Food Forests Forever

Re-greening the world. Together.

[foodforestsforever]

Friday Food Links: Pandemics, Pay, and Protest

Friday Food Links: Pandemics, Pay, and Protest

Racial justice is food justice is worker justice.

Every day there’s a new outrage—which are all actually old outrages reaching an audience that had been previously sheltered from it. I don’t know what makes this moment different. Maybe it’s the pandemic. Maybe it’s the internet. Maybe it’s a combination of factors. But my hope is that the time and energy and attention being paid to the Black…

View On WordPress

[foodforestsforever]

Friday Food Links: Why You Should Go Meatless

Friday Food Links: Why You Should Go Meatless

Skip the summer barbecues this year. (And every year.)

It’s impossible to not look at everything now as having been changed by the pandemic; our daily lives are radically different. Even the decision to revive this blog is due to a combination of some more free time (summer vacation, and a lack of a commute to…anywhere), reprioritization, and not an insignificant amount of restlessness.

View On WordPress

[foodforestsforever]

Update: Where have you been all this past year?

Update: Where have you been all this past year?

It’s been over a year since I’ve posted to this blog, and the reasons for that are as boring as they are legion (i.e., I had a lot of stuff going on, but I’m not going to bore you all with the details). However, I do hope to pick this blog back up and keep writing about food and sustainability. What can you expect from the blog revamp? Not much, if I’m honest. I won’t be committing to a regular…

View On WordPress

[lenorestreetgarden]

I’m scaling back on peppers and going deep into the leafy greens this year.

[sunbathe]

https://www.instagram.com/p/BUgZpHplVMG/

[howlmountain]

Buckets full of homemade fish emulsion, fermenting weeds, manure tea, and other fertilizers.

[currentsinbiology]

A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

(via

currentsinbiology

)

[fenderlust]

Everyone should have themselves regularly overwhelmed by Nature.

George Harrison (via luxelouubygemmalouise)

[howlmountain]

Easter Egg radishes are always fun because of the intense colors they make and the medium spicy flavor.

[amateurblooms]

first geranium flower! 

[just-art5]

John Singer Sargent, A Stream over Rocks, c.1909

[plantyhamchuk]

Year 4

Our garden is pretty incredible this year. It’s a combination of several things - years of experimenting on the best way to build garden beds on a steep slope (hugelkulture? layer beds? raised beds? In ground?), where to get the best locally available material (our first large batch of mulch turned out to be full of something awful, and it really mucked things up for years), and just the time it takes to physically improve the structure of the soil. It cannot be done overnight, unless you have boatloads of money. 

Also rain. The rain has helped tremendously. 

Elderberry - Sambucus ‘Aurea’

We bought this property on the date of the ‘Mayan Apocalypse’, but the cats and I didn’t move up until the next June when it had things like a kitchen, so that puts us at 4 years here.

I had intended to do an annual video walkthrough, to chart our progress, but it just didn’t happen. Part of it was not being sure how to communicate best what is being seen - we are not Visual / Aesthetic / OCD gardeners, we are wild nature overflowing gardeners. Our garden is full of weeds that no one has the time or energy to deal with (but that wildlife seems to mostly enjoy). Our garden will never be in Southern Living or Fine Gardening. We do not have rare specimens or anything too picky, because we simply don’t have time for plants like that. Our garden is cool as hell though and I do want to figure out how to share our ever growing food forest.

Alkaline bed on the right, Two Dogwoods area beyond

As we learn new ideas, new skills, and acquire more plants I’m sure it will continue to transform.

I’ve had a line I’ve told V so many times it feels like a mantra, and that was that at 5 years, even a non-gardener could understand what the hell we’re doing here. Still hoping to reach that goal.

The other part of the goal for this property was create the feeling we would get in our old community garden. By the time we left that garden, I could go into altered states just walking through it. In summer it hummed and buzzed so loudly with joyous life that you could drop into a trance like it was nothing. THAT is what I want in my witchy garden. 

Tiki triangle bed

[seedkeeping]

The Aster family is looking good this week! Yesterday, the Shungiku aka Edible Chrysanthemum (Glebionis coronaria) from Japan put out its first flower. Today, Calendula (Calendula officinalis) - a Southern European food, medicine, and dye crop- and Dahlia (Dalia spp.) - an Aztec tuberous food crop - followed suit. These plants are extremely different but in their flowers you can see the family resemblance. Thanks to @viola_bow and @roughwoodseeds for the seeds! #shungiku #ediblechrysanthemum #glebioniscoronaria #calendula #calendulaofficinalis #dahlia #acocotli #cocoxochitl #aster #asteraceae (at Newtown Square, Pennsylvania)

[visitafghanistan]

The Melon Seller Of Kabul. Kabul, Afghanistan Taken on May 19, 2008

[seedkeeping]

Acyl sugars, terpenoids, and flavonoids - these are released by the tiny hairs on the tomato plants as you handle them, giving you a literal green thumb and then some. I learned this from Lynn Byczynski in an article she wrote for Growing for Market dot com. FYI! Here’s my hand after pruning 50 of my plants. #tomatopruning #tomatohands #solanumlycopersicum #acylsugars #flavanoids #terpenoids (at Newtown Square, Pennsylvania)

[ireth-alcarin]

https://www.jessica-roux.com/ <3

[babyanimalgifs]

The world is a beautiful place.