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Growing fruits, vegetables and other edibles using organic, sustainable, duplicatable methods.
Frost Warning tonight. Busy day after a busy Thanksgiving weekend. Wanted to can some apple butter and apple sauce, but instead I spent naptime madly harvesting all remaining veggies from the garden: 3 green cabbages 1/2 dozen japanese eggplants of varying sizes 2-3 dozen peppers, green and purple, of varying sizes 3 over-sized zucchini 1 [...]
The orchard is throwing up apples. We don’t spray for pests or diseases, and we stopped pruning years ago – call it laziness, busy-ness, whatever – but every two or three years, we have perfect growing weather and in spite of our lack of attention, the trees give us a fantastic harvest. This year is [...]
So our old raccoon is back and, clearly, is no longer deterred by my little green box. He knocked down half my corn stalks last night. There were little nibbles where the ear would have developed. I decided to pull all remaining plants, leaving nothing for the little b—–d to get his fingers on. I’ve [...]
June was a blur. But the garden grows without me, now, so there’s little to do there except wait for the harvest. The peas are just finishing, the beans are just starting, the greens are continuing, and the tomatoes are full size and ready to change colour. I have never had such a lush vegetable [...]
Miscellaneous updates for the past week: Fertilized the tomatoes. Replanted (third time) yellow beans; eleven of the original twelve plants had been chewed off by a furry foe. Lost one pepper plant to some critter that left the plant mostly intact, but nibbled on the stem just enough to make it flop over in despair. Planted [...]
It took all winter to come up with a decent garden plan, but at this point, it’s mostly gone to hell. It happens every year, though this year it’s comical. The tomatoes are in the general vicinity of where they were planned to be, as are the peppers and summer squash; there are fewer of them, though. [...]
All tomatoes are planted – only 18 plants this year, less than half of the previous year – but with a little extra care and diligence I could end up reaping the same harvest. We shall see. I lost one tomato to a cutworm, another to a raccoon. To fend off more cutworms, I decided [...]
It’s been an amazing week for gardening, weather wise. On Monday, I sowed cilantro, green pole beans, yellow bush beans and shelling peas. I also finally transplanted my ailing onions and leeks, and my stellar parsley; they should have been put in the ground ages ago. Wednesday, I sowed more beets and carrots; also chard, corn [...]
I like manual labour. I like to see immediate results of my efforts. Weeding dandelions is a perfect example. I’ve been pulling them almost daily. It’s very satisfying work. I already have a fridge full of leaves, so today’s harvest went straight to the compost pile. My first planting of beets did not germinate. Have to [...]
My records indicate that the earliest I’ve ever planted is April 2. That was in 2004. This year, I beat it by one day. On April 1st, I sowed the following: Lolla Rossa Lettuce Red Oakleaf Lettuce Tatsoi Mustard Sylvetta Golden Detroit Beet Early Wonder Beet Easter Egg Radish Sparkler Radish In the two [...]
I have spinach in my garden! The one bed that was to have been my “winter greens” experiment (but was ultimately destroyed when my hoop house collapsed under a foot of snow) is waking up and producing green, baby! In celebration of the discovery, each of us sampled a perfect tiny little leaf, then went and [...]
Herb gardens, salad gardens, cutting gardens, butterfly gardens, knot gardens, rock gardens, water gardens, rose gardens, wildlife gardens, potagers. What about a juicing garden? I’ve reorganized and replotted my garden four times already. The latest version includes a juicing garden, designed to ease my transition to an 80% raw foods diet. Some of the best juicing [...]
I’ve spent the last several days going through my old seeds and deciding what to use and what to toss. I generally have no trouble germinating seeds that are three or four years old. I don’t even store them under particularly ‘seed-friendly’ conditions, and yet many of them still produce. Now, that’s fine, of course, [...]
Three weeks into the year and I’ve already received all of my seed catalogues. I’ve spent the last few days laying out my garden plan on the computer. Already the list of jobs to do (outside of planting, seeding, etc) is a mile long. We usually begin with whatever jobs weren’t finished last year. Makes [...]
I was worried that my beautiful greens might take a wee bit of a hit tonight (-2 predicted), so we rigged a temporary mini hoophouse over the garden bed. It was a very last minute decision – made at about 4pm – and I think we did well. We happened to have several yards of [...]
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