There is a beautiful, simple understanding of plants: they have roots, stems, branches, leaves, flowers and fruit, in various combinations, but grape vines, like all the rest, are understood to grow from […]
Reversing the Water Flow in Vineyards
Mixed Use Farming, Some Wild
A tree is a blessing to all animals, so why not a walnut? Or a cherry or an apple. It’s all good. It lends a certain free flow to things. And everyone […]
The Evolution of a Dead Planet and What to Do Next
Start with a grassland, maintained in a state of ecological diversity by human care for 5,000 years… …and under human use for 12,000 years. A productive grassland. Then add cattle. Hungry cattle. […]
Watering the Garden in Winter Makes Sense
Winter in the grassland is not a time of waiting. This is when the year is actively formed. To collect the water you will need in the spring, you need to start […]
Mystery Solved!
Thanks for helping, everyone! My mystery plant from yesterday, the one creeping along the upper shore of Okanagan Lake… … is no mystery. It is cleavers: Cleavers is a sister of coffee, […]
The Tree Whisperer: My New Book on the Poetry of Tree Pruning
This is a beautiful book, that holds 51 years of my personal tree pruning experience, and a few thousand years of ancestral experience behind it. This hand-made book is just out from […]
Some Things Ripen, Some Don’t
It will be a couple months yet for these grapes in Vernon. If they make it. The weather is turning cold. 23 or 24% sugar is a high bar. Perhaps, we should […]
A Grassland is Not Just Grass
Here’s a cut on the Grey Canal Trail in Vernon, that was planted into blue bunch wheatgrass about 15 years ago. Bluebird boxes were installed on the fence (you can see one […]
The Problem With Stock Photos
There’s this important article about low wages in vineyards in the Okanagan: https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/opinion/opinion-mla-ben-stewart-apparently-wants-bc-workers-to-be-paid-as-little-as-possible-4206374?fbclid=IwAR0D42Rq3CmDC5WqDXd3HY7Hog-J_Y8-qxKPEAFopi5OJ4GfN9BDN4VlAiA This image is attached to it: I don’t know where Carlos Bezz took this image, but this isn’t a […]
Honeybees are a Red Herring
Bees are attracted to pretty flowers. Wasps, too. In a healthy grassland, flowers continue all spring and summer and into the fall, with flowers for the big bumblers and tiny wasps and […]
Okanagan Okanogan 