Relying on Facebook for Gardening Information!

Where I started when I didn’t  know where to start. I always knew I wanted to have a vegetable garden; but when we finally bought a house with some land I didn’t know what to grow, how to grow it, and when to start. I was starting to feel a little overwhelmed because I knew most of what I would find online wouldn’t work here in Palmer due to our short summer and very long days. That’s when I turned to Facebook! I was in all sorts of Facebook groups, Read More …

A Tale of Two Interests: Resource Review of the Suburban Homestead YouTube Channel

The Stomach of Necessity The quickest way to someone’s heart is through their stomach. As someone who has worn many hats in the field of healthcare, and has passed a human anatomy class, I take issue with this phrase. However, as someone who spends the better part of their time either thinking or talking about food, I could not agree more. I began the process of learning to cook at the age of about 10. I was fed up with canned green bean casserole, and determined to exert more control Read More …

Viburnum Edule, A “Berry” Nice Garden Shrub

Highbush Cranberries “Highbush Cranberries” is a publication from the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service (CES), to which I have been referring on an annual basis for a couple of decades. The current version, revised in 2013, by Roxie Rodgers Dinstel (Extension Faculty) and Marci Johnson (Extension Program Assistant) is sitting in front of me as I blog. I have temporarily misplaced the berry-stained original that my mother handed down to me, but it will resurface, most likely stuck to another spot-on CES publication. The Stench Highbush cranberry is Read More …

Inspiration from the Ambushing Bush

You never know when a bush is going to attack you when walking up my front stairs. There have been many mornings where I am running late for work and have to wrestle my way around a   web of branches and leaves from a large bush that is intended to welcome you to the home. Instead of welcoming you, it often feels like it is trying to suck you into the plant itself so that you are entangled and a part of the bush forever. A Book for Beginners Read More …

Love Cloves? Read Growing Great Garlic

“It  is not a ‘garlic gospel,’ nor it is another garlic cookbook. It does answer most of the questions that no one could answer for me fifteen years ago when I began to grow garlic.’ -Ron L Engeland, Growing Great Garlic (p. xi) Engeland is a content expert as a “founding farmer” at Filaree Garlic Farm in North-Central Washington State. This book, published in 1991, seeks to educate organic gardeners and small famers about best practices in garlic production. Although this is a broad goal and the content often leans Read More …

The Art of Discovering Plants

The good, the bad, and the weedy How can I fertilize my soil naturally without using animal waste? What native plants will grow together and compliment each other? How can I attract bees?  That looks like a weed – can I eat it? In Discovering Wild Plants by Janice Schofield, I found not only the answers to these questions, but so much more. Open the book’s pages (there are no online resources associated with this book) and find  instructions on how to make herbal remedies and recipes that make your Read More …

More Rain than Shine: Book Review of, “How To Grow Vegetables in Sitka, Alaska” by Lori Adams

My Plan to Grow When I became Assistant Groundskeeper at the Sitka Pioneers’ Home in almost five years ago I was really impressed with the amount of flowers that were now in my care. But it didn’t take me long to realize there was something lacking on the Pioneers’ Home grounds. I knew that a small vegetable garden would be a nice, attractive, and useful addition for the home. Fortunately I was not alone in this thinking as a former employee of the home had received permission to do just Read More …

Fall-the Most Nostalgic Time of Year

Fall has always been a nostalgic time of year for me, and, of course, a busy time, too. Fall evokes memories of the beautiful times past and of great growing seasons, great harvests and great farming people. The chill comes back into the air, the sun overhead starts to feel warm and friendly instead of uncomfortably hot and bothersome, the wind tickles the trees and causes their golden colored leaves to undulate, the biting insects begin to go away, a light dusting of new snow gently falls up on the Read More …

A Plant IS What It Eats

I like to read fiction. It was amazing to me that a book on plant nutrition was a ‘page turner’ for me. True, there were many very scientific terms used, but Jeff Lowenfels, in his book, Teaming with Nutrients, gives a layman’s rendition of these terms, making them understandable. There are also processes that I needed to go back to read over again in order to understand, but I did so eagerly. The unfolding explanations and the subsequent wonder of what actually is happening in the plant structure and around Read More …