STEM

Practicing Gratitude

Practicing gratitude is a woefully underrated skill in 21st Century America. We are consumed by the desire for efficiency and disdain inconvenience as if it were a mortal sin. We are allergic to nuisance. none of this is a sin,…

A Garden of People and Ideas

Mezzacello is an enclosed urban garden ecosystem. There are many gardens on the property. One of the most important is the gardens of people and ideas. What do I mean when I say a garden of people and ideas? Well,…

2022/2023 Internships
Volunteer Olivia helping to rabbit proof the urban garden beds.

The Humble Chicken Tractor

The ins and outs of how to build, deploy, and care for various poultry in a chicken tractor in the city; or in the country.

Chicken Tractor
The PVC chicken tractor with a new tarp for the top.

Lasagna Garden Mid Summer Update

It’s mid summer at Mezzacello. Today many of the garden beds are resting after harvest. Seedling are coming along in the greenhouse and I am fortifying the lasagna beds with molecular iron and magnesium sulphate (Ironite and Epsom Salts) and…

Preservation, Seed Vegetables, and Recycling

I am continuing the midsummer harvest from the soil-free lasagna garden beds. Today it was another bushel of red potatoes, a bushel of shallots, and a bushel of red onions. I gathered them all in inexpensive laundry baskets lined with…

Preparing redskin potatoes, planted in March for storage. And shallots from a 14th Century French heirloom seed. Ooh La La!

The Power and Problem of Rogue Plants

It can be easy to allow a volunteer plant to grow in a garden. You can have many reasons why this will appear to be a good idea. You might see it as free food, or maybe the birds love…

Turnip greens ready for a minor harvest.

Life in the Aquatic Ecosystem

­Many of my posts about the pond or as I like to call it, the aquatic ecosystem, have been complaints about the system in crisis. It is true; this pond was built on an Indian Burial ground and feels cursed….

A love shot in the pond at Mezzacello. Three generations of fish in one shot.

Rats, Mosquitoes and Squash Bugs Beware

Pests. Can’t live with them and (at least on Earth) can’t live without them. From rats in the alley eating trash to mosquitoes breeding somewhere in shallow water, to squash nymphs surviving in the same nutrient dense compost I have…

This zucchini was ravaged but alive yesterday and this morning, but suffered catastrophic collapse late this afternoon.

The Most Beautiful Compost

My favorite aspect of Mezzacello is the #ZeroWaste strategy we strive to employ here. Nothing is whimsical; if you have nothing to add to the greater welfare of the ecosystem you have no purpose here. Rick and I violate this…

One of the two 18m hydrangea hedges at Mezzacello.

Gilligan’s Island meets MacGyver meets Ray Bradbury

When I was a young boy I would watch the reruns of “Gilligan’s Island” every afternoon. I would laugh and enjoy the larger than life characters and situations. My favorite and most despised character was the professor. How could someone…

Bamboo, jute string, coconut fiber, steel, and Martian regolith compost in one photo.