The rain barrels were finally installed, all four of them, on Sunday, and for once I looked forward to the rain on Monday, which filled them all up in 15 minutes! We have a fifth (metal) barrel, a well-made one which we got from a neighbor, but before I use it I want to ask …
Category Archives: food (growing, cooking, preserving)
Garden Bounty
These are today’s pickings: green beans (mostly Provider), some mint and thyme, snipped onions tops and some more Swiss Chard. In a few weeks I’ll be laughing at the amounts in this picture (I hope)… Amie was picking too, buckwheat flowers in our patch up front. Some of the buckwheat has gone to seed, so …
Food from the Garden
I harvested the fingerling potatoes because I suspected Late Blight. If they had had one more month, they would’ve made for a good yield. Now… not so much. Let’s just say that 2.5 lbs of seed potato went in and less came out. You do the math! And please don’t call them cute. Potatoes from …
Thinking of Transition
a.
Rain and Slugs Slugs Slugs
It’s the middle of Summer and you wouldn’t say so. The Boston Globe reported that eastern Massachusetts may have had its “dimmest” June since recording began in 1885. Through June 22, Boston and vicinity had received just 32% of the available sunshine. In an average June, the region gets 55% of the possible sunshine between …
Oh no! BLIGHT! (?)
Via Skippy’s Vegetable Garden, which operates quite near to us, this news: If you grow tomatoes or potatoes, take heed. This is shaping up to be one of the worst years for Late Blight, the fungal disease made famous as the cause of the Irish potato famine of the mid-1800’s… Late blight is caused by …
Pictures of My Garden for my Grandfather
My grandfather passed away a few weeks ago, after a prolonged illness. Again I couldn’t be in Belgium for the funeral, nor could I fly over to see him during those three weeks that he was in the hospital. But I did call him at the hospital every other day. Usually the conversation was very …
The Mobility of Skills and Spirit
Someone asked me: What if you would have to move now? This was with reference to the vegetable garden, to which I have devoted many, many hours of hard labor and a whole lot more of research, hopes and dreams. My answer was: It would be no problem. Really? You could leave all of this …
So Tired!
Now I really AM tired! We spent the day digging a long one foot trench, then installed the fence. We’re talking 150 feet of trench/fence in mostly stone and rootbound soil. We still have 1/3 to go. For budget reasons we went with simple chicken wire, three feet high. It doesn’t look too bad – …
So Tired
The beds (see here for map) Bed 3: beans. A couple of days ago I sowed garbanzo and lima beans, haricots verts and Provider bush beans. It’s so much fun, tucking in those beans: big, hefty, and immediate reminders of what you will be harvesting. The French lentils I sowed on the 13th have all …