What to grow in 2023?

By Eliza Daley, By my solitary hearth

So as I was already grousing about the pantry, I decided to review my garden plan for next year… and found it woefully inadequate.

The Year in Which I Grow Our Food Pt. 6

By Jocelyn Siegel, Medium.com

In short, keeping animals teaches you how to respect life. You respect it when you raise it, and you respect it if you take it, and you certainly do not look at food in the same way.

Owning Earth

By Eliza Daley, By my solitary hearth

Nobody owns the land. Nobody has title to create scarcity in order to increase personal wealth. Nobody can take without giving back.

The Year in Which I Grow Our Food Pt. 5

By Jocelyn Siegel, Medium.com

Hopefully I’ve convinced you to plant a fruit or nut tree or two in your yard. They can be tucked into a garden, only need pruning twice a year, and they give you pretty flowers, nice fall colors, and lots and lots of food.

A Garden of Wonder… Still

By Eliza Daley, By my solitary hearth

That gardening works always takes me by surprise. I put these hard and cold and seemingly inert nuggets into dirt and, wondrously, plants happen.

Skills, Plain and Simple- Microclimates and Season Extenders

By Jocelyn Siegel, Medium

We are at the mercy of our climate, which is as it should be. Nevertheless, we have ways to push our seasons a bit, and most take very little effort and are pretty cheap and easy to do.

In Rotation

By Eliza Daley, By my solitary hearth

So this is my pest control toolkit: rotation and companion interplanting. It works as well as the chemicals do, and in many ways it’s more reliable than the chemicals — because pests can adapt to the chemicals...

The Year in Which I Grow Our Food Pt. 4

By Jocelyn Siegel, Medium

Let’s talk about the big question of the year: “How much do I grow to feed my family for the year?” 

The Year in Which I Grow Our Food Pt. 3

By Jocelyn Siegel, Medium

Vegetable gardens in this country are largely seen as a “summer thing”, and I believe this is because the crops people associate with vegetable gardens are mainly summer growing.

The Year in Which I Grow Our Food Pt. 2

By Jocelyn Siegel, Medium

The bottom line is this: anything you grow now is something you no longer have to buy or worry about finding in a food store. Things are not going to get better, no matter what the ads say.

The Year in Which I Grow Our Food: An Introduction

By Jocelyn Siegel, Medium

Last year, when things really got dodgy and this year looked to be the start of things becoming terrible for the near future, I bit the bullet. I stayed home to raise the food we would eat.

Just Peachy!

By Eliza Daley, By my solitary hearth

I have a strong inclination toward hygge culture. This is not merely that I like being comfortable and among friends… or maybe it is… because those are far more profound than our mainstream EuroWestern culture allows… but I tend to think of it in more philosophical terms.