Archive for the 'Garden Technique' Category

The Taste Of Green

I simply love this time of the year when the days are clear, the nights are cool, the maples are blooming, the buds are swelling on the trees, and so many green things - good to eat too - are poking out of the ground, or just starting to grow for real.
Witness:

The acid green of [...]

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Growing Babies

Seven weeks old (seeded on January 25), and growing. Transplanted once already and soon again!
Those are my super early batch (The main batch was started on Feb22). They are a reliable tasty and prolific cherry tomato for me (Wetsel Red Cherry) and - cross our collective fingers - harvest should start in June. That’s the [...]

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On Spinach

A month ago, we were under 2 feet of snow with night temperatures in the single digits. This week we garden in short-sleeve shirts and harvest mache, baby lettuce, just-emerging sorrel, baby arugula, escarole and… spinach - lots and lots of spinach. Finally!

The spinach was not planted in the hoophouse but outside. Last spring we [...]

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A Gross Of Tomatoes

It does roll good off the tongue, doesn’t it? or is it just me?… “a gross of tomatoes”…
Except of course, they are not yet tomato plants, just 144 seeded cells with the promise of 144 seedlings. Seeded on Februray 22 (although the labels read 2/21 because I meant to do it on the 21st but [...]

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Seed Starting Madness Starts

Seasonal madness has started. Seed starting madness that is. There is still snow on the ground - although slowly melting, but this is the time of the year to start seeds for earlier crops.
In late January (1/25), I started a few Red Cherry tomatoes, as well as 2 flats of peppers. Four weeks later, [...]

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Planning for Tomatoes

We may have two feet of snow on the ground, but the early tomato seedlings have germinated.
I do like to pick my first tomatoes in June, so I plant a few seedling in late January. They germinate in early February, and I keep up-potting them into bigger pots until it is time to plant them [...]

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More on Growing In Hoop Tunnels

This is Swiss Chard in the garden today, unprotected, after weeks of cold weather, night in the teens (F/- 7 C to -12 C) and days of bone-chilling howling winds with gusts at 50 miles/ h (80 km). Not pretty, right? Certainly not much to harvest…

This is Swiss Chard (and more) in the unheated hoop [...]

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Snow, What Snow?

2 feet of snow last week-end, temperatures in the lower teens (F/ about -12 C). I have not been in the hoophouse for about a week, and frankly I was not sure how it was going to be in there. Would I have mush? It after all, got cold quite suddenly after a long mild [...]

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Before The Rain

Before the rain is a good time to:
1. transplant Swiss chard

2. transplant lettuce

3. check on tomato seedlings in greenhouse. Sigh. Too early to transplant outside. BUT

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Volunteer Seedlings

Among the pleasure of the early spring garden is the hunt for the wanted volunteers: dill pokes its elongated slim first leaves among the sowed arugula while cilantro is coming up now in the pea bed - both bright green, brightly flavored, their unmistakable pungency released when you crush or brush them. Both are [...]

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