MBOFVG 2016: Summer Update

Regular fertilizer applications made all the difference in my backyard organic fruit and vegetable garden this summer, but you're in for a big surprise if you think you can only have a lush, productive garden with synthetic fertilizers and other costly inputs.

As the wind chimes on my back stoop tinkled in the gentle summer breeze, I reflected on one of the most prolific gardens I have ever tended, and I realized this could be the dawn of a new golden age of gardening for me. I don't want to leak any secrets, but I just can't hold it in anymore: it took a real fertility whiz to get my garden back on track--Amber Waters, who holds a PhD in agroecology with an emphasis in natural fertilization methods, actually deserves most of the credit.

And for my gardening counterparts in French-speaking parts of the world, oui oui, vous pouvez aussi avoir un beau jardin sans l'utilisation d' engrais synthétiques.

The lawn is mostly dead, but everything in the box is verdant.

This bed has a mix of basils, tomato, serrano and jalapeno chiles, zinnias, and white alyssum, plus several large volunteer squashes, a few volunteer fava bean plants, and a few volunteer vetch sprouts. Somewhere in all of that is some type of thyme and a Mexican mint marigold.

Sweet almonds harvested from a neighbor's tree.

This year there are seven volunteer sunflower plants along the west fence.

MBOFVG 2014: Spring Update

This is just a quickie--mostly photos, not much text.

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Jam Good: Making Jam at Home from MBOFVG Grapes

The concord grapes in our backyard are filling the air around our house with a deeply sweet and grapey perfume, beckoning us to pluck them from their weeping vines. By the end of the weekend I could resist no longer and scoured the web on Monday morning for a simple recipe that required nothing more than the grapes themselves, and here it is: Incredible Homemade Wild Grape Freezer Jam. Yes, you have to refrigerate it since it really has nothing in the way of preservatives in it, but the flavor is intense and pure--a real treat!

It does require some time, though. If you are going to attempt it, make sure you have a few hours to spare.

Initial heating to rupture the grapes and begin the cooking of the pulp and the reduction of the liquid.

After processing (removal of seeds and skins by pushing through a metal strainer), the puree is returned to the pot to further reduce until the desired thickness is reached. 

The finished product served with freshly ground peanut butter--ambrosia for me!

Trail of Trash

Let's hope that phrase doesn't turn out to be a completely appropriate nickname used by future historians to describe the developments of the 20th and 21st centuries that led humanity down a path that ends with the destruction of most or all of Earth's non-human ecosystems.

This phrase could also aptly describe the wake behind the advancing fronts of civilization on Earth, and the phrase definitely applies to the scene I came upon between two noise barrier walls next to Highway 87 in San Jose, California. I was looking for an access road to a derelict piece of land next to the highway that I have dreamed of nurturing into an urban farm. This is what I found.

After getting over my initial disgust, I reminded myself that a significant number of humans on this planet live in trash heaps thousands of times the size of the one I discovered. I suppose I could just be glad the pile I discovered doesn't look like this...

By Ashley Felton (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

...yet.

Kraut Kare

First lesson learned while making my own traditional (fermented) sauerkraut: BURP THE JAR EVERYDAY (for the first week, at least).

I opened the cupboard where I was keeping the jars of newly made kraut after a few days to discover that they had erupted all over the shelf--not that hard to clean up, but also not an extra chore I wanted to perform.

MBOFVG 2013: July Update