Cosmic Kitty » Horticulture

Xylotheks

abberdab — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 18:55:26 +0000

Mr. Slakethirst introduced me to enlightenment era Xylotheks, today. Xylotheks combine botany and book arts as well as book arts and container making. See below:

A xylothek is generally speaking a collection of simple pieces of wood specimens placed together in some kind of cupboard. In a refined form it is in the shape of “books” where you can find details from the tree inside, everything arranged as a “library”. This latter form flourished in Germany around 1790-1810. Four different manufacturers existed and three of them offered their products for sale…Each “book” describes a certain tree species and is made out of the actual wood (the “covers”). The spine is covered by the bark, where mosses and lichens from the same tree are arranged. “Books” of shrubs are covered with mosses with split branches on both covers and spines. —The Wooden Library in Alnarp

Large photos of the Alnarp collection of Xylotheks can be seen at The Wooden Library in Alnarp website. Wonderful stuff!

Figs

abberdab — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 20:43:35 +0000

No, I haven’t started on the previously mentioned September garden tasks. But I have a good feeling about today. A trip to Portland Nursery is in the works. I still have a week of September left.

Meanwhile… figs! Our fig tree is bursting with more figs than we can reasonably eat out of hand. Hurrah! We’ve only had the fig tree for two—maybe three—years and it’s already prolific. Our harvest this summer is meager so every pluckable edible is that much more exciting. I was thinking about making fig preserves, but the only recipe I have at hand calls for 4 pounds of sugar. FOUR POUNDS. Granted, it also calls for 2 quarts of figs, but still… I hope I can find another option. According to Mr. Slakethirst’s baby brother, fig preserves are the bee’s knees.

PDX Gardening in September

abberdab — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 04:49:43 +0000

So, I’ve whittled down the overwhelming amount of gardening info to the tasks that affect what I most care about: growing food. I shall endeavor to accomplish the following this September: Plant maché (corn salad) and fava beans from seed. Plant winter cover of annual rye or winter peas. Cover bare areas of garden with compost.

Some PDX/Oregon specific gardening links:

September Seasonal Task List at Slug and Salal
Fall and Winter Vegetable Gardening in the Pacific Northwest (OSU Extension)
Month-to-Month Garden Calendars (OSU Extension)

Gardening in Autumn

abberdab — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 19:51:14 +0000

Historically, fall gardening opportunities pass me by. When the glamour of summer produce begins to wane — squash plants begin to mildew and wither, tomatoes stop ripening, basil turns black — I usually lose interest in the face of autumnal ennui. The garden remains neglected and unattractive until spring. This year will be different! I’m looking into fall friendly plants and plants that will over-winter. Maché, arugula, fava beans… I actually don’t know that much about what works this time of year, but this is a good starting point. To remind myself of what else can be done through the fall and winter, I thought about setting up a Portland – specific gardening calendar.

This is where I segue from Horticulture to Geekery.

To this end, I just ran across a plugin for WordPress that enables multi-author calendar event posting, as well as calendar subscriptions. I could share the calendar with friends and family and hopefully reap the benefit of a pool of gardening knowledge. This is the idealistic dream anyway. We’ll see how it plays out.

Asparagus

abberdab — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 01:44:49 +0000

Garden Neglect

abberdab — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 07:03:10 +0000

During a thesis paper writing break, my mind drifted to thoughts of our poor neglected garden. It’s practically April already and we haven’t planted anything new. Last summer’s chard (still going!), a few slug eaten maché plants, scattered dandelions and a gajillion tomato sprouts (from last year’s unharvested crop gone to seed) are the sole inhabitants of the raised bed. I threw some slug bait (a pet friendly sort!) into the raised beds and the strawberry patch, but I’m so preoccupied by school stuff I don’t even have time to think about what else needs to be done. No spring veg for us, I guess. At least I’ll be done with school in time to plant the summer stuff.

For now, I’ll just glance through my Garden 2003 pix to cheer myself up. That was our most successful garden summer so far.

On the upside, the appletrees are blooming, the grape, fig and medlar are leafing out. Hooray for the persistence of trees and vines!