Garden
Pints of Pickles
In 2009 and 2010, I made a serious gardening mistake. I planted, not one, not two, not three, … … altogether too many cucumber plants! The result was 52 pints of pickles (and quite a few quarts of pickles as well). It is 2017 and we still have some of those pickles! And yet, this … Continue reading
The 2017 Garden
For a number of years, my gardening endeavors got more and more ambitious. I started on Vashon Island, WA, with a small strawberry patch and a couple of tomato plants. The strawberry patch got larger. The vegetable garden grew to flank the entire side of the house. I got carried away my first year in … Continue reading
Vegetative vs. Generative – or How to Grow a Better Tomato
My garden in growing, in spite of this week’s 100+°F temperatures. I don’t remember last June being so very hot and others who have lived in Albuquerque say that these temperatures are unusual for this time of the year. In spite of the heat, my garden seems to be thriving. And this year, my tomatoes … Continue reading
A Pendulum of Hope and Worry: The Tale of a Bee Colony
If at first you don’t succeed …. Our bees died over the winter. This time I expected it. We learned a lot about bees over the previous season including how to check our bees for varroa mites. In the fall we did a sugar shake to see whether our bees had a mite infestation and … Continue reading
A World That Needs ‘Bee Guardians’
In 2012, I got my first beehive and honeybees. This is a re–posting of my Goshen Commons blog post about bees, beekeeping and top bar hives. When I moved to Albuquerque, we did not take the beehive. But we did take our veils and beekeeping jackets. We hoped that, eventually, we might have bees again, maybe … Continue reading
The Jumble That Is My Garden
A new gardening year will start tomorrow. Our Huning Highlands Community Garden is having its spring work day. Today the chickens will be shooed out of the garden. All winter long they have been digging in the dirt in search of whatever it is chickens search for in the dirt.. Tomorrow we will rake all … Continue reading
A Different Kind of Urban Homesteader
When I first moved to Albuquerque, I had a bit of an identity crisis. For so long I had embraced the persona of an urban homesteader. My garden got bigger and bigger and my pantry room shelves were full of jars of canned goods from the garden. But now I found myself really living in a city, … Continue reading