another week's round-up of eco-foodie news, tips, links & recipes. Each week I glean tasty bits from the various blogs & sites I follow outside of the Kos-verse and bring them together here for your perusal. If you have a good tasty bit to share let us know about it in the comments!
And this week's "What is this? features an imprint of our 1st President George Washington! Ooh, he's making a rather sour face, don't you think?
Welcome once again for another week's round-up of eco-foodie news, tips, links & recipes. Each week I glean tasty bits from the various blogs & sites I follow outside of the Kos-verse and bring them together here for your perusal. If you have a good tasty bit to share let us know about it in the comments!
Welcome once again for another week's round-up of eco-foodie news, tips, links & recipes. Each week I glean tasty bits from the various blogs & sites I follow outside of the Kos-verse and bring them together here for your perusal. If you have a good tasty bit to share let us know about it in the comments!
And this week's "what is this?" is quite a beauty!
Back in the eighties, in Sydney, I had the luck of renting an apartment on a rooftop. In fact the bricked space outside the quaint 2-bedroom was twice the size of our living quarters, and had 2 solid pergolas which could sit a party of 10 comfortably under both. The view wasn't bad either, the Opera House & and the (coat-hanger) bridge loomed in the distance. At the time I was running perhaps my most successful eatery and came into buying a fair amount of Bordeaux and Burgundy wines encased in sturdy pine boxes. Being a hundred feet or so closer to the sun gave me the idea of growing my own vegetables and herbs, and give my toddling son something to watch and amuse him.
So, with the help of a couple of friends, we trekked up some hundred or so boxes, soil (a good potting mix) and lots of old newspapers, and a bale of straw. Newspapers? Straw? Yes: an old friend of mine, an organic gardener who supplied some restaurants, had told me to intersperse sheets of papers with the soil, creating sub-layers (I think, IIRC, 4 to 5 layers per box, which was a foot high) thus saving a reasonable amount of water in the process. Straw was also a good idea to put into the soil with the paper. It worked. Daily watering, once in the morning and sparsely in the evening, using an old fashioned watering can, gave way to fresh organic vegetables from right outside my door within weeks. My little boy, who was beginning to talk non stop, was seen singing to the various plants one afternoon....pity I didn't have a video recorder in those days!
a quick photo essay on seed starting....
(these pictures will open in another window if you'd like to view full size)
i finally got a seed heat mat (that's it on the left)
and a seed tray w/humidity cover...
well actually i got 2.
for years i just cut toilet paper rolls in half (paper towel rolls in 4)
cut 4 slits in their ends & fold up like a box....
it's been 13 yrs since i've started seeds. i hope this works!
This morning I noticed in my front yard that the hard work of Spring is beginning, not only for me but for the perennials, shrubs, grass. Last year I rescued a few peony bushes from the yards of houses that are empty. These houses will probably be torn down, or left to be lonely sentinels until the forces of gentrification crash upon us. Which is to say, I "rescued" them. Yes - there are red nubs up this morning, a morning with a gardener's rain and my achy left hip (oh, oh). Also some of the grasses I planted in the front are turning green, and some of the small perennials are pushing out from the good earth.
(WarrenS has graciously allowed me to republish this brilliant essay.
Original post is HERE)
Our little household will never be able to get off the food grid entirely (can't grow rice in the Boston suburbs! No room for the spaghetti trees!) but we've been getting better at it every year.
Let me describe our layout. We live on the side of a hill. 47 steps lead from street level to our front door. When we bought the house, the front yard was a very steep slope, covered with weeds and debris. There is a garage at street level, inset into the hill. When we bought the house, the garage had a peaked roof in wretched condition.
I started a garden four years ago. It took a lot of work. The weeds and debris had to go - and individual planting beds had to be made out of rock, rubble, and concrete. I mastered the technique of building a leaky stone structure (dig shallow ditch & fill with gravel; plop rocks and rubble on top of gravel; slap concrete on top of rocks and rubble; allow to dry; add more rocks and rubble; add more concrete; repeat until you're at the height you want, then add soil) and at this point have fifteen or sixteen fully operational planting beds in my front yard.
My front yard during the off-season. Note the drip-irrigation hoses.
(thank you Leo in NJ
& puzzled!
- promoted by RiaD)
This is a re-printing of Leo in NJ's DK diary, brought here with his permission:
Nothing beats fresh, homegrown vegetables and fruits. The taste and nutrition can't be beat. No fossil fuels are burned trucking them all over the continent. You know where they came from and what fertilizers and chemicals they've come in contact with. And the price can't be beat. The process of growing them can be laborious, but it's not rocket science, and I find it very rewarding.
(Not updated, but republished for 2012 - promoted by Alma)
(this is updated & re-published for 2011)
Before you can get growing there is one thing you must have.... SEEDs!
When I started gardening there were only a couple places you could buy "good quality seed"... the local hardware store or the local feed & seed store.
Now, it seems, seeds are for sale at almost every store you go to- the dollar store, the big-box stores... even grocery stores often have seeds.
The question is- are all seeds the same?
Little did I know when i started but most seed from the local feed & seed store have been treated with chemicals. At that time organics was NOT a very well known concept. Almost all gardens were planted in rows (about 18 inches apart) & seeds for home gardeners came in packages designed to plant 100 foot row. If you ran out of seed before you ran out of row you were planting too close!
