When my husband first began teaching, he was amazed at the number of textbook offers he got each semester - publishers who wanted him to review and rate existing textbooks. Some even wanted him to suggest ideas for new ones, and they offered to help him submit manuscripts. "This is ridiculous!" he would often say. "Why would I write my own textbook when there are so many others out there?"

After a few years of teaching, however, he began to see why this idea was so appealing. One book might have excellent information in one area, but another area was under-represented or poor; if he was teaching a complex course, he'd have to pool together information from several texts. And some information seemed to have been left out of all the books completely; in those cases, he'd assign reading from periodicals or even (gasp!) websites.

R. J. Ruppenthal began writing Fresh Food From Small Spaces: The Square Inch Gardener's Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting and Sprouting after a similar experience. In the introduction, he writes, "I know firsthand of the need for this book, because I have been searching for it for many years." An staunch urbanite, he wanted to know how he could make the most of the space he had to grow usable, practical foods - enough for his family, and perhaps a little left over to share, barter or sell. (He got points in my book for using "grow" in a more expansive sense: not just fruits and vegetables but also honey, sprouts, eggs and mushrooms.) So he set to work doing research, and he came up with this collection of information.

The problem with the book, then, is exactly what makes it so useful to Ruppenthal: it's very personal. Not personal in the way of gardening memoirs, which use narrative to communicate important information; personal in the way of prioritizing according to fancy. For instance, there's a small section on cold frames (that actually references this book) but the author stops there, casually mentioning that you can buy a kit for around $100 online before moving on. When he comes to self-watering planters, however, he spends several pages detailing exactly how to make your own - and includes several down-and-dirty photos of what looks like a project he completed in his garage. Most of the ideas in this book suffer from similarly thin research; the three "t's" of vertical gardening (terracing, trellising and tumbling) are described in very little detail and without enough information to actually do it yourself, without getting some more books. A section on beekeeping is admittedly drawn from "books and from others who have raised bees and told me about it." The compost section contains both too much detail (charts detailing the N-P-K content of common manures) and too little (an interesting story about a sheet composting that takes a nosedive when the author admits he "cannot yet report on the results because the pile is still decomposing.") It reads very much like a personal journal, which it more useful at some times than others. The presence of many stock photos also erodes some of his credibility; it's as if he cobbled all of this information together to make a presentation, and he waited until the night before to look for visual aids.

The good points: There is a lot of good, solid information about fruit-bearing plants, both where to buy them and what to expect from them. Again, there is a disproportionate amount of information about pollination, but that was obviously a personal interest of his. The section on sprouting is also quite useful, including several recipe ideas to use up your bounty. The chapter about fermented foods (yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, etc.) is interesting, although I found Nourishing Traditions a far more thorough and well-researched source of information. I also thought the chapter titled "Survival During Resource Shortages" was both wise and timely.

This book falls into the category of books whose first chapter really, really excited me, but it failed to deliver. It could have been much more successful as a compendium of resources and data - where to find out more information about topics that interest you - or as a meandering memoir of a city-dweller with a conscience and a strict budget. I wish I could have read that book. But maybe that means I'll have to write it myself!

No bur is a friendly bur, but we have a variety of bur (or burr, depending on your taste for repeated consonants) here in central Texas that are colloquially referred to as "goatheads" and are basically armor-piercing plant husks that want to hurt you more than anything else. They puncture bicycle tires and feel like stepping on long, sharp tacks, designed as though they wished to nourish the nascent embryo with drops of fresh blood.

They were my introduction to the idea that a wild lawn like ours (seeded decades ago and only half-heartedly maintained) could not be walked in barefoot for several months out of the year.


The plant goatheads come from, Tribulus terrestris, is an Old World plant that is naturalized to the Americas, and also goes by the name goathead as well as puncture vine, yellow vine, and caltrop. It likes warmth and low moisture, and once it makes it's mark it is hard to get rid of because the seed is viable for 3-7 years.

Oddly, there is a person who is prepared to offer these seeds in trade. Maybe you could send the person a vial of skunk scent in exchange for them.

That said, they are lovely little pieces of natural weaponry, and in fact they have been weaponized: In southern Africa, goatheads have been smeared with the poisonous juices of another plant and scattered where a victim is expected to walk.

From the Onion opinion desk this week comes a column by Bur #318 entitled "I Have Completed Stage One Of Our Plan To Take Over The World." An excerpt:

Stage One, Sequence B: I have successfully attached myself to the host sock. As planned, the 100 percent cotton sock proved suitable for my naturally adhesive hooks. In this regard, our calculations were beyond sound - they were flawless. Prior concerns that wind resistance might prematurely dislodge me from the sock were entirely unfounded. The denim pant leg adjacent to the host sock acted as a protective barrier, holding me firmly in place for the duration of the journey.

Stage One, Sequence C: By my best estimate, I have successfully traveled 3.45 miles from Parent Organism Beta 51.2-6. I now sit at a prime vantage point from which to colonize the surrounding hills and meadows. Contact with foreign soil forthcoming.

If goatheads wrote a column, the text would read something like "Kill! Kill!"

I dislike lawn care, but I also dislike having a lawn covered in flesh penetrating devices.

We have never gone the route of pre-emergent pesticides with our lawn in the several years we've lived in our home - in part because we avoid toxic chemicals where we can and haven't done the research to figure out what's the least harmful effective option, and in part because we like the idea of a lawn "ecosystem" instead of a monoculture, which makes sense to us even more because we live in the country on two acres, which means a range of biomes beyond the basic "lawn" area. We like the idea of xeriscaping, but even this would be done in stages - two acres is a lot of space - and we may like to have some small patch of lawn when we're done, especially if it is not one that attacks us for several months out of the year.

Anyone have some simple suggestions for helping our lawn fend off these pointy invaders?

Top image by Karate Putter, shared via Flickr.

In my garden, the snow has compressed my leaf-mulch into a flat, wet, mat. So about this time of year, I de-limb the Christmas tree and chop the branches up into tiny pieces. Then I spread them in a thin layer around the base of my acid-loving plants. This mid-winter mulch protects the soil around my blueberries and native evergreen huckleberries.


Then I saw the Christmas tree trunk into 12 inch lengths and pile it up in an inconspicuous corner of the perennial garden. Come next year, this area will provide winter homes for beneficial insects. It also provides slug habitat, but my chickens will take care of those.

Someday it'll be expensive to ship in soil improvements. For that reason, anything you can add to your soil for free is money in the bank. I feel a bit guilty when I carry off my neighbor's fallen leaves every year.