What’s Cooking

Compost bin 1 at 92 degrees F In the Germination Area sowed second batch of Onions, Leeks, Catnip sowed first batch of Garlic Chives 2 Rosemary sprouts emerged 1 Parsley sprout 15 Sweet Marjoram 15 Thyme 3 tiny Mint sprouts 1 Lemon Balm sprout (but it’s probably a stray Marjoram) 1 Pepper seedling (looks stuck …

Too Much (Fun)!

Mama’s potting bench in the basement The situation at our “homestead” is very complex, and getting more so as I gather more information and experience. I feel like I’m that not-so-proverbial teacher who is only one step ahead of her students, and I’m teaching French!  Today, for instance, I was transplanting the lettuce seedlings (the …

Believing in Myself On this Glorious Day

The Pachy Patch in Summer 2008 yesterday was a perfect summer, spring, winter’s day: cloudless sky, 60F, the mildest of breezes, and some good hard labor. I went out, turned the two defrosted compost bins and then tackled the Pachysandra patch, a.k.a. the vegetable garden. Ah Pachysandra… It took over five hours of hacking and …

Three for the Neighborhood, or How I Scored Unlimited Amounts of Horse Manure

One Our renovation project has so far generated a fair amount of scrap materials. Luckily it’s mostly wood and only some drywall, which is virtually not reusable.  Of the wood  DH and I have saved most: we take out the nails, tease off the drywall and have built up a nice stack of project wood …

Seed/Ling Update, and Thyme, Parsley and more Onions,

The Black-Seeded Simpson Lettuce is doing well. I fed it some Tomato Food (Terracycle Wormpoop) the other day, as it was immediately on hand. There were no instructions on the bottle, so I eyeballed it. Oops! Their leaves soon curled under, a sure sign of overfeeding. Luckily it wasn’t too bad. The wormpoop is a …

How Much Is the Garden Worth?

Kitchen Gardeners International has an interesting article on the worth of a home garden. The author, Roger Doiron, weighed the food coming out of his 1600 square feet garden in Maine (zone 5b/6) and calculated how much this food would have cost had he bought it in a conventional grocery store, a farmer’s market, or …

Miscellaneous

Yuck! I have one flat with green algae coating the surface. It started with one small spot and the next day it was all over. It shouldn’t harm the seeds directly, but it may smother them. The causes were (1) over-watering (beginner’s mistake), (2) the fact that the potting soil I’ve been using compacts too …

Riot Reckoning: Month 4

“Rekenen,” Dutch: to count Gasoline: doing much better at 16% Between us we consumed 20.3 gallons. That’s 6.77 gallons/person, that’s: 16% of the US national average. I have this great deal with another mom from Amie’s preschool: in lieu of my watching her kids for four hours a week, she watches Amie for two hours …

Sowed Peppers and Leek

Vegie update Of the Black Seed Simpson Lettuce, sowed last Saturday, all but 3 of the 36 plugs have germinated. I took off the dome and moved the flat to the seedling area, which isn’t heated or enclosed. It’s a steady 65F there, underneath the fluorescents. The Clear Dawn Onions, which I also sowed last …

More Seed Purchases

This time I went with Bountiful Garden, because they were one of the only companies selling the French Green Lentil we’ve been looking for. And while I was at it, I ordered the veggies I had forgotten and some more herbs for teas and bees. Here’s the list with Bountiful Garden’s descriptions (BF), which speak …