plant: sunflower

Gardening is not just about following a set of guidelines, it’s much more than that. It’s about observing, listening, and building relationships with those we’re working alongside: the plants, the soil, the weather. This post will be a little different than usual. Let me take you with me as I reflect on a quiet but significant shift, my garden’s turning point. ‘‘Nuchter’’ I grew up in a small village in the Netherlands, where we have a particular word to describe our outlook on life: ‘’nuchter’’....

Part of why I turned to gardening was for resilience. That quiet confidence of knowing I’ll always have access to food. Understanding what it took from the earth, and what it gives back, tastes like freedom. Like peace, in a way. It also made me think more deeply about what nourishes me. And if there’s one nutrient the world seems fixated on right now, it’s protein. Every other product at the supermarket screams “high-protein” or “protein-packed”, gym culture has practically rebranded it as a religion, and new research keeps surfacing about how essential it is for our health....

What is Jerusalem artichoke? To put it very simply, Jerusalem artichoke is something like a combination between a potato and sunflower. Most varieties produce 10-foot-tall sturdy stalks much like a sunflower but under the soil produce knobby (some might say ugly) delicious little tubers. While Jerusalem artichoke is very popular in western Europe among vegetable gardeners it is actually indigenous to the central United States. It is also part of a very small handful of crops still around today that were originally domesticated by North American natives’ well before European settlers arrived in the Americas....

Many types of plants depend on pollinators such as bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds to pollinate their flowers so they can produce fruit and seeds. To get the best harvests possible, there are steps we can take as gardeners to encourage more pollinators to visit our garden. Why are pollinators important in the garden? To understand why pollinators are important in the garden, we first need to understand which plants rely on them....