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Starting Seeds Indoors and the Quest for Homemade Sauerkraut
I used to hate sauerkraut when I was a kid. I thought it smelled like boiling, smelly socks. Now I love it! When I started growing vegetables, I was so excited to plant cabbage, and tons of it, so I could make and can sauerkraut. The first year I planted cabbage, it grew really well and I successfully made and canned sauerkraut. It was a little salty, but still pretty good! It must have been beginner’s luck though, because the next year, I planted more cabbage, in a different spot (a completely different bed) and it got mowed down by cutworms. The year after that, I rotated it again and…
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Getting Ready to Garden- Part 1: Garden Planning
In the northwest, if you cover your soil with a cloche, or plastic, early enough in the season for the ground to dry and warm up a little, planting peas by President’s Day is a possibility. I tend to plan my garden around President’s Day and start planting soon after. I planned my garden last weekend. I’m not going to go into detail about rotating crops, since that is a huge, sometimes confusing, topic in and of itself. I try to rotate leaf, flower, fruit and root crops as much as possible. I try not to plant the same thing in the same spot, year after year. By the time…
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Overwintering Vegetables- what’s in my garden now
I have had so-so success with overwintering vegetables. I seem to do better ever year, so that is something, I guess. Last Fall, I planted beets and cabbage under my cloche, which all got eaten by something. I also planted a cover crop of Buckwheat. I even covered it with row cover, so the birds wouldn’t eat the seeds. I took it off once the seedlings had emerged. I’m thinking I should have left the row cover on longer, because all the seedlings disappeared shortly after I removed it. What survived and is thriving, is the arugula, spinach and lettuce that I planted in my cold frames. Just a couple of…
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Garden Helpers
In 2010, I participated in a program called the “Garden Helpers” that was a collaboration between Community Harvest of Southwest Seattle and Seattle Tilth. It was basically the Comprehensive Organic Gardening course that I took back in 2007, but from a teaching perspective. At the end of a five week course, we were partnered up with people in our community to do site visits and consult with them on starting their own edible gardens. Unless you are part of a pea patch, or garden on someone else’s property, gardening can be such a solitary activity, something you do in the privacy of your own home. I liked the idea of getting out into…
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More gardening inspiration
Before I bought my house, when I lived in a loft in Pioneer Square, with no place to even think of growing anything, I started photo assisting for photographer Jim Henkens. Jim is another reason why I started gardening. If there was down time on shoots, he would tell me about his vegetable garden and the delicious things he cooked from the food he grew. Jim’s garden is amazing. It’s like a little Italian oasis! Here a few shots I took with my iPhone one day: Jim would also show me the beautiful pictures he took of his own garden, things he cooked, trips he took and other photography jobs. Now, Jim has…
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Welcome to Rake and Make!
Five years ago, when I first bought my house and was trying to figure out what I was going to do with the intimidating grassy area in my front yard, I took the Comprehensive Organic Gardeners class at Seattle Tilth. The COG class provided me with a great foundation of knowledge to utilize that big grassy area in a productive way, by getting rid of the grass and growing delicious and chemical-free vegetables! It also left me with resources for when I need advice, such as the invaluable Garden Hotline. I started small and have been learning gradually. The first year, I started with one raised bed. The next year, I bought a couple of feed…
