Our Home Works

I spent the latter part of last week in Portland for Organicology and then stayed through the weekend to spend time with friends.  Many of the sessions at Organicology were appropriately focused on farmers, but I took away tons of valuable information even as a non-farmer.  There was a particular focus on seeds, which I [...]

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It has been a busy week in the garden.  The sun came out for a few days and inspired us to get outside.  I am most excited about my Christmas present that Matt finished yesterday - my very own cold frame.  It’s a perfect place for our newly started seeds to go before they are [...]

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The sun came out yesterday so I took advantage of the break in weather to plant our peas.  Before planting, I checked the soil temperature and was pleasantly surprised to see 50F on the thermometer.  When I checked the temperature about a week ago, it was under 45F.  Between the soil temperature change and the [...]

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After learning about bees in last week’s Master Gardener class, I was inspired to create a home for mason bees.  We are considering keeping honey bees as well, but that takes a bit more of a commitment than putting up a little house on an east wall.
Part of the motivation for the bees is our [...]

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Its been a relatively quiet blog week for us so I wanted to finish the week with something really good.  It was supposed to serve 4 but we ate almost all of it for one dinner.  I didn’t even give Matt a chance for the leftovers.
It is another recipe from Heirloom Beans, which I continue [...]

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We woke up this morning to about 4 inches of snow.  Here are a few photos from our beautiful, crisp winter day.

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Our first garden that we planted this past spring was easy - almost zero pest problems.  Our biggest problem was keeping the tomatoes on steriods properly supported (which we were only somewhat effective at).  Then we decided to get all local and do a winter garden.
I think that all of our winter crops have suffered [...]

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It was almost 70 degrees in Eugene yesterday and I took full advantage.  As promised, I took photos of the garden in the filtered morning sun.
Before planting our winter garden, I picked up a copy of Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades by Steve Solomon.  We grew the turnips, chard,  peas, beets, broccoli rabe, and [...]

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