Category: Uncategorized
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Chaya: Not Your Colonizer’s Spinach
Chaya, also called tree spinach, has been eaten by people all over the world for eons. However, you rarely see it sold or grown in the United States. Instead the most readily available spinach in the U.S. is European in origin. My growing conditions couldn’t be more dissimilar to Europe😶. Rather than expend a lot
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Hot Take
Now that it’s officially hot HOT🥵, farming has become an exercise of surrender. My work days are necessarily shorter due to the unsafe outdoor heat. This requires I accept that some things just aren’t going to get done. Not today. Not this week. Maybe not even this Summer🤷🏾♀️ I have two choices. Choice #1: I
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Summer is For Propagating
Each season I identify a few primary objectives. This Summer, one of my primary objectives is plant propagation. Of course, I’ve always got some amount of plant propagation going, but this Summer I’m ramping up👊🏾! Each week I take cuttings from my perennials- namely cranberry hibiscus, Longevity spinach, sweet potato, Okinawan spinach, Brazilian spinach, various
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Outcome-Based Farming: The Results Speak For Themselves
Justus von Liebig defined agriculture as “the cultivation or the manipulation of the soil in such a way as to bring about the greatest possible yield of products useful to man with the least injury to the soil and at the least expense.” I’d never heard this quote until recently, yet I had already adopted
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Sunny Sentinels
When aiming to introduce as many species as possible into your food system, it’s important to consider climbing/vining plants in order to take advantage of vertical space. A fence that encloses your growing space is a no-brainer trellis structure that should be utilized whenever possible. Unfortunately, when growing in an urban/suburban setting, your fence line
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Will Work For Food
The more I learn about the farming industry & American “food,” the more affirmed I am in my decision to grow the food I eat. Since, of course, I can’t grow everything, I’ll accept sourcing food from other natural growers. As you might imagine, finding clean food can be challenging at first, but once you
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If Ever There Was a Time To Spray Chemicals, This Would Have Been It!
I was toiling on the farm one cool April morning, when something moving in my right periphery caught my eye. Even once I put my full attention on it, I had no idea what I was looking at. What I knew was there was some sort of deadly looking bug (being black with a neon
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The Season of Papaya
Last August, I excitedly potted up several papaya seedlings that had taken root in my compost pile. Less than a year later & those “trash trees” are ready to soon offer their versatile fruit🤲🏾 Papaya is at the top of my growing list of trees that fruit in under a year in the subtropics. It’s
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Summer Wardrobe Upgrade
Summer growing just got a lot more tolerable💁🏾 The net won’t stop mosquitoes from biting me through my clothes😖, but they can no longer have my face & neck😠 I FULLY understand why most people in the South take a break from growing in the Summer, but that’s not something I’m comfortable doing since I
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Tree Peas
I already knew I was strange. I love harvesting legumes. I love eating them even more😋! Every time someone asks, “🤔If you don’t eat dead animals, how do you get protein?” I know they haven’t even begun to explore the expansive legume family. One of my new favorites- both for taste & ease of cultivation-
Mahaba Farms 