Category: potager
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Natural Garden Planning
Seed catalogs are arriving. So now is the perfect time for planning what to plant in your outdoor garden. Right? I used to think so until I realized that gardening isn’t like placing an order on Amazon. You can’t pick the plants you want and install them like you would a power cord or an…
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Cover Crops: An Invigorating Vacation for Your Soil!
I used to think cover crops were for commercial farmers with tractor attachments to use for tilling. Now, I know they are a basic gardening tool that any gardener can use to improve and protect soil while reducing weeds. What are Cover Crops? Cover crops are kind of like an exciting adventure vacation for your…
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Live More Sustainably
Want to live better while improving our shared environment? It’s easier than you think. Issue Two of Epicurean Living includes ideas on how to garden sustainably and regeneratively. There are tips on cooking and snacking to save time, money, and benefit your overall well-being as well as our environment. Plus, it’s full of ways to…
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Vegetable and Spice Garden Time!
Spring is nearly here. That means its time to get gardening in earnest! I have written tons of posts and made lots videos about gardening over the years. So, below, I’m going to detail what I’ve got going on in my garden right now and what’s coming up in the near future. Then, I’ll also…
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Simplestead Guide to Pruning Plants
Each morning I walk our dogs through the semi-wild parts of our wooded property. There I encounter various trees, shrubs, ground cover, mosses, lichens, and a seemingly infinite variety of fungi. What beautiful complexity exists in this woodland ecosystem. Yet, as a gardener, I can’t help but notice the diseased limbs on otherwise healthy trees.…
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Growing, Harvesting, and Curing Saffron at Home (with Video)
Saffron is one of the most exotic seeming and expensive spices in the world. Yet I grow an abundant perennial crop of it in a weedy, but compost rich patch of ground in my North Carolina backyard. Okay, so my backyard isn’t exactly a typical yard. It’s a homesteader’s fantasy of organic food production meets…
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Decorative and Useful Garden Fencing
You know that expression “good fences make good neighbors”? Well, I always thought of that turn of phrase as negative. That’s probably because Robert Frost’s poem, Mending Wall, made it seem so divisive and futile. Yet, it doesn’t have to be that way. Good Reasons for Fences There are many ways a good fence can…
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Growing and Harvesting Ginger at Home (with Video and a Peak in My Fall Garden)
Hi everyone! It’s finally fall here in Northwestern North Carolina. After the intense heat, humidity, and heavy rains we’ve had for the last two months, this weather is an amazing gift. I just wish I could wrap it up and share it with the West Coast for awhile to help all those brave people out…
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Potager Gardening in a Crisis
The COVID-19 virus has made it difficult for grocery stores to keep shelves stocked. I visited the grocery for the first time in a month and was surprised to see so many shelves empty. Toilet paper, of course, was no where to be found. But, other things like flour, eggs, butter, and many fresh vegetables…