Last Thursday, after staring at a laptop for 8+ hours, I decided to ease my digitally-overloaded mind by flipping through Trowel and Error: Over 700 Tips, Remedies and Shortcuts for the Gardener by Sharon Lovejoy, a recent birthday gift from a friend. It’s the kind of book you can read word for word or opt [...]

Back in the 60s and 70s young people migrated back to the countryside to make a go of farming. Novella Carpenter’s parents were part of that movement. But it didn’t last. People found that growing food is very hard and rural life can be extremely isolating. The motives of today’s generation of farmers are different, [...]

After my earlier seed-sprouting mishaps (I forgot which seeds were which and what needed what), I’ve come up with a system this time: If the powers that be were making a prequel book to “Seed Sprouting for Dummies,” the should ask me to write it. The amount of things I’m unsure about that you’d think [...]

Many vegetables continue to ripen after they are picked. Enzymes in the vegetables continue ripening, converting the sugar into starch. If you just pick vegetables, cut them up and freeze them, they’ll taste like cardboard within a couple of months. To stop that, you need to heat them quickly and then stop the cooking quickly [...]

• M. Stone jewelry sale & rooftop gathering Saturday. 252 Norman Avenue, 3-7 p.m. keg beer + necklaces & earrings that look like the west • May’s Greenpoint Foodmarket is also Saturday afternoon. Church of the Messiah (basement), 129 Russell Street, 12-5 p.m. From creator Joann Kim: The market is hosted by the Church of [...]

… has gotten out of control. I almost just called it a “tree.” But it’s not a tree, or it didn’t start out a tree, anyway. It was squarely in house plant territory when I bought it. Windowsill-plant territory. Now, however, it has quite unabashedly overtaken my windowsill and is slowly (but quite deliberately, I [...]

I was overzealous. Remember all that stuff I planted? Basil, dill, arugula, spinach, sorrel, mugwort, lavender, rosemary, thyme, a few things I can hardly remember (feverfew?) So many different kinds of seeds. So many different light, heat and water conditions required for their care. I couldn’t keep track of it all. Or, rather, I didn’t [...]

Goodness, gracious, why aren’t more people talking about this? Meat, poultry industries await new antitrust rules: Federal regulators are set to release the most sweeping antitrust rules covering the meat industry in decades, potentially altering the balance of power between meat companies and the farmers who raise their animals. At issue is how much power [...]

NY has organized its own ‘Crop Mob. ‘ Crop Mob NYC is “for aspiring farmers or the merely ag-curious.” We will organize mobs to descend on farms around the metro area to help them for a few hours with whatever tasks are in front of them. Learn about organic agriculture, meet cool people, have fun, [...]

The seeds he’s lying next to refuse to sprout. Good to know they’ve got a second purpose as cat pillow.

Rooftop Farms co-founder Annie Novak will participating in EDIBLE ESTATES: Attack on the Front Lawn, a conversation about growing food in public spaces on Thursday, April 8th at WNYC’s The Greene Space.  [44 Charlton Street (at Varick Street)] For EDIBLE ESTATES: Attack on the Front Lawn, Annie will be joined by Manhattan Borough President Scott [...]

Everything I read online about starting seeds had me convinced that only, say, 1 in 35 seeds I planted would actually sprout. For basil, I lined up a whole tray of peat pots (18 total) and sprinkled each one with a couple seeds and … they have all sprouted. I now have 18 pots of [...]

Lots of food policy, agriculture news this week: * Pittsburgh considers reining in urban agriculture, beekeeping and chicken raising. Says the mayor’s spokesperson, “Anytime you see something growing and expanding and there are no rules, you need to regulate it.” Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear …(but darling for the way she manages [...]

This Saturday, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s “Making Brooklyn Bloom” conference will feature workshops and lectures dealing with growing things in the city: Kick off the spring gardening season at Brooklyn Botanic Garden with this daylong conference on how to green up our communities by revitalizing our soil, the foundation of life in the garden. This [...]

It’s seed-starting time, and I’ve gotten much more ambitious than I was last fall. I am attempting: spinach, two different kinds of arugula, sorrel, rosemary, thyme, lavender, dill, cat grass, chives, mugwort, feverfew and cornflowers! Oh my. The seeds I ordered either don’t come with instructions or the packaging is printed in Italian, so I’ve [...]

Via Phoebe Maltz, I came across this Freakanomics Blog post about Italian agriculture: Reports of recent unrest by African immigrants in southern Italy have underscored the dirty little secret that, lo and behold, there’s racism in Italy. Lost in the condemnation of Italian xenophobia, however, is a less obvious but equally important discovery: Italy’s bucolic [...]

I don’t realize I’m rambling about varieties of winter squash until I notice people staring at me, bored or confused. Lovely story from the Atlantic Food Channel about a writer returning to the city after a few months as a farm intern. This is more and more something I think I need to do …