Heirloom Gardening, Food and Other Thoughts
Aseed Europe, based here in Amsterdam, Netherlands is planning 3 days (2-4 May 2011) of camping on an organic farm with workshops, cultural and social activities together with demonstrations. The primarily language will be Dutch, but they will provide translations into English as necessary, and everyone is welcome. Reservations required.
The Belgian Field Liberation Movement is planning a demonstration with direct action against the GM potato trial fields in Wetteren, Belgium on Sunday 29 May 2011. Here trials are being conducted on blight resistant GM potatoes. Activities planned are:
For more information see their blog.
Be sure to bring seed balls made with True Potato Seeds!
Heguiberto of Weird Combinations sent me an email a few days ago to tell me about his blog. It’s been around for a while, but I hadn’t noticed it before, and I was very happy to hear about it.
Check out the view from his community garden! It looks out on the San Francisco Mission neighborhood, Twin Peaks and the Sutro Tower, parts of the Civic Center with a glimpse of the upper parts of the of the Golden Gate Bridge towers.
One of the nice things about his blog is he makes the connection between gardening and food, which of course some other blogs do too, but it’s still nice to see. He and his partner eat mostly vegetarian, so this is emphasized in the blog too.
I’ve been looking a long time for a Yuzu (Citrus junos) tree in the Netherlands, and I’m really happy I just found someone selling them at a reasonable price.
Yuzu is a type of citrus, similar to a lemon. It’s one of the few citrus varieties that both tastes good, and is hardy enough to survive winter in Northern Europe! They survive temperatures down to -15C or so.
When I visited Tom in the US last year, I looked for a tree there in Washington state. The story was more or less the same as here. Yuzu trees are very much in demand now, and young trees take several years to mature, so they are just unavailable except at very high cost. In a few years it won’t be a problem to buy one, because they are on order everywhere.
Last year I found someone here in the Netherlands with 1 tree to sell, but he wanted something along the lines of US$150 for it, and that was too much to pay.
The tree pictured above that I just bought is grafted to Poncirus Trifolata rootstock, and I have this growing already in my garden. I should be able to make my own Yuzu trees within a few years…
Not much photogenic is going on in the garden right now.
The asparagus is just starting…
The fruit trees are also starting to bloom.
Plum:
Pear:
