garden plots in the snow

On this last day of the year, Skippy, Steve and I walked though our community garden plots and the adjacent fields and woods. We got about 7 inches of snow yesterday - our first real snow of the season. Everything was beautiful. Bright blankets of white, song sparrows and chickadees out and about, and lots of dogs and their people out enjoying it all.

tiny little sweet potato sprouts!

About a month ago, I selected a couple sweet potatoes and put them in little bowls of water, hoping to get them to sprout. I put them on the floor by the heater, but since they got in the way there, I moved them to my plant shelf. Today I checked on them - sadly, no sprouts yet. :-(

Then later, as I was selecting a sweet potato for dinner from my basket in the kitchen, I found that one of these had tiny little sprouts! Yippee!!! I put this tuber in a bowl with water. Finally, I have a sprouting sweet!

I am guessing that this one sprouted because it was stored in the warm kitchen, quite near the oven. Maybe the room with the plant shelf is too cold for sprouting sweets? In any case, it is exciting to have one sprouting. As I learned last season, one sweet potato makes a lot of slips, and one slip makes a lot of sweets.

garden christmas gifts - given and received

This year I gave, and received, a number of gifts made from homegrown garden produce or items to use in the garden.

Dried herbs: This year I dried lots of my garden thyme, rosemary, sage, hot red chilis, and coriander seeds. I packed these in little jars (from Crate and Barrel) and used ribbon to tie on labels.

Hand-decorated dried gourds: My brother-in-law found a fantastic source for the most creative decorated gourds I have seen. I love the tall snowman gourd that is now on my mantle! I'll add more photos and the source later.

Planting basket: My sister gave me a Smart Pot. Its a 10 gallon container made of a porous aeration fabric. (www.smartpots.com) I can't wait to try it.

And, I received a stack of wonderful books!

my on-line planting calendar is fixed now

Stan and Jan reminded me that my On-line Planting Calendar link was broken. So I have just now fixed it. It is exciting that it is time to start thinking about planting!!!

If you haven't tried this calendar before, its a piece of code I wrote that lets you calculate when to plants all sorts of vegetable seeds based on your last frost date.

Here's the link: Calendar link.

The link is also near the top of my sidebar.

Bo checks out the White House tree:

\http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lce5gWKgMXI
I like this video!

today's harvest

Baby bok coy - one of my favorites! I wore a head lantern to go out and find my cold frame in the 5 pm winter darkness this evening. The greens in the frame are looking really nice.

Our dinner tonight was bok choy stir-fried with garlic, sauteed garden sweet potatoes and kielbasa. It was a yummy winter meal. We are waiting for 4-6 inches of snow to fall on us tomorrow.

advancing cold front

We've had a nice couple days of 60*F weather. Skippy and I have enjoyed walking our usual trails in the balmy warmth. But a cold front is moving in. That's December....

more 2012 crop reviews

Carrots. I didn't do a good job with carrots this year. Lots of room for improvement here next year. I've grown great carrots in the past, but for some reason, decided to experiment this year. I learned what not to do. Carrots sprout slowly and they need to stay moist. This is hard for me since I grow them at my community plot and don't have time to go water every day. So I sowed my carrots in pots and and transplanted the seedlings, like I do for nearly every other crop I grow. The results were terrible - short, badly misshapen, bi-, tri- and quadru-furcated roots. Next year, my plan is to dirext sow and use burlap the hold the moisture.

Chiles. Overall a very good year for chiles. I grew lots of NuMex Joe E Parker, poblanos,Thai hots and cayenne. Also a yellow bell that never turned yellow, but was very nice as a green bell pepper. I tried some other varieties also, but these did the best for me.

Cucumbers. It was a super cuke year! I had 6 or 8 varieties, long and short ones, white and green ones. I love to grow way too many cucumbers. Diva is still my favorite variety, but a close second is the long and crispy Sooyow Nishiki. Cucumbers do well in the very protected and slightly shady space my side yard.

Eggplant. My eggplants got shaded by my cucumbers this year. They eventually produced a nice crop, late in the season. I like the little bicolor Thai variety (Tiger) and a big purple oval one (Classic). I'll try to remember to give them more space next year.

