This has not been a good year for crops in the Cucurbitaceae family. The squash vine borer wiped out all my zucchini and summer squash plants so for the first time since I started my garden in 2004, I did not have a single zucchini or summer squash. The cucumbers yielded barely enough to make a salad a couple of times, and now the Red Kuri squash plants are one by one succumbing to the squash vine borer as well. Continue reading
Herbs
Herb-Rub Roasted Chicken, or: celebrating July 4th with local foods
On most days, we eat vegetarian. We have fish once a week at the most, chicken once or twice a month, and beef or other meat on very rare occasions. The few times we do eat meat or poultry, I am ready to dig into my pockets for prime quality, raised organically and locally, because food that is shipped hundreds or thousands of miles across the country is not sustainable even if it is organic. Continue reading
Urban farming, Berlin style
It was the most intense basil scent I had ever smelled. 27,000 basil plants, as far as the eye can see… well not quite, as outside the greenhouse the early 20th-century factory buildings stood tall nearby, which made the sea of basil all the more surreal. Continue reading
A spoonful of sugar no longer
It looks like my childhood heroine Mary Poppins needs to reconsider. No more than six teaspoons added sugar per day for women and nine teaspoons per day for men – that’s what the American Heart Association recommends. Until I read this I thought our added sugar intake was on the moderate side. We do not drink any sodas or soft drinks, nor do we add sugar to tea or coffee. I pay attention to the sugar content when I buy cereal and other processed foods. We do not eat candy and a piece of chocolate only once in a blue moon. Most of the baked goods and sweets we eat are homemade, and I reduce the sugar amount in any given recipe by at least one-third. Still, I concluded that we still eat much more sugar than we should. Continue reading
Green Card Gardener 