Before fall descends into winter, we vegetable gardeners have to make a decision: whether to put the vegetable garden to bed with a cover crop of crimson clover (or other green manure) until spring, while we cozy up indoors; or to tend a winter garden and have fresh vegetables year-round. A winter vegetable garden is […]
Jane Monroe
Posted inHumboldt Nature
Burying the Dead
The approach of Halloween may bring to mind bats, crows, toads and spiders, but there is another creature that fits in with the holiday’s theme: the burying beetle, aka sexton beetle (Nicrophorus defodiens). It’s aptly named, as a sexton is a person who maintains a church’s buildings and churchyard, and whose duties once included digging […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Causing Ferment in the Kitchen
While the cold spring weather this year delayed growth of the vegetable plants in my garden, I am finally getting enough cabbage, garlic and radish to start making kimchi. Like yogurt and kombucha, kimchi, a fermented vegetable dish and staple of the Korean diet, has been enthusiastically adopted in the U.S. and is commonly carried […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Look Closely, It’s Crab Spider Season
What do you see in this photo? A bumble bee. A small brown spider. White flowers. Look closely: There’s a large crab spider front and center. If you have a garden, you may be familiar with the goldenrod crab spider (Misumena vatia), which is commonly seen on flowers from late spring through early fall on […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Beyond Apples
Living in a special place like coastal Northern California, with its cool summers and wet winters, the challenge for a dyed-in-the-wool fruit grower is to find every possible fruit tree that might grow successfully here. Cool summers make it especially difficult for many types of fruit to ripen fully, and wet winters make it easy […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Plant a Cabbage, Welcome the Amphibians
In our last article (“Gardening Undercover,” March 13), we suggested ways to protect your vegetable garden from slugs, snails and other pests by using physical shelters. There are other great ways to control pests, like inviting amphibians into your garden. After all, frogs and their kin live and hunt on the ground where most pests […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Gardening Undercover
Despite the early morning temperatures in the middle 20s, I made a visit to the winter garden during a lull between rainstorms. Because of the cold and the rain, much of the vegetable garden is muddy and even the winter-hardy cole crops look mushy. But this is the perfect time to check on the garden […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Planting Apple Trees on the North Coast
Apples are the most accommodating and long lived of fruit trees, and they cope with our wet climate quite well. There are many varieties of apple trees to choose from, each with its own characteristics. January is the best month to plant bare root trees, so take the time now to research the best varieties […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
The Woolly Bear Crosses the Road
Recently, I watched a documentary that depicted the Serengeti’s famous wildebeest migration as the animals forded a river in Tanzania. The wildebeests are reluctant to cross the river because of the huge crocodiles waiting to catch and eat them. While the majority safely make the crossing, a significant number are killed. We, too, have a […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Humboldt Apple Chutney
It’s fall in Humboldt County and apples and pears are in abundance. What to do with the excess (as in, what’s left over after the deer and bears eat their fill)? When I first tried preserving my fruit harvest in the 1980s, the American cookbooks I found did not address fermentation and fruit pickling very […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
The Beating Heart of a Dead Tree
I was working in our winter vegetable garden not long ago, when l heard a deep thumping coming from one of the dead red alders nearby. I scanned the tree but did not see a woodpecker; the sound continued. A walk around the tree revealed a new hole in the trunk: The thumping heartbeat was […]