"We Inspire People To Plant, Nurture, & Celebrate Trees."

Arbor day is the last Friday in April and "We inspire people to plant, nurture, and celebrate trees." says the Arbor Day Foundation. $10 gets a six month membership and 10 trees of your choice. I'd been planning on buying some additional trees for the back yard and the price certainly seemed right. The trees won't actually ship until later in the spring when the time is right for planting so it will be a little while before I see what I get.

They also have a hazel nut project which for $20 you get a number of hazelnut trees as part of a study.

They also offer a variety of other trees at what seem to be reasonable prices. I'll wait for the initial offer before getting more though.

The Perfect Fruit

The Perfect Fruit: Good Breeding, Bad Seeds, and the Hunt for the Elusive Pluot is an interesting book about growing plums and apricots and the industry that produces them.

When I was a kid, I remember eating apricots and plums as fast as I could get them.

When I got older as an adult, I did not like them as much and stopped eating them. At the time I assumed it was simply my changing tastes (I used to like liver as a child too. Go figure).

One of the most interesting things I got from the book was that it wasn't me, but the industry. During the 1980's, they started growing fruit that could ship well, but tasted poor. Now there is a resurgence in trying to breed plants that produce tasty fruit and ship well. I'm looking forward to the summer months now so I can check out some of these. Look for pluots (plum / apricot hybrid) for something at the higher end of the taste range.

A Trip To The Pork Store

When I was a child, we used to go to a butcher shop near my grandparents house. Kids always got a slice of bologna from the person behind the counter to snack on and I remember it being so rich and full of flavor.

While this is not about gardening, it does fit in with the general idea of the farmers market and eating food from close to home and is also along the lines of how we forget how things should be when they change slowly over time.

I came across an ad for http://www.schwindsporkstore.com/ in the local town paper, decided to check it out and was well rewarded for it. The bologna was exactly like the kind I remember from being a child. It was so rich and full of flavor and with an aroma that filled the car. We made sandwiches on rolls that we got from the Italian bakery and could not believe the amazing sandwiches we were eating. They also had some really great landjager; another treat I remember from that same childhood butcher shop. We'll be back again soon to check out some of their other items.

No more tasteless pink plastic from the supermarket for me anymore!

Everyone probably has a place like this near their home and all it takes to find it is to remember that everything didn't always come in a vacuum sealed pack.

Victory Garden

Victory gardens were vegetable gardens planted at private residences and public parks during World War I and World War II to make up for gaps in the public food supply brought on by the war effort. A combination of sending food to the troops and a lack of people to work the farms brought on food rationing in many countries and a victory garden was a good way to make up the shortfall at the family dinner table.

I wrote about victory gardens last spring when I first learned out town had them and posted a few other posts as we worked it over the summer.

The renewal form just came and I am going to sign up again. The two primary lessons learned were to bury the fence deep to keep out the rodents and to visit the site often to make sure the plants are getting enough water.

Although the current war hasn't caused food shortages like those in the past, having a home garden still helps the war effort. By reducing the amount of food trucked from far away, we reduce the amount of oil needed to maintain the food supply which in turn reduces our dependencies on many of the unstable countries of the world.

Call your local parks department or town hall to find out what is offered near you.