Vegan 100 by Gaz Oakley

Vegan 100 by Gaz Oakley

As Heard on The Daily Gardener Podcast: Vegan 100 by Gaz Oakley This book came out in 2018, and the subtitle is Over 100 Incredible Recipes from Avant-Garde Vegan. In this book, Gaz celebrates the versatility and adventure you can find when you dedicate time to creating new dishes with vegetables. Gaz is a famous chef…

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The Cherry Tree at the Osakabe Hotel

The Cherry Tree at the Osakabe Hotel

by Naoko Abe There, in a garden of a house near the Osakabe Hotel (“sah-KAH-bay”), towering above a tall wooden fence, stood a tree with narrow leaves and bunched clusters of double mauve-pink blossoms with close to 100 petals. Ingram’s immediate reaction was to work out how to spirit cuttings of the tree to England.…

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A Sense of the Soil

A Sense of the Soil

by Carol Williams When one is first beginning to garden or gardening in a place one does not yet know, soil can seem dumb and unhelpful, just dirt. It is gray and empty, or yellow, clammy, and stony, or perhaps it is black and full of worms. Little pebbles might be interspersed all through it,…

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Bark and pH

Bark and pH

by Tristan Gooley Each tree’s bark will have its own pH, and some are more acidic than others. Larches and Pines are notoriously acidic; Birch, Hawthorne and Oak are acidic too, but slightly less so. Rowan, Alder, Beech, Linden, and Ash are little less acidic again, and Willow, Holly and Elm are getting closer to…

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Garden Attire

by Nancy Goodwin I am a small person with short, gray hair, usually dressed in winter in faded jeans, frayed at the knees and cuffs, boots, and layers of old shirts, and in summer in faded shorts and shirts. A wide-brimmed straw hat without a crown protects my face from the sun. I generally pull…

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William Ernest Powell Giles

William Ernest Powell Giles

by Anita Silvey In 1874, the English botanist WEP Giles (William Ernest Powell) explored the vast deserts of central Australia. Setting out with his hunting partner from a base camp at Fort McKellar, he discovered a leak in one of his large water bags. The two men decided to continue, even though the temperature had…

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The Winter Larder

The Winter Larder

by Georgeanne Brennan Harvested fruits and vegetables can be stored over winter in a number of ways. Perishable summer stone fruits can be dried, packed into sweetened alcohol syrups, or cooked into preserves or jellies. The pom fruits —  apples, pears, and quinces —  from late summer and early fall harvest will keep for several…

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Milk Sickness from White Snakeroot

Milk Sickness from White Snakeroot

One of the most famous victims of milk sickness was Nancy Hanks Lincoln, mother of Abraham Lincoln. She fought the disease for a week but finally succumbed, as did her aunt and uncle and several other people in the small town of Little Pigeon Creek, Indiana. She died in 1818 at the age of thirty-four,…

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Connecting with Nature on a Minifarm

Connecting with Nature on a Minifarm

by Richard Louv The yard surrounding Karen Harwell’s home is only six hundred square feet, yet it harbors ducks, a beehive, eighteen semi-dwarf fruit trees, an organic vegetable garden, calming places to sit and read and think, and neighborhood teenagers. The teens visit summer, the dog, and sit in the rabbit hutch, hold the baby…

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The Absolutely Right Way to Start a Garden

The Absolutely Right Way to Start a Garden

by Cheryl Merser As with most occupations, there are different ways to approach the garden. The absolutely right way to start a garden, for instance, is to bulldoze your whole yard, then, according to a friend of mine, a brilliant (if obsessive gardener), spend some time in it naked in the middle of the night,…

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Advice on Pruning Willows

Advice on Pruning Willows

by Beth Chatto ‘How often do you prune your willows?’ you may ask. It varies. We have to consider the vigor of different varieties and also, of course, the amount of time we have to spare. We do not always do what is ideal. If you can manage it, I think it is probably best…

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The Common Daisy (Bellis perennis)

The Common Daisy (Bellis perennis)

by Susan Wittig Albert The Daisy’s genus name, Belis (martial or warlike), refers to its use by Roman doctors as a common treatment for battlefield wounds. John Gerard, the sixteenth-century herbalist and author of the first important herbal in English, wrote: “The leaves stamped take away bruises and swellings … whereupon it was called in…

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The Skunk Cabbage

The Skunk Cabbage

by Jack Sanders In much of North America, skunk cabbage has earned the widespread reputation as the first flower of spring. It might be more accurate, however, to call it the first flower of winter. “The skunk cabbage may be found with its round green spear-point an inch or two above the mold in December,”…

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The Beauty of Spring Bulbs

The Beauty of Spring Bulbs

by Katharine S. White I shall never desert the bulbs, though, and last winter, I think I got more pleasure from a pot of February Gold daffodils than from anything else I raised unless it was my pots of freesias. February Gold, which is a medium-small, all-yellow narcissus of the cyclamen type, for me proved…

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