Last year in the garden, a new variety climbed up to take the gold medal place for summer squash in my heart: ‘Friulana Rugosa.’ This summer squash is an Italian heirloom – the fruits are yellow or light green, long, and bumpy. Ok, actually they’re warty. And I’d forgive you for thinking it’s just another…
Category: summer
In Praise of Bolted Carrots
There’s nothing delightful about carrot roots that have bolted. Yet, I’m here to sing their praises. Carrots are biennials, and are supposed to wait until year two to produce flowers. When they bolt in year one, instead of sending their energy into root production, that energy gets moved into reproduction, aka flowering, leaving the root…
We Grew it From Seed – Will Rogers Zinnias
One of the delights of my gardening life is trying new seed varieties – a pleasure that my husband Chad and I share. Lately though, I’ve been dealing with gut dysbiosis related food chemical intolerance, so choosing seed varieties of tomatoes or winter squash is no longer the easy breezy, fun process it used to…
Cosmos Flowers in the Garden
It’s summer, and summer is a good time for a break, a good time to send post cards. Here’s my summer garden post card to you. While the “official” purpose of our garden is to grow food that we can eat, my not so hidden agenda is growing flowers. Yes, they help attract pollinators which…
A Summer Solstice Tradition
One of the ways we assert ourselves as creatures of the natural world is to celebrate equinoxes and solstices. As part of these seasonal celebrations, a few years ago Chad and I started a tradition of hiking to the same spot in the desert on these occasions. We nicknamed our spot, “Solstice Point.” Every solstice…
Showy Milkweed – Weed or Wildflower?
When it comes to differentiating between a weed and a wildflower, the answer lies in one’s perspective. Many farmers find that milkweed gets in the way. I wouldn’t exactly say that my husband and I qualify as farmers. Though we do live on a small farm and keep farm animals, we earn our living from…
We Grew It From Seed – Costata Romanesco Zucchini
In addition to ‘Cube of Butter,’ another of our favorite zucchini varieties in the Hearthwilde garden is this Italian heirloom, ‘Costata Romanesca.’ What initially appealed to me about this summer squash, after its long history, was its ridges. Texture is a big thing for me, just as important as how things look. The ridges on…
Watching Our Pollinator Neighbors
Once the days are warm and the flowers in bloom, one of my greatest and most simple pleasures is watching insects – and our garden affords many opportunities to do just that. Actually, harvesting food from our garden makes me quite happy, but honestly, not as happy as watching these little “neighbors” of ours buzzing…
We Grew It From Seed – Plains Coreopsis
Coreopsis is a plant I’ve been fond of back since my high school days when I had an afternoon job working at a family owned garden center. There’s something reassuring and cheery about this plant’s bright, bobbing flowers. So when I noticed some seeds for plains coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria), a native of the Great Plains,…
We Grew It From Seed – California Poppies
While we still grow some exotic garden flowers in our polyculture garden, such as cosmos and zinnias, this year I decided to add more native annuals to the mix. One of the native wildflowers I planted was California poppies. Our sunken garden rows are on a slight slope, so when I planted the seeds, they…
We Grew It from Seed – Lauren’s Grape Poppy
I’m not sure why, exactly, but I decided to grow several different types of poppies from seed this year. Lauren’s Grape poppy was one of my favorite varieties. With deep purple flowers, this poppy variety was pleasing to the eye – but also to our local pollinators, affording me many pleasurable moments snapping up photos…
We Grew it from Seed – Cube of Butter Yellow Zucchini
Chad and I usually prefer open-pollinated varieties as opposed to hybrids, so that we have the option of saving seeds if we want to. However, early this year when we were choosing our seeds, I was tempted by ‘Cube of Butter,’ a yellow zucchini hybrid that promised to be very productive, have a great texture,…
Garden News – Summer’s Harvests – 2019
Winter seems like a good time to look back at the past year’s summer bounty and see what did well for us out here in the high desert. Here are some of the highlights: ‘Lemon Boy’ tomatoes. I’m trying to keep my acidic food intake low and these tomatoes are great. They are low acid…
Garden News: The Apricopocalypse
My Two Weeks (Or So) Of Non-Stop Apricots One of the nice things about living on an old homestead is that usually some person, decades ago, was smart enough to plant some fruit trees. Thanks to such past individuals we have an apple tree, crabapples, and a big, mature, apricot tree. The apricot tree has…
Growing Heirloom Snap Beans
This spring as I planned our garden, I wanted to make sure we planned heavy on produce that would get us through the winter – including lots of winter squash and dry beans. After Chad and I reviewed my plan, we realized that it was VERY bean heavy,
Garden News – Harvesting Apricots – 2019
Harvesting Apricots in July in Utah We have one mature apricot tree on our property. Mostly every year it blooms a bit early, then a frost comes along and kills all the blossoms off, knocking them to the ground, meaning that there will be no apricots for us. When we noticed the tree covered in…
Tips – How to Keep Track of Your Polyculture Garden Plantings
A few years ago I excitedly planted several varieties of snap beans and dry beans in the same section of the garden. At the time of planting, I marked the different varieties with wooden markers, so I didn’t think I’d have any problem knowing which was which later. By the end of the summer, however,…
Garden News – Polyculture Garden in Late Summer
On this last day of August the days are still hot and I find myself longing for fall. The garden is producing beautifully, and everything seems as if it will keep on going this way forever. But I try to remember not to take things for granted – the last warm days, the bounty of…
Hearthwilde 