Posted by Robyn Lee, July 22, 2008 at 5:00 PM
Want to grow food in your backyard without getting your hands dirty? Just hire someone else to do it for you! The New York Times covers services catering to "lazy locavores," including personal vegetable gardening from MyFarm in San Francisco, locally grown mail-order meals from Three Stone Hearth in Berkeley, and locally grown fruit deliveries to your office from The Fruitguys. If you do like getting your hands dirty by gardening or cooking, maybe this is your chance to start a new locavore-friendly business.
Related
Food Words for Thought: 'Locavore' as 2007's Word of the Year
I Took the Locavore Challenge (Sort of)
Posted by Hannah Howard, July 1, 2008 at 8:15 PM
I thought I had a basic understanding of oregano: I like a healthy dash on my pizza, and always in my feta-laden Greek salads.
But I was wrong. I didn't know that I'm probably using O. heracleoticum, which has a pungent oregano-like taste. Unless O. viride, a seedless cousin, is what's living in my store-bought jar of dried oregano. Or maybe it's Origanum x majoricum, an Italian oregano-marjoram hybrid that the Herb Society of America likes best for culinary use.
Margaret Roach of A Way to Garden learned her oregano lesson the hard way. She wanted to grow a supply of the versatile herb to cook with but didn't end up with what she was expecting:
The plant marked as “Oregano” at the garden center grew lush with little care, a low, green mound with a pleasant aroma if touched. But come harvest time, the oregano leaves tasted like peppery dirt, if that good, and the plant had spread in every direction I did not intend for it. Not exactly what I had in mind for a seasoning with my homegrown tomatoes.
Turns out the world's herb-namers were shockingly promiscuous with the term oregano—they gave the name to a multitude of plants, many of them totally useless in the kitchen. To further complicate matters, Mexican oregano is closely related to lemon verbena, but not at all to Mediterranean oregano. Cuban oregano makes a nice houseplant, Margaret says.
Do you cook with oregano? Which kind? Think you even know which kind now?
Posted by Raphael, June 28, 2008 at 9:00 PM
The Guardian UK is reporting on gardeners who have unknowingly poisoned their own vegetables by using manure contaminated with a powerful herbicide, causing plants and vegetables to grow "deformed and withered" in gardens and allotments across the UK. The pesticide appears to have entered the food chain via grass treated twelve months ago: "Experts say the grass was probably made into silage, then fed to cattle during the winter months. The herbicide remained present in the silage, passed through the animal and into manure that was later sold."
The extent of this problem is not known, but gardeners are being warned not to eat any home-grown vegetables that bear signs of damage by the herbicide, and are being advised not to replant in the same soil for at least a year.
The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has been inundated with calls from concerned gardeners who have seen potatoes, beans, peas, carrots and salad vegetables wither or become grossly deformed. The society admitted that it had no idea of the extent of the problem, but said it appeared 'significant'. The affected gardens and allotments have been contaminated by manure originating from farms where the hormone-based herbicide aminopyralid has been sprayed on fields.
Aminopyralid, which is found in several Dow products, the most popular being Forefront, a herbicide, is not licensed to be used on food crops and carries a label warning farmers using it not to sell manure that might contain residue to gardeners.
May 29: The Los Angeles Times runs a story on guerrilla gardening. June 8: The New York Times Magazine runs one, too, but with videos.
Posted by Robyn Lee, June 5, 2008 at 11:00 AM
"After a season of grueling labor and multiple attempts at benign deterrence, the sight of a trashed garden is often the last straw: the moment when a gentle gardener will suddenly go Rambo."
The New York Times chronicles the battle between home gardeners and the pests who ravage their gardens. How do you get rid of squirrels, rabbits, birds, and raccoons who just can't take a hint and non-fatal options—such as electric fences and covering your crops with mesh—just don't work? Pick your poison: guns, sledgehammers, shovels, drowning, and so much more! Killing the critters who ravage your tomato plants may not seem appealing now, but someday you too may be pushed to the edge.
Related
Guerilla Gardening
Growing a Garden: A Moral Imperative?
Can you recommend some good (food) gardening resources?
Posted by Robyn Lee, June 2, 2008 at 11:15 AM
Think that ugly grass-covered road median could use a flower or two? Perhaps even stalks of corn? Transform ugly patches of neglected grass in public spaces to the beautiful and productive land it should be by becoming a guerilla gardener.
The Los Angeles Times covers the prevalence of guerilla gardening in L.A. fronted by "green enthusiasts who plant without approval on land that's not theirs." While these gardens aren't always welcomed with open arms, some people recognize the benefit of "citizen gardeners helping cities turn wasted space into food and flowers" and encourage the activity. Long Beach's superintendent of grounds maintenance Ramon Arevalo wants to work with guerilla gardener Scott, who dedicates much of his time to cultivating a lush garden on a road median—but only during early morning hours to avoid detection by law enforcement.
For more information about guerilla gardening, visit guerillagardening.org, which features guerilla gardening around London and gives you tips for how to start your own garden.
Posted by Raphael, April 21, 2008 at 2:00 PM
This is not Martha gardening.
Martha Stewart's most recent blog post title reads "Planting shallots in my garden"—if by "planting shallots in my garden," you mean "somebody else planting shallots in my garden."
Posted by Adam Kuban, March 1, 2008 at 11:00 AM
Oh, March, the month that officially ushers in spring, and with it, thoughts of gardening. Martha Stewart, on her blog, shows us how to brew "compost tea."
It's not exactly something you'd want to drink as a human, but your plants will appreciate a taste of the stuff. Using a special contraption to brew it, Martha and her staff steep compost in tap water that's been infused with a special microbial powder that gets the nutrient action going.
Martha recommends feeding plants with it once a month—or every two weeks, if your little green friends seem particularly stressed.
