As gardeners we often don’t get to work in a field.  It’s a different thing altogether to work in a field than in a garden. There is all that space, sky, sun. You walk from one end to the next (diagonally, so as to get the most out of it) and throughout the soil is soft and …
Category Archives: garden
Last Potato Harvest
Almost a bucket full of potatoes. 5.5 lbs of Red Marias and 14 lbs of Salem from one bed (22 feet). That’s similar to the potato bed up front, of earlies, which yielded 12 lbs from 16 feet. Also some last squashes, cherry tomatoes, cukes and some errant onions. What’s left is kale, chard, a …
Local Lunch and other Food
Pickling summer squash into a relish, using this recipe (which is not an endorsement, just a record so that, if we do like it, I know how I prepared it – {UPDATE: After tasting it, I DO endorse it}), CSA squashes, zucchinis and green peppers colonizing my fridge and homegrown onions. (for the record: I …
First Day of School Harvest
Amie was so excited about the first day of school (third grade) that she was awake until 11:30 last night. Still, she was up bright and early and happily went off to school. First thing I did after she and DH had left was visit the garden. I harvested all the beans from the other …
A Day of Food
In the afternoon I felt better. A friend came over – with three carrots from her garden, instantly eaten – to sort through what turns out to be 160 lbs of peaches. We put aside the ripest ones for canning tomorrow, but the rest will be ready on Friday. We’re going to put up peaches …
What’s Been Happening
I laid down the first three rows of the brick wall for the earth oven (more on that soon). It didn’t have to be pretty (we’ll cover this with mud in the end), just strong. Though I got in a groove, I decided to wait to open another bag of cement and put down another …
Designing a Garden
A group of us hammered out the mission of our Community Garden plots today. What a lovely meeting, dreaming, brainstorming, opening reference books… and all the while freeing the oats. So good to have something to do with the hands while conceptualizing. We started by putting together a mission plan, a dream: Â why this garden? …
Heat Wave Foods
We’re (hopefully) at the tail end of the second  heat wave of the summer. The house, after accumulating heat over the past days, hit 88 at 3 pm, with 70% humidity. Outside, in the shade, it reached 97F (36C) . But it seems I’ve acclimatized. I wouldn’t say that I was comfortable, but it was …
Goings On
Wild strawberries, which are said to be deadly when overripe, as these were: deadly because you die of disappointment: no taste, whatsoever. Bummer! A surprise patch of St. John’s Wort – this after trying to grow it from seed (50 seeds, only one germinated). Thank you! Hive 3 swarmed on the 16th and alighted in …
Eating from the Garden Again and the Little Activist
In the afternoon I picked a huge salad for a party we’re going to this evening. All of this is from our garden: Lettuce, mache, minutina, sorrel, claytonia (with flowers), radicetta, kale, chard, lamb’s quarters Amie will eat only greens from our garden. Yesterday after school she got to go with my friend M and …
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