Gardening/Growing

Leek Scapes

April 30, 2015 · 9 comments

Maybe you’ve heard of garlic scapes, those curlicue green things that show up at farmers’ markets around this time of year. They taste faintly of garlic and are often (for reasons I don’t totally understand) blended into an alternative pesto. But have you heard of leek scapes? Like garlic scapes, leek scapes are the shoots and […]

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Back in early October, my friend Erin and I toured the Corylus collection at the National Clonal Germplasm Repository (NCGR) in Corvallis, Oregon, and basically we were like kids in a candy store. Once again, my friend and neighbor Joseph Postman, a plant pathologist at the facility, welcomed us, provided us with some literature about […]

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Hull-Less Pumpkin Seeds

October 18, 2014 · 3 comments

Oh, this poor, neglected blog of mine. I was really truly convinced that when my kids started school in September, I was going to spend at least an hour a day working on stories for this space, but alas, that obviously hasn’t happened. Don’t worry, though, I’m not gone for good. I have a good […]

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The USDA National Clonal Germplasm Repository in Corvallis, Oregon maintains, among other things, the world collection of Ribes cultivars as well as their wild counterparts. The genus Ribes includes currants, gooseberries, and jostaberries (a black currant-gooseberry cross). Ribes species are native to the Northern Hemisphere, and in cooler, shorter-growing-season climates such as Canada, the United […]

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Boy, the Corvallis Saturday Farmers’ Market sure is getting pretty. After taking a bunch of photos, I was even tempted into buying a cabbage, some carrots, a couple onions, two packs of bratwurst (from Northwest Natural Beef because they’re super nice), and a few kohlrabis. I’m kind of a kohlrabi evangelist. On Saturday afternoon, I […]

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Ahhh…It’s blueberry season again. I feel a little guilty, like I’m cheating on my beloved Radke’s Blueberries, but I was getting desperate for fresh fruit that the kids and I headed to Anderson’s Blues on Aboretum Road in North Corvallis. Anderson’s is a pretty huge U-pick place with many different varieties of berries from early […]

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I snapped a few photos of my parents huge garden/small farm on Saturday. It’s kinda fun to compare them with this post from almost exactly a year ago. My mom has almost everything planted, and my dad’s been attacking the robust, early-summer weeds. Unlike last year, I’ve barely helped out at all this spring, so […]

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It was another beautiful market day on Saturday. It seems crazy early for cherries, raspberries, and some of the other fruits and vegetables seen on the waterfront, but I guess it’s just a crazy year (plus some local farmers have significant acreage under greenhouses). It was a morning full of colors, textures, flavors, aromas, live […]

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My history with farmers’ markets goes way back…all the way back to the beginning. When I was a year old, my mom started selling apples and vegetables and bread at the Corvallis Wednesday Farmers’ Market (the second longest running farmers’ market in the state I believe), so basically I grew up at and around the […]

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My kids aren’t perfect eaters. Levi isn’t into carrots or oranges (except satsuma mandarins). Charlotte doesn’t like eggs or most kinds of beans. Neither one would touch a salad. But when it comes to kale, raw kale straight off the plant, they can’t get enough of it. They have this thing called dinosaur kale eaters, […]

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