THERAPY – BRAIDING GARLIC

I spent my Sunday handling the garlic crop, which loves our mountain garden. My husband plants bulbs in the ground in the fall then we leave the mountains for the winter. By the time we return in late spring, the crop is ready for harvesting. Several years ago, I discovered how to braid the bulbs

PROTECTING THE GARDEN AND STILL BE ORGANIC

Pests can ruin your vegetable crop, but they can be controlled if caught early enough. Here is an excerpt from From Seed to Table on dealing with them while still remaining as organic as possible. The definitions on organic gardening differ. At its most basic level, it means gardening with native plants, using natural fertilizers

THE ART OF COMPOSTING

Here’s something you can start at home without much effort. You might have all the ingredients right at your fingertips. We start with either a plastic or metal garbage can for the outdoors bin. But for the kitchen I’ve used many different containers with a air-tight lid, until recently. When visiting a friend, I spotted

CUKES & ZUCS – GARDEN MADNESS HAS BEGUN

  Suddenly, I’ve been thrown into overdrive in the kitchen attempting to preserve the produce starting to accumulate. The past two days found me dealing with the cucumber and zucchini madness happening right outside my door.   Yesterday, I decided I had enough cucumbers to do seven quarts of kosher dill pickles. Wrong. I had

THE FIRST SALAD OF THE SEASON – #GARDENLOVE

We rolling in lettuce right now. Radishes are beautiful and tasty, too. My husband planted a variety of radishes, and the taste differences are subtle, but none of them are bitter as sometimes happens with older radishes. I’m amazed at how fast the garden is growing. I’ll soon be pulling down the canning equipment from

It’s Growing! #gardenlove

My husband rushed to put all of his seedlings in his newly built garden bed before we headed to Florida for a few weeks. The light began fading from the day as he tenderly placed the last plant in the soil he’d been preparing for a few weeks. And then the heavens opened up. He

Building the Garden Beds

  We began by hiring Samuel to bring his excavator out to the cabin to prepare the site for a garden. Tree stumps stood in Robert’s way to turning the soft clay soil. Samuel had no problem ripping them out of the ground and dumping over the other side of our small mountain (folks here

Happy Spring – Building a Garden

  Living here in the Smoky Mountains during the winter made for some easy living. If it snowed, the sun shone the next day. If the temperatures dipped one day, we were in shorts the next. It’s been a lovely winter in our new home.   But now spring gradually spreads itself over us, and

Happy #Earth Day – Pay Dirt – #Composting

Happy Earth Day 2015! Celebrating Earth Day is a little bit like giving canned goods to the homeless at the holidays as if that’s the only time the food is needed. Same with Earth Day. We get all warm and fuzzy inside thinking about doing things to help the environment, but then May comes along, and

THE RITES AND RIGHTS OF SPRING

It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want — oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! ~Mark Twain It’s a rite of spring around our house that my husband begins