Garlic. A bad garlic year. :-( I planted 100 cloves last fall, but at least half of it rotted in the ground. I think because I planted too late and did not mulch. We had a nearly snow free winter, and the soil in my garlic bed was like hardpan it was so dry. I havested about 40 nice big cloves. With so few, I didn't have enough to eat and plant next year. I bought some new seed garlic: The variety Music, which I am looking forward to trying. My current variety is Duganski.

Green beans.

december cold frame

My cold frame is full of greens. The baby bok choy is a good size for eating now, and I love the thought that it should hold at this size for months in the cold. The other plants are a bit small for harvesting. They'll grow more in March, when the sunlight increases.


There are a couple of pots of greens that I didn't have room to plant. I am reminded now that I juts left them in the center of the frame. They don't enough soil and are dying. I hate to throw out seedlings.

My cold frame is being held together with more and more duct tape as tome goes on. And the wood supports have warped a bit and so my husband stapled old towels to block the the cold air from blowing in the spaces.

I have visions of rebuilding it sometime. I'd like a brick base. But there are so many options to decide on. Plastic or glass panes? Walk in or lift up panels? Kit, custom, or homemade? Heated? Same size or bigger or smaller?

snow

We had a powder sugar coating of snow on the garden on this first day of December. It accumulated to about 1.5 inches. It stayed around a day or two, and then melted back to bare ground.

I'm reminded of my fig tree as I look at this picture. It's still sitting in the garden in a pot, unprotected. I have read that its hardy down to about 10*F. We're not close to that yet, but we'll likely get down there in a few weeks. I'm thinking that once the temps fall a bit more, I'll bring it in to my heated porch where my Meyers lemon spends the winter.

today's harvest

Today, I harvested the last of my leeks, 2 tiny heads of savoy cabbage, 2 big heads of bok choi, a few tiny beets, a giant bunch of kale, and 4 or 5 big heads of frizzy escarole.

There was snow still in the center of the bok choi, left over from a light dusting we got last night. The air temp was right about freezing as I harvested, 33*F, I think. The ground is not yet frozen, but is icy cold. My hands got very chilly and muddy as I harvested. I took my time and enjoyed what is probably my last day out in the garden for a while.

After wandering and admiring this and that, oblivious to everything else, I realized Skippy had stolen my mittens. He snuck up to the chair where I put them and took both of them. Then he left the garden quickly with them and started barking at me. That teaser! I was taking way too long and delaying his walk. I chased him a while - we both had fun. I eventually got both mittens back, warmed my hands AND Skippy got a nice walk.

My harvest filled 3 grocery bags quite nicely. As I left with my bags, I was thinking how I enjoy this so much more than going to a grocery store.

Now all that's left outside in my gardens is kale. Our forecast is for more chilly weather to come.

Thanksgiving brussels sprout harvest

For Thanksgiving, I harvested my first ever crop of Brussels sprouts. They were tiny, the size of marbles. And not very many of them. We added some store bought sprouts and my sister made a nice dish of them for our feast day.

my how-to videos are ready

How to Harvest Perennial Bunching Onions -- powered by ehow

A couple weeks ago, Skippy and I shot some garden "how-to" videos. Well, it was certainly mostly the work of our video producer to put these together. Skippy and I just goofed off and had fun in the garden and Alan Mack (Spinning Horse Productions) did an amazing job to make it all come together.

I was pretty nervous to do this project, as I've never done video before (neither has Skip, though I don't think he was all that nervous). I hope these videos are helpful to gardeners. I would appreciate any input about content or quality. Demand Video (E-How) sponsored them. They develop products that address the specific topics for which people are searching information.

Topics they asked me to do for my "Fall Garden" set include:

How to harvest perennial onions
How to plant pea seeds in the fall
How to remove dahlias
How to store dahlia tubers
How to grow sprouted garlic
How to save seeds and start a life saving garden
How to harvest chile peppers
How to protect seeds with burlap
How to harvest summer squash
How to pick squash
Easiest way to grow leeks

I hope you enjoy these videos. Many of them have Skippy in them. The other black dog is Skippy's girl friend Koby - Alan's black lab. They look calm in the videos, but they had the run of the garden when the camera was off!!!

