Kathleen Alcalá

While some gardeners are putting their beds to sleep for the season, mine is just warming up! Yellow beets gave way to snow peas. Snow peas gave way to red cabbage. I’ve got a second, sweeter crop of carrots, new crops of broccoli and chard, and every other day I harvest a few potatoes. I tried to grow blue ones, but I must have picked up the wrong starts at Bainbridge Gardens! I made soup with them the other night along with a cup of dried nettles picked earlier this year at Suquamish.

We had a hot, dry summer in the Northwest, punctuated by bad air from fires to the north, east, and south. Some days were apocalyptically bad, with the worst air I have tried to breathe since leaving smog-filled San Bernardino in the 1970s. But the plants loved the days of endless sunlight, rare up here.

Fall means  Read More 

No, la jefa of the Rock Farm Community Garden, Anita Rockefeller, spread lime over all of our plots, creating this eerie landscape. I happened to be there Thursday before the evening rain soaked the fine powder into the earth. The darker front rows are my plot, where I turned it in and planted a row of blue potatoes and a row of carrots. Next, we will spread a layer of compost. Supposedly, we should avoid turning the soil too much. This should encourage a build up of compost and keep carbon sequestered in the soil, where it belongs.

Spring is here after an unusually dry  Read More 

It is that time of the season when, if you are in the right place at the right time, someone will hand you a bag of beet greens. Or a handful of berries. Or leave a dozen fat oysters at your back door!

It took four to five months to reach this point, but every cloudy day, every seed that refused to sprout, every insect, is forgiven when we bite into a salad of our own growing.  Read More 

The summer of 2009 I lived in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico where I rented a small condominium with a kitchen. The furnishings were basic, and I ate simply when at home, mostly breakfasts and salads.

The stores are clustered by type along the narrow, cobble-stone streets of San Miguel – pharmacies on Insurgentes, clothing stores on El Reloj, and produce stores on Mesones. One day, I bought some carrots. I didn’t eat them for a couple of days. Then I washed and peeled them, although at home I probably would have left the peels on. Hungry, I cut one into rough junks and took a bite.
This was my Proustian moment, the madeleine of my vegetable experience.  Read More 

Last week, something ate most of my broccoli sprouts. This was followed by 1 1/2 inches of rain in one day, washing away anything left. So I visited Bay Hay & Feed to purchase more substantial broccoli starts. I also added marigolds, remembering that I used to mix them with my vegetables to ward off bugs. I  Read More 

... for my broccoli sprouts! This year, the neighbors loaned me a planting bed, so I will attempt to grow a few vegetables. About two weeks ago, I planted broccoli and carrots. There are a couple of specks on the carrot rows, but I expect them to be more pronounced next week.