Hi, I’m Nathaniel, and I will be occasionally writing here now (I believe my lovely wife was kind enough to introduce me). So anyway, nice to meet everybody. I hope you all find what I write about interesting and valuable. In an effort to get our seed trays out of the house earlier last year, Eliza and I decided to…
Hey everyone, Appalachian Feet is getting an additional writer! From now on, some of the posts will be by me, and some will be by my husband, Nathaniel. I don’t know what he’ll be writing about… my guess is lots more urban homesteading/permaculture topics with an extra focus on cooking, mushrooms, soil building, backyard chickens, and fermented things. ~Eliza
Consider this article “Sustainable Pest Control 101.” Once you’ve read this, you’ll be an expert at dealing with insects on the farm or in the garden. One of the classes I taught at Saturday’s SC Organic Growers Conference was Insect Garden Ecology. This is a topic that overwhelms growers everywhere… people often tell me they just aren’t good at remembering…
We’re teaching at the SC Organic Growers Conference on Saturday. Our three conference topics are Ethical Soil Fertility, Unusual Fruits and Vegetables for the Southeast, and Insect Garden Ecology. I’ll post the handouts from these courses later this week. Hope to see you tomorrow!
This morning we found out that our baby doesn’t have a heartbeat anymore. We really appreciate how excited everyone was for us. I’ve deleted the blog post announcing our pregnancy. If you know you have mutual friends with us, a kind thing you could do is to tell people for us so we don’t have to. Thanks again for all…
We love the Organic Growers School in North Carolina and are delighted that we now have a similar version for South Carolina! This is the 2nd year for the annual SC Organic Growing Conference which occurs on March 2nd, 2013. It’s run by the SC Organization for Organic Living (SCOOL) which you can find on their website or on Facebook….
I’ve noticed more and more people seem fed up with trying to choose what to eat. Attempts to make good food choices are often derailed by yet another media blitz announcing our dinner is unhealthy, contaminated, ruining the environment, inhumane, or causing human rights violations. How can any sane person navigate all the food noise? Why can’t there just be…
I wanted to share this free online “Introduction to Permaculture” course offered by NC State University. It’s a high-quality, 40 hour college course taught by Professor Will Hooker that really explains the fundamentals. Click here to watch the lectures. The first lecture mostly covers orientation for the live classroom students (introducing themselves, field trip carpooling, etc.). If you want to…
That may be the wordiest title I ever came up with on this blog. The short of it is, “can poke sallet be highly desirable in the garden?” Poke sallet (as in pokeweed, pokeberries, polk salad, or any of the other myriad common names and spellings you want to label Phytolacca americana) is a plant native to the southeastern US….
The Greenville Urban Farm Tour is over for this year and we hope our visitors went home inspired to make their own green paradise. During the UFT, we set up an “ask the site owner” table in our garden and one of the most frequent questions was, “do you consult and when are you going to offer classes?” How about…
It’s time for the Greenville Urban Farm Tour again! When? This coming Saturday, May 12th, from 9am – 5pm. Tickets are $8 per adult (children under 12 free) and there is a group rate available on the UFT website. This year there are 31 sites to visit, 16 free workshops at the UFT’s headquarters (Crescent Studios), and bicycle tours offered…
My daughter just wrote a detailed blog post about our broody cuckoo maran hen. If you’d like to read her description of Ol’ LaZertron’s exploits, here’s the link!
What’s Pecha Kucha, anyway? You could describe it as TED Talks for people with short attention spans or a good way to get presenters to keep it short. Every Pecha Kucha is 20 slides long, 20 seconds each slide. Pecha Kucha Greenville adds to the 20×20 theme by also scheduling their events at 20:20 (8:20pm). They have around 6 presenters…
If you’ve never eaten a salad turnip, and you probably haven’t, it’s unlikely you think they sound very exciting. Back when the Organic Growers School was Saturday only, they did an experimental Sunday session in Burnsville, NC. Among skills like how to build hoop houses and grow through the winter, I mostly remember taste-testing the ‘Hakurei’ turnips that Patryk Battle…
Today’s blog post was inspired by the karma-themed TV show My Name Is Earl. I know some people would rather pay their taxes twice than be nice to snakes, but I owe this mundanely-named brown snake family some good publicity on account of I killed their brother. Or sister. Or both. Specifically, a couple little specimens of Storeria dekayi. It…
You’re probably having the initial reaction that I did, “Why would I want to control kudzu bugs? Just have at it!” But kudzu bugs (Megacopta cribraria) also attack other legumes. Especially soybeans, wisteria, and hyacinth beans (Lablab pupureus). The idea of something that successfully retards the growth of kudzu having a picnic on my soybeans is not appealing. It’s possible…
We started an Appalachian Feet Market email list last year for people who want to know when our urban farm products are for sale or when we are giving talks the public can attend. Then we planned a wedding… and never used it. If you live in the Greenville, SC area and would like to be on the list, click…
I used to hate squirrels. Then my daughter raised and released some orphans and I began to recognize their charms and place in the ecosystem. They’re native and gardeners too — of forests. I can share my garden with them. But I still shake my fist in anguish when they forage through my newly planted beds, uprooting seeds and plants…
Garden Bloggers: I challenge you to post at least one photo of your garden at its worst and put a link to it in the comments here. When I’m talking to people about gardening I often hear apologies that their yard or produce doesn’t look as perfect as mine. Some even give up trying to grow things because they feel…
For over ten years I have grown my own garden transplants by carrying the seed trays out into the sun on warm days and bringing them in every evening. In the last 3 years, I was juggling over 20 trays in and out of the house. This method uses natural light to produce strong, non-leggy transplants — but if you’re…