Herbs editor
Tristan Aoki
Tristan Aoki grows about eighty herb varieties on a small property in southern Kyoto and edits Wintergreen's Herbs section.
Beats
Published in Wintergreen Quarterly
The Codling Moth Pheromone Trap on a Small Orchard
Tristan Aoki spends a year monitoring three apple trees in southern Kyoto with a single five-dollar pheromone trap, and reports what he learned about timing his only spray.
The Glasshouse Floor as a Design Decision
Tristan Aoki compares concrete, gravel, brick, and bare earth as glasshouse floors, and finds that the question is older and more consequential than it appears.
A Japanese Saw for the Home Gardener
A Silky Gomboy 240, carried in a leather scabbard through a season of fruit pruning, brush clearance, and one small carpentry job, and the case for the pull-stroke in the garden.
The Tea Pea of Coleraine
An Irish heritage pea, nearly lost in the 1980s, kept alive by one family and now back in the seed exchanges of three countries.
Twenty-Six Square Feet in Shimokitazawa
On a third-floor balcony in west Tokyo, a translator grows seventeen herbs, three tomatoes, and a single fig tree, and considers what a garden owes its keeper.
Compost Tea and What It Actually Does
Tristan Aoki tests the claims for actively aerated compost tea on a Kyoto vegetable plot over two growing seasons, and reports what he observed.
A Polytunnel as a Household Appliance
Tristan Aoki spends a year with a 24-by-12 polytunnel in suburban Kyoto and concludes it is less a garden structure than a kitchen extension.
A Cottage Garden in a Brooklyn Side Yard
Tristan Aoki visits a fourteen-by-thirty-eight-foot plot in Carroll Gardens where a former chef has built an English-style border between two brownstones.
Preserving Herbs Without Freezing
Salt, oil, vinegar, paper, and the older grammar of keeping a summer garden through January.
Twelve Months at Great Dixter
A Wintergreen contributor spent a year on the gardening staff at Great Dixter in East Sussex, and came home with a notebook of weather, failures, and one very good salad burnet.
Rosemary Indoors Through a Boston Winter
A nineteen-year-old plant, a south-facing window in Jamaica Plain, and the long quiet argument with the radiator.