2012 crop review

Beets. I grew a lot of different varieties this year. Bulls Blood, Detroit Red and White, Chiogga, Lutz, Cylindra, Early Wonder, Red Ace, Round Red Merlin, Blankoma. I like them all! But it was not a great year for my beets. I just never had enough of them. I planted a great crop for my parents. In March, I direct seeded a good thick row of Detroit Red in their garden. They came up well and produced all season and my parents were really happy with them. They gave me several bunches. Next year - MORE beets in my garden!

Broccoli. Super crop, again. I have have several really good years of broccoli. I grew "Diplomat" this year. Very nice. I plant it early under lights and it gives a nice big head and them side shoots til October. My fall crop was not worth the effort, especially since the spring one was still producing and I love the small side shoots. I had a 4 x 4 foot patch with 12 plants.

Bok Choi. I am almost jumping up and down about finding two SUPER varieties of bok choy this year! I love bok choy stir fried with garlic and ginger and in a nice sauce, in fried rice, or grilled outside with a peanut marinade. Win-Win Choi is a big plant with lovely white stems and deep green leaves. Mei Qing Choi is a "baby choi" that doesn't bolt even if its gets big - super for grilling. Yummy, yummy, yummy .....

Cabbage. Another super crop. I grew Savoy (Alcosa), Napa, and Red (Super Red 80). These worked well both as spring and fall crops. I love these three varieties for cole slaw and salads. Also braised along side a roast. I don't eat that much cabbage, but a few heads are really nice to have as they are one of the prettiest plants in the garden.

thyme harvest

I picked a big bowl of thyme the other day. My thyme patch has grown rampant in the past year and is overtaking the blueberry and bean space. I let the bunch dry about a week and now I am working on separating the dried leaves and stems. I'd like to have enough for my for winter use (and maybe for holiday gifts in pretty little jars.... I found some nice jars at Ikea....).

starting to sprout sweet potatoes

To get a head start, I put my sweets for sprouting in small bowls with half filled with water. I lined them up under the radiator for extra warmth. I will be collecting some pint jars (and toothpicks) for setting them up correctly soon. Here is a great link for reading about how to sprout sweets: Starting Sweet Slips.

I have three varieties starting. Two from my harvest from this year (Jewel's and Hannah's - these are dry textured, orange and white flesh) and a new one I picked up at the supermarket last week, (Beauregard - a moist orange type). These are three of the most common commercial varieties. I am thinking I will also try ordering a few heirloom slips from Sandhill Preservation next year. They have some very nice assortments: their choice of heirloom varieties, 2 types $5. Sounds good to me!

today's harvest

Today I harvested big and baby bok choy, tiny heads of red and savoy cabbage, a lot of lettuce and escarole, a big bunch of parsnips, and one overlooked carrot.

2012 crop review

At the end of the year, I like to go through my crops from last year, one-by-one, and write down the successes, failures and what I'd like to do different next year.

Going alphabetical the first is:
Apples. Well I'm starting the list off with a failure. No apples this year from my dwarf Fuji tree :-( I forgot to spray it with dormant oil before the buds broke this spring. The tree got badly infected with something. No flowers and no fruit. Also, growth of a maple to the east has shaded it more. Last winter we took down a big branch, maybe not in time to affect this year's flowers and fruit. Hopefully next year added light and timely dormant oil application will give us some apples. An added note, this summer I pruned the tree back quite a bit. I removed a lot of sucker growth and shortened the length of all branches.

Asparagus. I was able to harvest one small meal from my 3 year old patch this year. It was yummy. It seems that the spears grow faster than I had realized and that I'll need to harvest daily to catch them at the right point for eating. Many escaped me this year and got to big for eating. I expanded my asparagus patch this year and put in about 10 more new crowns. Its now about 4 x 5 ft. I fertilized with liquid fish fertilizer and kept it watered and weeded well this year. The ferns looked really nice. I cut them down a couple weeks ago and they are providing mulch for the plants now. I'll add some hay to the top next time I am at the plot. I am definitely looking forward to a BIG harvest of asparagus next spring!!

Basil. I planted a big patch of basil under the tomatoes. Then, when late blight was spotted nearby early, I started spraying the tomatoes with copper. This seemed to seriously damage the basil. The leaves looked burnt. I pulled all the plants after a couple weeks of spraying. Next year, no basil under tomatoes. The basil grows better in my sheltered side yard garden anyway and is more convenient to harvest there. I am thinking of planting all herbs in my side yard next year.

