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The importance of interplanting and biodiversity in the vegetable garden
Companion planting, or interplanting is the practice of growing crops together so that one or both may be benefited by the presence of the other or planting crops together that at the very least won’t commit unspeakable crimes on each other. Conventional home garden methods are to plant crops in orderly blocks or rows, which makes navigation and harvesting much simpler. Here’s the problem, when you don’t interplant, your rows are essentially a buffet for whatever pest or disease takes…
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The way cheaters make fancy pancakes
My two blackberry bushes have started producing a couple of ripe berries here and there, and since they are rather tart and I’m not a fan of the seeds, I’ve decided to tuck them in to Wookie’s birthday peach cobbler. It was pretty yummy in my biased and rather uncultured opinion. Having fun with berries brings me to my faux crepes craze. We had a pint of strawberries last week, and after watching a PBS program which the scent of…
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Friday Freak Show
Friday morning, and the boys are still in their beds. There’s a five hour countdown until the appraiser comes, and from what we know, there’s a 50-50 chance he will actually come inside the house. We aren’t moving – just refinancing, hopefully. On the 50% chance he does, I painted the master bath. What’s even more amazing than the fact that I waited five years to paint, is that I still liked the color of paint I picked out. This…
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Orange Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Scones
Over the past couple months, I’ve developed a scone fetish and I’ve been plotting my first attempt at baking scones on my own. To pay $3 a scone every weekend at the Farmer’s Market and on weekdays when I get overcome by a hankerin’ would be too much damage to the bank account. After browsing Pinterest and Allrecipes, I pieced together the following recipe that resulted in flavorful, fluffy, moist scones. Ingredients: 2 cups all-purpose flour 1/3 cup sugar 1…
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In Bloom: Cucumber
I wish I could tell you the exact cultivar, but I planted three or four different kinds and didn’t remember to label them!
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No space in the garden?
When space gets tight in the garden, the good news is that your crop has a time limit. Whether it’s a 68 day carrot or a 150 day garlic, the time will come to harvest. However, I have a packed garden with nothing quite ready to be scrapped, and five more sweet potato plants ready to be put in the ground. I did manage to get four of the nine planted under the boys teepee along the fence, and now…
