Amie and the Fedco catalog Homemade rice pudding in one of my pots. Garden planning (in Plangarden)
Category Archives: garden
Garden Goals for 2013 (and Beyond)
Ah, it’s 2 degrees out, but bright and sunny and in between running out to swap out the chickens’ frozen water I am dreaming of the garden. My goal for 2013 is to do more work on the homestead, because I realized what an opportunity we have here, to build a place that is a …
Edible Mushrooms in my Garden and Neighborhood
You may remember I tried to grow King Stropheria in a bed of sawdust and leaves. Unfortunately it dried out and I never got any shrooms from it. But my mushroom adventures just began anew. I learned a while ago that a neighbor is a hobby mycologist and I expressed interest. Today she came by …
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Two Ferments: Sauerkraut and Comfrey Liquor
The first one is sauerkraut. It is my first deliberately fermented food. A huge cabbage head came in our CSA box a couple of weeks ago. What to do with it? As I was reading Sandor Katz’s The Art of Fermentation, I couldn’t resist. My mom and I went looking for a good crock, but all the right …
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Fall Harvests
Here’s the West Garden, put to bed with the indispensable help of my mom and dad, who were visiting from Belgium the last two weeks.  Thank you, Oma and Opa, also for helping me extract another 25 lbs. of honey, totaling the honey harvest from Hive 3 to almost 50 lbs! I keep saying this is …
Putting the Garden to Bed
I lost it somewhere in the middle of August. There was too much to do for Solarize Massachusetts, for Transition Wayland. So I lost the garden. The plants kept on growing, but so did the weeds and the pests. I stopped watering the tomatoes and peppers in the hoop house altogether. We never managed to put …
Harvests so Far
This year I’m not weighing the harvest. I used to enjoy it and would still enjoy it today, but I no longer have the time or the need to do so. I hope it’s not too arrogant to say that, in my fourth year, I have a pretty good idea of how the garden is …
Of the Bees and the Birds in My Garden
Honey bee on Echinacea Humming bird drinking nectar from the Bee balm Humming bird drinking nectar from the Bee balm (messy hoop house in the background)
Compost!
All this out of one of my four compost bin, and it was only 1/4 full. I spread the wealth around the garden, then watered it in with (almost) the last of the rain water. Gotta make work of those 275 gallon toters. Oh but for a pickup truck or a trailer!
One Element at a Time
Two elements in this image, actually. One of which we set in motion a couple of months ago, and one that I just strung. We had a clothesline until two winters ago, but the trees it was under leafed out so much it stopped being a very good spot: too much shade, too much stuff …