Old Time Recipes for Home Made Wines: Sarsaparilla Mead
Karen In her book, Old Time Recipes for Home made Wines, my paternal grandmother, Helen S. Wright, gives a recipe for sarsaparilla mead that calls for Spanish sarsaparilla. Sarsaparilla belongs to…
Plant Profile: Ground Morning Glory (Convolvulus sabatius aka C. mauritanicus)
Also called trailing morning glory and blue rock bindweed, this evergreen woody stemmed perennial is tender and usually grown as an annual. It is native to Italy and North Africa…
Language of Flowers: Dwarf Almond (Prunus glandulosa aka Amygdalus pumila?)
The double flowered dwarf almond is a small deciduous shrub growing 2.5′ high and a member of the rose family, Rosaceae that also includes peaches, lady’s mantle and pyracantha. It…
Plant Profile: Rose Galway Bay
This modern climber has apricot colored buds that open to to 4″ wide flowers with petals in various shades of pink from dark pink on the outside to pale pink…
Plant Profile: Peruvian Canna (Canna iridiflora)
Peruvian canna is a herbaceous perennial and a member of the Cannaceae family that is most closely related to ginger, banana, and bird of paradise. Native to high elevations in…
Book Review:Gardening with Biochar
Everyone wants bigger, more productive, more nutrient filled plants and Jeff Cox shows you one way to have them by supercharging the soil with biochar. This soil amendment is wood…
Poisonous Plants: Common Vetch (Vicia sativa)
Common vetch is climbing annual vine brought to North American from southern Europe as a covercrop but has since escaped and become a troublesome weed in shrub and perennial beds…
Shakespeare’s Garden: Plantian
Common plantain,(Plantago major) is an herbaceous perennial native to Europe and northern and central Asia but naturalized in the US beginning in the time of the Puritans. It thrives in…
Plant Profile: Saged-leaved Bellflower (Campanula collina)
A native of the Caucusus Mountains, sage-leaved bellflower is a herbaceous perennial and a member of the Campanulaceae family that also includes ladybells (Adenophora), balloon flowers, and Lobelia. It has…
Book Review: Cooking from Scratch
ooking from Scratch comes from the Puget Consumer Co-op Community Markets, a Seattle based grocer dedicated to local producers, sustainable food practices, and healthful, organic seasonal food. The recipes are…