Blog
September 30, 2023 To Net or Not This year I got the hang of netting fruit trees. Not by choice. Our fruit trees were hit by apple maggot fly larvae damage two years ago. The larvae tunnel throughout the apple and ruin the taste (unlike other pest damage that can just be cut off.) City […]
Blissful Birder
December 27, 2021 Alec is a new volunteer. His profession is landscape design and he worked hard on the recent 60th St restoration project. He is also a stellar bird enthusiast and photographer! A couple of weeks ago, I spotted a bird in our yard that I did not know. Excited, I emailed Alec. Ruth: […]
Everything From Fruit To Nuts
November 23, 2021 Friday we devoured the last few plump Evergreen Huckleberries – the end of our fruit and nut bounty this year. And just before the Huckleberries, a few volunteers tried the Medlar. (Medlar? Read Shakespeare to find out about this unusual fruit.) One volunteer thought it tasted like refried beans. Another tasted applesauce. […]
Salsify Can Satisfy
October 27, 2021 This fall I made the best batch of cooked greens! The secret ingredient? Salsify. Wow! Chefs (mostly from Britain) warn that the peeled root turns brown “at an alarming rate”. They advise to drop the peeled root quickly into water with lemon. I followed their instruction, then chopped the root to add […]
Desperate Decision → Piddly Persimmon
September 15, 2021 No one in their right mind would buy a Persimmon Tree from Home Depot. Or would they … if desperate enough? We ordered an Izu from a well-known nearby nursery in 2019. We received the bareroot tree in March of 2020 and made a nice home for it along the west fence. […]
Turn over a new leaf – if you still have one!
August 22, 2021 Our June heat wave hit just after the summer solstice, precisely when the days are the longest of the year. Double whammy! Record high temperatures in June beat our plants to the max. Ouch! We all witnessed the most obvious punishment, sun scald. What’s a plant to do? The stomata pores of […]
Pruning Points
July 25, 2021 Last week Ann saw a T-shirt with printed words, “I’m pretty sure I am not going to figure it out.” Sounds like me and pruning! I have been watching Ingela masterfully craft the orchard fruit trees for 10 years but, this week, it was I who grasped the pole pruner and reverently […]
Tried-and-True Tomato Trellising Technique
June 23, 2021 The Florida weave! Is it a type of shawl? A new hair style? Some kind of line dance? No. The Florida weave is used widely and is well thought of as a tomato-trellising technique. Rutgers has a fine explanation online. Sue’s tomato plants get big and weigh a ton. In the past […]
The Handy Dande
May 19, 2021 Dandelion – Taraxacum officinale – origin from Greek words meaning ‘disorder remedy’ – Asteraceae family. How did we ever come to hate dandelions? Well, who knows. In any case, Europeans thought them valuable enough to tote them to the New World in the 1600’s. In ancient times, the plant was valued as […]
You Need This Kind of Friend
April 25, 2021 An old pal and I were talking about different kinds of friends. We have friends who challenge us, helping us to be the best we can be. Hopefully, we also have a friend who thinks we are wonderful and that everything we do is amazing. Joan Davis. Everyone needs a friend like […]
Pruners Without Borders
March 15, 2021 FECO volunteers, Reid and Jacob, both well over six feet tall, used their height last summer to glean a few figs from a tree in Green Lake Park. They agreed that the tree needed care. This spring, Reid asked me if I might be interested in helping them prune the tree. I […]