One of my friends recently started a backyard compost heap and raved to me about how much they’ve decreased their load at the curb on garbage day. Welcome to the wonderful world of composting, I told her. Where you don’t have to feel guilty when a vegetable rots in your fridge before you have a [...]
I was taught to mix potting soil with vermiculite when preparing pots for planting for better drainage and I’m sure I inhaled some of the vermiculite dust along the way. Once I was even enveloped in a cloud of dust when I dropped the bag accidently. These days my husband supplies me with dust masks [...]
Last week I introduced my kids to spaghetti squash. They were happily eating away when I crowed about them eating “squash.” The mistake I made was in calling it “squash”. I should have just called it “noodles,” which I tried to do to salvage the meal, but it was too late. I love spaghetti squash. [...]
Whether from a garden, the farmer’s market, or the local grocery, fresh herbs are a good buy as the summer herb harvest comes in. My neighbor gave me a sheaf of 3-foot-tall dill stems yesterday. The first thing I did was mince some and blend it into softened butter for a tangy twist on grilled [...]
Something is eating my spinach leaves. I do believe this is the dirty work of little caterpillars, but it could be something else. I know for sure that it is not the work of the baby cat face spider I saw roaming among the leaves of my lettuce garden this spring (we were thrilled to [...]
Check out this talk by one of my favorite authors, Michael Pollan, a natural historian whose book The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World introduced me to a whole new way of thinking about our world many years ago. In this clip he discusses a topic from his book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: [...]
