I had intended to do some “man in the garden” interviews while I hung around the Victory Garden watching the crowds come through. But my first set of victims were so interesting I talked to them for the entire half hour I had in between lectures.
Maestra Macuilxochitl, Luz Alvarez-Martinez, and Carlos Ruiz-Martinez turned out to […]

Our Victory Gardens have reached harvest season, and we’re celebrating the coming Labor Day weekend with a virtual potluck.

Summer’s heat has finally reached us all, even our northernmost Ethicurean colleagues, and if you wonder why you haven’t heard much from many of us -– well, you can imagine us with dirt on our hands and knees, working away in our Victory Gardens as our crops take off.

There’s something about caring for a tomato plant that brings out every nurturing instinct in me. I am literally in constant motion during peak season, in a long, choreographed dance of pruning, irrigating, mulching, deworming, and finally, harvesting — my own version of tomato salsa. But there may be another living being that likes tomatoes more than I.

Big, volunteer-powered projects like the Victory Garden have the potential to unleash a wave of human energy. I could feel this energy during the event — there’s a desire to make things happen.

Lately we’ve seen a bumper crop of articles extolling the virtues of gardening. Sure, it’s a great way to reduce your food costs at a time when those prices are experiencing rapid growth spurts. But it’s more than that: gardens can be environmentally friendly and even (in our dreams, perhaps) politically savvy. It’s enough to make a gardener feel just a teeny-tiny, eensy-weensy bit smug.

An environmental lawyer for 20 years, including four spent with the USDA, Claire Hope Cummings reports regularly on agriculture and the environment; she has also farmed in California and in Vietnam. She chatted recently with the Ethicurean about her new book, “Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds.”

of the Mississippi into most of the city.

Time in New Orleans is now reckoned in relation to Katrina, and the organization that is helping Joe with his garden — New Orleans Food & Farm Network (NOFFN) — had projects in his neighborhood before Katrina as well as after Katrina.

If the Memorial Day weekend kicks off summer, then we’re well on the way to sweet summer eats in our Victory Gardens…

We on the Ethicurean team may not always keep all these purposes in mind when we garden. In fact, probably most of us approach the garden with a mixture of the dread facing work that must be done and the hope of enjoying the peace of a little plot of earth that will produce good food with a seasoning of joy. But as we continue to prepare the garden beds and start sowing seeds, we’re doing something more. In the words of Pattie over at FoodShed Planet (where this year’s Victory Garden Drive got started), we’re declaring victory over our food supply — at a time when that food supply is looking more and more shaky.

In-depth, offbeat, or thought-provoking features about aspects of SOLE food, from eating locally to raising grassfed beef to food preservation.

Finally, after 3 months of blizzards, winter seems to be showing signs of weakness in Montreal. I’m sure this doesn’t mean that winter is over, even though spring officially began over two weeks ago, but still, today the sun was shining and the snow was melting, and people were out on the […]

The radio program Living on Earth has been running excerpts from "Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape," a book by renowned nature writer Barry Lopez ("Crossing Open Ground," "Arctic Dreams," "Of Wolves and Men") that defines landscape terms such as pack ice, blind creek, and cascade. On a recent program, they featured a […]

We’ve just dug out from a mild winter storm here in northern Ohio (only a few inches of snow, but topped with a thick glaze of ice), and I’m finally able to see the ground emerge from that blanket of cold, frozen precipitation. The weather lately has fueled a number of dreams of sunny, tropical […]

During both World War I and II, the American government mandated that its citizens ration food in order to feed the troops overseas. In order to supplement their rations of meat, oil, sugar, and other precious foods, the American people followed the government’s call to plant War Gardens (in WWI) and, later, Victory Gardens. Home […]