The Season Thus Far

It’s been a busy summer of gardening, harvesting, cooking and preserving.  This year is, for me, the most productive season I’ve ever had.  The early spring gave us an early summer which, in turn, gave us an early harvest.  The dry start was scary, but eventually gave way to an almost perfect schedule of rain [...]

All You Can Eat Buffet

Microgreens

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 [...]

Plan G

Garden Plan

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.  [...]

Tomato Transplant Time

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 [...]

Dandesparabarb

A Good Spring Day

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 [...]

Down and Dirty Nice and Early

Spring Raised Beds

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 [...]

Microgreens

Microgreens

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, [...]

It’s Never Too Early

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 [...]

It Looks Like a Plant, It Behaves Like a Plant, It’s Not a Plant

I harvested potatoes and onions today. The onions are perfect, round and uniform – I’m quite pleased. The only bummer is that I didn’t plant enough of them. The potatoes are from my second planting, which I did in the experimental stacked bins. Russet Burbanks in all three. RBs are …

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