Archive for the 'Kitchen Garden' Category

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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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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On Chicken

The chicken have moved to their winter quarters.

We’ve taken the wire fence from the summer garden down; moved the electric net fence to enclose the new chicken area; relocated the coop inside the old summer garden, and built a little dome shelter - complete with perches - so the chicken can be outside [...]

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Still Harvesting

Last evening I saw the man in the moon. In the incredible Hunter’s Moon that hanged, powerful and enormous, for a short while. As I was driving home, the sun sinking behind the mountains at my back , the majestic Moon was rising in the Eastern sky, capturing and reflecting the dying light from [...]

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On Ground Cherries

Shall we talk about ground cherries?
mmm… say you politely, really? Ground cherries?
You are not the only one to wonder… the year I gave ground cherry jam to friends for Christmas, I got some puzzled looks: this is cherry? you grind them? why? that’s an unusual color… and what about all the seeds?…
Yes, it needed a [...]

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it’s summer, you eat … WHAT???!!!

Purslane: I call it a nutritious easy to grow crunchy little green (now officially renamed par moi a “super gourmet green” !). Add it to green salads, or - my favorite - to potato salad. Other people like it too: El - of course! (go to this post for a picture … if you need [...]

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Peppers Before Tomatoes

That’s really not the way it’s supposed to work, but that’s how it’s working this year.
Despite having started my tomato plants early in February, I did not plant most of them them until fairly late, and since they don’t hold as well in pots as peppers do, the peppers are harvestable - not yet the [...]

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One Local Summer

The kitchen garden is really coming into its own now.
We are eating lots of salad greens and cooked greens (kale, mustard, Swiss chard, escarole); peas (both mange-tout/sugar snap and shelling peas) have just started and should go through the end of the month. Still a few spears of asparagus, despite my resolve to let the [...]

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