Summer squash actually hates the summer here in Florida. As soon as mid- June rolls around it starts it’s slow, painful curling-up-and-dying routine while the squash bugs, stink bugs, and stem borer moths get more and more prosperous and happy. Even if you replant, the new plants look little and sad and won’t set fruit.Luckily…
Category: Organic Gardening
LATE SUMMER VEGETABLE GROWING AND EATING GUIDE #2: Bitter melon
Most people I’ve met who have had a culinary adventure with bitter melon share stories of horror. When I first tried to feed it to my family years ago I got the same reaction I get from trying to feed the piggies something they don’t consider food: outraged squealing and disgruntled criticisms. I didn’t grow…
LATE SUMMER GROWING AND EATING GUIDE #3: Callaloo
Callaloo or amaranth greens, are of if my favorite summer vegetables. They cook down to be very tender, and have such a delicious flavor. When cooked they are very much like spinach. Apparently any amaranth leaves can be eaten, even the thorny wild one if you’re so inclined, but some are better eating quality than…
LATE SUMMER VEGETABLE GROWING AND EATING GUIDE #1: Late Summer Asian Cucumbers
Let’s be honest – the late summer garden vegetables are gorgeously colorful and tasty, but they are definitely unusual. For a long time, I thought nothing would grow this time of year, and it rested in my gardening mind like a deep winter of sorts. That was before I discovered the wonderful selection of vegetables…
New Season
This world of dewIs only the world of dew —And yet…..oh and yet….. – Issa Kobayashj, written on the death of his little daughter I had to move very hastily last September, and all our stuff has been haphazardly stored at my parent’s house in Gainesville, waiting for an unknown time when I am not…
Sky Blue Sticky Rice With Blue Butterfly Pea
I just love the wild and twisting shapes, the intense, slippery flavors, and the bright colors of the late summer garden. A good late summer garden in Florida should look and feel like anything could happen, like a loud Saturday night party scene. The crickets and cicadas blare their loud music day and night, and…
Summer Omlette with Malabar Spinach and Garlic Flowers
At last the summer rains have come to wash clear the everlasting skies… I was working in the garden the first afternoon they began, sweating rivers in the baking hot afternoon. Hand clearing this wild land and making a garden is a tedious and thorny task, more daunting than difficult however. It feels pleasant in…
Breakfast Parsnips And Bacon
We are in those baking hot, long sun days now, the hard drought time of the early summer when even the wild plants wilt and long for rain. At my new farm, the dry afternoon wind blows through the herby meadows and smells fragrant and good from the wild croton and the skullcap. This year…
Buttery Cauliflower With Toasted Pecans
I love the power surge that comes from the earth and sky in the beginning of spring. It happens so quickly. One drowsy winter day you fall asleep in the damp chill, and suddenly you are picked up and shaken awake in a whirl of pink and pure white and new green, and the bright…
The Sacred Mother
Being in this new place, I am still getting to know this new piece of earth, and all the plants and the animals that live here and were here before us. Starting over all fresh, I can see the way the land shifts to me with how I live, the ways I walk, the things…
Counter-Top Sweet Potato Slips
If there is anything that farming and homesteading have taught me, it is that you must never give up. Death and loss and horrible things happen, but giving up is the only real mistake, and abundance is always there, if only you can find the creativity and inspiration to use it. The magic of the…
It Begins With A Seed…
I keep reminding myself…. It all starts with a tiny seed. The hopes and dreams of the future begin so small and insignificant, and you can never be sure if they have the spark of life until you plant them and they begin to grow. If carefully tended to, they will take on a will…
Toadstools And Fairy Rings 