A happy and pleasant surprise has just arrived through the post at home.
21.07.2023 - 22:44 / awaytogarden.com
MY ROUTE TO HOMEMADE YOGURT began with a virtual trip to Seattle, to Erica Strauss, “a professional chef turned gardening and urban homesteading fanatic and an accidental garden writer.”Last year I had word that my website was nominated for a “best garden blog” contest, put on by “Better Homes and Gardens” magazine. Curious, I clicked over to the sites of all the other nominees—many of whom I did not know.
One, in particular, stood out as a kindred spirit, and then a funny thing happened to seem to say, “Get in touch with that blogger” even more emphatically: A reader of mine emailed with congratulations on the contest nomination, but called me “Erica” in the greeting.
“ERICA is my longtime best friend’s name, but I’m MARGARET,” I wrote back with a smiley face next to it.
“Oh, I confuse you two because I love both your websites.” the reader replied, also “smiling.”
Guess I’d really better meet “this” Erica, I thought, and emailed the other nominee at once.
“This” Erica is Erica Strauss of Seattle, who says she is an accidental garden writer because she never decided to follow her bliss, but managed to stumble into it. She’d always liked writing, and cooking and, about a decade ago, discovered she really liked growing vegetables. In January 2011, she put it all together and started writing about what she calls “hipster homesteading stuff like urban gardening and backyard chickens and cooking and canning and DIY projects and natural living and frugality.”Like making your own yogurt.
Erica Strauss of NWEdible.com–as in Northwest Edible Life—visited me on my public-radio show to talk about yogurt-making (listen in now), which is what she and I quickly got to talking about once we met, a conversation that continues batch after
A happy and pleasant surprise has just arrived through the post at home.
A straightforward and cost-effective net pot from recycled bottles can be an excellent option for your hydroponic plants. Check out the instructions here.
When it comes to irrigating your garden, a drip irrigation system can’t be beat. You can purchase a kit, buy separate pieces to assemble or try your hand at DIY drip irrigation for the garden. There are several types of DIY drip irrigation systems, none particularly challenging to assemble. Keep reading to learn how to make your own homemade slow drip irrigation system.
You don’t have to buy baby food. You can make, and even grow, your own. With a home vegetable garden and some fruits, it’s possible to make delicious, nutritious, and safe baby food at home.
Moms and dads are busy people, and some may wonder if it is worth the time it takes to make homemade baby food over the convenience of buying store-bought baby food. There are considerations to make with this decision. Is my baby old enough and ready for solid food? Will my baby show any allergic reaction to a newly introduced fruit or vegetable? What are the food safety concerns with making my baby food? Below are a few ideas to help with your decision.
Besides leaning how, enter to win the new book plus a chef’s knife and tote bag Alana shared with me to celebrate her book launch, the followup to her previous hit, “The Homemade Pantry” in 2012.One recent weekend, when we were teaching back-to-back, daylong cheesemaking classes at my place, I was explaining to the students how Alana Chernila and I ended up in my kitchen together this way, surrounded by all this milk and cream. After all, I’m a gardener, right, not a dairy farmer?Trying to explain Alana’s and my connection, I asked the class:“You know how my A Way to Ga
THE FLYER PIQUED MY INTEREST: Dan Benarcik, part of the creative team at Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, Pennsylvania (a must visit!), would be lecturing nearby about “The Art & Craft of the Garden,” and how to personalize a garden using artistic elements, found artifacts, and ornamental containers. I quickly got a ticket—you can, too, for the June 16 event, including garden tours and a garden market, in Spencertown, New York—but also asked Dan to share some of his ideas and images (including the bromeliad-artemisia- urn-and-melianthus moment at Chanticleer, above) with us, no matter whether we can attend. A Q&A with this enormously talented plantsman and garden artist.
Few people have a more practiced eye about ferns than Judith, a.k.a. The Fern Madame, who joined me from Fancy Fronds in the State of Washington to introduce us to some distinctive favorites from among her vast collection: ferns with pink-to-bronze early color, with glossy foliage, with forked, divisifine-textured cresting (like the crested uniform wood fern, above).Read along as you listen to the March 5, 2018 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).fern q&a with fancy fronds’ judith jonesQ. I’ve known about you and your catalo
Dan Hinkley is a longtime plant explorer (that’s him in the Himalayas, below), nurseryman, teacher and gardener. Above all, he says, he’s committed to “above-average garden plants.” I found out from Dan just what, when the subject is hydrangeas, qualifies as above average and even exceptional, and we took a peek into the future of what traits hydrangeas of tomorrow might show off, too. Sneak peek: red flowers, or foliage that’s evergreen or felted or even purple are just some of the standout features we might see more of in hydrangeas of the future.Plus: at the bottom of the page, learn about how to visit Dan’s garden undertakings at Heronswood—the former specialty nursery he founded that is now a public garden—and at Windcliff, his home garden, both across Puget Sound from Seattle.Read along as you listen to our conversation on the August 28, 2017 edition of my public-radio s
Erica Strauss of NWEdible dot com and I discussed how—plus we’re each offering giveaways of key canning gear to help in the effort. (And no, that’s not us in the 1940s photo above from the Library of Congress–but we both think food preservation is more fun when tackled with friends.) Even if you’re a CSA shareholder or a farm-market shopper, and not a vegetable gardener, now’s likewise the moment to make plans for when the bounty you’ll purchase comes in. Do you have fresh lids for canning jars? Enough pickling salt or citric acid? Have you eaten your way through last year’s canned, dried and frozen goodies to even make room fo
The backstory: When I heard the title of a lecture being given nearby by a visiting North Carolina State University zoologist, I had to know more. The talk wasn’t titled “Woodchuck-Proof Your Backyard,” or “Rabbits Be Gone,” which would have attracted me, too, but for more obvious reasons. It sounded far more dramatic:“The Return of Predators to Urban America.”The speaker was Kays, a North Carolina State University zoologist and expert in using new technologies to study free-ranging animals, including the ones that may very well live in your neighborhood and garden. He leads the project called eMammal—a citizen-science animal-counting collaboration with the Smithsonian—and directs the Biodiversity Lab in the Nature Research Center of North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. I invited him to my public-radio pro
Seattle-based Debra Prinzing is a longtime garden writer and author most recently of the books “The 50 Mile Bouquet” and “Slow Flowers” (Amazon affiliate links). When a garden designer friend who has also been a guest on this show, Kathy Tracey of Avant Gardens, recently wrote about a workshop she’d attended with Debra, I knew I had to invite her to my public-radio show so we could all learn more. The transcript follows:my slow-flowers q&a with debra prinzingQ. Your own adventure into slow flowers began with an “aha” from the food world.A. It did. I’m in Seattle, which is a big food community, and there are big food communities all across the country where we’re celebrating the chef and the farmer—they’re like the rock stars.The slow food movement began in Italy, I think, in the 80s, and migrated to the U.S., bu