seed love is true love

seed packets and a brochure from Truelove Seeds

This year as we started seeds for the garden, Dorene Pasekoff of Hill Creek Farm introduced me to Truelove Seeds, Owen Taylor's seed keeping labor of love in Philly, where "The story is in the seed."

July garden update

beets from my backyard garden

I have been keeping track of everything that we harvest from our little garden. Amazes me to see all this produce come out of our little garden every year.

hen of the woods

This year has been great for wild mushrooms. In the past two weeks I have foraged around 5 pounds of grifola frondosa, "hen of the woods."

bread and salt

Rick Easton slaves in front of hot ovens for 36 hours at a stretch so you don't have to. It's madness but a delicious kind of baker's madness. Bread lovers, rejoice!

cider trees

As the weather gets warmer, my thoughts turn to refreshing hard cider and all the traditions surrounding it where I come from. If you haven't tried cider yet, I highly recommend it. I'm going to try my hand at growing cider apples and see what happens.

putting the garden to bed

The harvest from my backyard garden continues well into the fall, with pumpkins, herbs, scallions, and a great selection of delicious greens.

tomato time

In keeping with my philosophy of preserving the harvest, I roasted many tomatoes. Roasting tomatoes is a very simple process, and also allows me to use fresh herbs from the garden: marjoram, oregano and thyme.

turnip revelation

Yes, yes--more about my garden. I am really enjoying my garden this year. So far it has been great and not a lot of damage from the usual visitors. This season I've tried something new. Ok, maybe not so new--turnips are turnips, right? But these are Tokyo turnips. I've always liked turnip greens, but truth …