Archive for the ‘Gardening’ Category

Want to subscribe to my RSS feed? Just click on the link. Also, check out the SITEMAP as an easy way to see what all is here!

Gaia’s Garden, by Toby Hemenway, now in a second edition, is one of the best books you could get on permaculture. (That link takes you to a page about what permaculture is.) One great thing about permaculture is that once you get a system going, it is not that hard to maintain. Sounds good to me! This book covers the topics listed below, and is meant for urban dwellers as well as those of us with more space. — Zana

• ISBN13: 9781603580298
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher.

Product Description
The first edition of Gaia’s Garden, sparked the imagination of America’s home gardeners, introducing permaculture’s central message: Working with Nature, not against her, results in more beautiful, abundant, and forgiving gardens. This extensively revised and expanded second edition broadens the reach and depth of the permaculture approach for urban and suburban growers. Read the rest of this entry »

October isn’t exactly the month when people think much about gardens, but it happens that I was reflecting today on ways that people earn money from home. Kelly and I do it with our websites, and there are many ways to make money online.  We know people who do catering out of their homes. We know a couple in our town in Colorado who run a CSA in season, and the Saturday market there is full of people selling their crafts, cooking, and veggies.

Ruminating while I was walking,  I started making a list  of ways you could make money from your garden. Some of these would even be possible from an urban garden.

Here are a dozen ways:

1. Grow specialty veggies to sell.

2. Extend the growing season with a greenhouse or coldframe. This gives you items to sell earlier and later than most other gardeners.

3. Grow flowers to sell. Used to be that dried flowers were particularly in demand; nowadays, I’d guess edible ones also would be. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently went to a short presentation about top bar bee keeping, which absolutely amazed me.

This is a way of keeping bees that is completely different from what I remember when a friend kept bees years ago. He was always talking about how much he got stung, the need for smoke, how much honey he harvested anyway, and so on. The whole thing seemed to me like all-out war between him and the bees. Did I have any interest in beekeeping after that? Ha.

But this week I heard a talk by a couple of people from Back Yard Hive, and it got me so enthusiastic that I signed up to be notified when they do a class in my area of Colorado. The difference: these people are working in harmony with the bees. They see themselves as guardians of the bees, helping them to survive. Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to Emma Holister of http://www.art-margin.com/ for several articles—one on sprouting earlier, and now this 3-part series how to grow a micro-greens salad.For larger images, just click on any one of these pictures. —Zana

29) When you’ve harvested all the greens, you can compost the remaining root mat in your own compost bin so that after two or three months of recycling your soil mats and vegetable scraps, you can use your own compost rather than having to buy it from your local gardening shop.  Doing a compost system is very simple, with a pair of bins.  To start off, take a bin, drill holes in it for drainage: Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to Emma Holister of http://www.art-margin.com/ for this 3-part series from her on how to grow a micro-greens salad. The first part was published yesterday, and the last will be tomorrow.

For larger images, just click on any one of these pictures. —Zana

11) Either buy a seedling tray from your local gardening store or make your own by drilling drainage holes in a shallow plastic undertray for a potted plant.  This one has a diameter of 31cm. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I posted an article by Emma Holister of http://www.art-margin.com/ on sprouting. Now here is a 3-part series from her on how to grow a micro-greens salad. If you’re not familiar with that term, you’ll easily see what it is from this article.

For larger images, just click on any one of these pictures. —Zana

Growing your own micro-greens is not only the easiest, cheapest and most rapid way to grow your own salads, but is also a guarantee of the highest nutrient level, freshness and organic purity of your food.

Read the rest of this entry »