Archive for the 'vegetable' 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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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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Summer Lunch

Summer has been cooler here than in prior years. So while tomatoes are really just starting to ripen and yield - finally!!!! - for real (a good 2 weeks past my usual tomato target date though), cabbage, kale (kale!!! in July! edible!) and lettuce greens are doing just well. On the other hand, the [...]

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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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S Is For Strawberries

Or is it for Swiss chard?
because my chard is doing quite well, thank you very much. I am now harvesting two big bunches a week, and with all that rain, and that nice temperature, it’s growing and growing and growing - as you can see from the photo taken just after a harvest, a couple [...]

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Asparagus!

or sparrow grass or sparr grass. But an asparagus by any other name is still an asparagus.

I learned my lesson from last year: pick every single spear, the huge fat ones (some are larger than my thumb) as well as the skinny ones during asparagus picking season (from 2 to 8 weeks depending on the [...]

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