It was 70*F today. Balmy! The whole weekend was warm and melted all our snow. My Brussels sprouts should be growing fast. Only just over a week til I am hoping to harvest them for Thansginving Day dinner.

snow .....

The wind is coming out of the northeast again and this time we have fluffy white snow coming down. Snow is gathering on my unraked yard and on trees still holding their leaves. Snow on pumpkins with the squirrels tunneling in to eat the seeds. Snow on fall roses and yellow marigolds, kale and Brussels sprouts.

Yesterday was the first hard frost in the Boston suburbs. My dahlia turned black and marigolds wilted back. My sheltered geranium and rose are still blooming. I brought my Meyers lemon inside to overwinter in the living room.

It seems that winter is here.

Midnight: 3 or 4 inches of snow have fallen by now. My husband put snow tires on his bicycle tonight and he got out my car scraper for me. Plows are scraping the roads now and its only early November!

4 more years for the white house garden!!!

election day question

Will the White House Kitchen Garden will get four more years?

- photo by katieb82981

to the start of another week - cheers!

Today I pulled the carrots I sowed in August. Pretty baby carrots. Somehow a rabbit seems to have found his way into the garden and ate off most of the carrot greens. I am fascinated that he only ate the carrots. Next year I am planning a chicken wire tunnel over the carrots.

I ended up harvesting about a dozen heads of lettuce today as there may be a hard frost tonight. Some lettuce plants I dug and moved into my cold frame to see how they do there over the winter. I also harvested leeks, walking onions, Savoy cabbage, bok choi, baby beets and baby carrots.

To end the day, we tried a new combination of veggies in a martini: baby carrots, walking onions and an olive. I highly recommend it!

garden work

This weekend, I am preparing my home gardens for winter.

First thing, I took down the six tomato plants growing there. As I did this, I realized I've never taken down tomatoes here before a frost. The plants had stopped growing from low light so I removed them. Always a first for everything. The forecast seems to maybe have a frost here in the Boston suburbs soon.

I'm getting more experience with my cold frame each year. I suspect everyone's cold frame is different, with their own temperature and light levels. My particular issue is that the house next door blocks my light when the sun is at it's lowest. I have great sun March to Sept, then nothing Oct to Feb. It seems if I plant seedlings after I remove my summer crops from the cold frame, there isn't enough time for them to grow big enough to produce winter harvests. So, once again, I have my cold frame full of small seedlings that I know (from the last two winters) will not grow again Feb or March. I will have good greens then, which is super, but I'd love to get some fresh greens midwinter too. I do have an idea for another experiment: I have a big crop of greens at my community plot now. They are fully grown and more than we can eat. I will see if I can transplant these, squeeze them into my cold frame for mid winter harvests. It's always fun to try something new.

Tomorrow's To-Do list:
Finish lifting my dahlias and begonia tubers.
Plant my spring flower bulbs. I have about a million bulbs to plant (well maybe 200) in hopes of a fine spring and an easy winter.
Transplant some greens from my community plot to my cold frame.
Put the covers on my cold frame and repair any rips in the plastic for winter.
After this work - see if I can find a nice little veggie to go in a fall martini!

late blight resistant tomato seed

Does anyone have experience with late blight resistant tomatoes?

After all the problems we have had the past few years, we would like to provide our community gardeners with late blight resistant tomato seedlings next spring. I am looking into the best varieties.

I am thinking of trying these:
Defiant PhR (Johnny's Seed)
Mountain Magic (Johnny's Seed)
Plum Regal (Johnny's Seed)
Ferline (Thompson and Morgan)
Legend (Reimer Seeds)

garden work

Today Skippy and I finished digging my sweet potatoes. I am glad to have lots of orange and white sweets in my larder for winter storage.

I also dug my dahlia tubers. They will go in plastic bags and hang from rafters in my basement.

Yesterday I visited a wonderful new small farm a mile from house. I talked with the farmer about tomatoes and late blight. I bought a bunch of his big fat carrots and a bag full of French horticultural beans. Someday soon I am hoping I can add some photos of his small farm.

happy halloween!!!

Here are some pumpkins on the doorsteps in my neighborhood.