As you can see I am alive and doing things, like playing around with my new dehydrator. Let me tell you, it was a bad idea to keep the apple skins on, and to start the process at 4 pm. Live and learn! I’m waiting for the rain to stop so I can put my …
Category Archives: herbs
Fall Coming On
It may still, officially, be Summer, but the day I put on my woolen socks is, to me, the first day of Fall. That was yesterday. Last night the temperature dropped to 47 F and my mind races to what we need to get done before the frosts come. Give our hoop house a “spine” …
Herbs – Drying
What a great day I had yesterday. I spent many hours in my garden, pulling weeds and dead plants, bulking up my compost, pruning the tomato plants, harvesting three (3!) nearly ripe tomatoes and any more cherries, a blond cucumber, a purple cabbage, a red carrot, multicolored dry beans and lots of green herbs. So …
Cool! A Poisonous Weed in My Garden
I was showing off my comfrey patch (above) to my mother-in-law when suddenly she asked “what is that!” I confessed not to know. I had weeded the bed – which also has some hostas, feverfew and columbine in it – some days before, and I had noticed this one weed, very beautiful, very singular, and …
We Get to Eat Too
The cucumbers are finally coming in. Amie was happy to harvest some, though she won’t eat them. These, maybe… Still no zucchinis or squashes in sight, just like last year. Of the dry beans, Jacob’s Cattle is the first one ready for picking. I love the sounds of the hard beans rattling in their dry …
Tomatoes and Green Beans
This is one more long update. Life is so full it’s tough to find a moment to sit and write it all down. But here goes… Home-grown salads are a common fare nowadays: lettuce mix, beet “greens,” cherry tomatoes, onions, garlic scape dressing. I could throw in bell peppers too, but I’m letting them mature …
My Camera Works Again
Feverfew Vervain Maltese Cross
Herb Spiral
Our herb spiral was a long time in the making. It just kept getting shoved down the list of things to do. But the herb seedlings were languishing in their pots, so I put my foot down and we did it in two days. We decided to build the wall with bricks from top to …
Strawberries All Taking, and Other News
strawberry bed I was skeptical about my strawberries but (again) nature proved me wrong, or rather, made up (again) for any bungling on my part. I bought 25 crowns from Nourse Farms and planted them the day they arrived in a well-prepared bed (it was crawling with worms). The instructions were to plant the crown …
Sheet Mulching the Herb Bed
The large 4 x 24 foot bed up front will be for the medicinal perennial herbs. (The culinary and the annual ones will go in the herb bed in the back, near the kitchen door.) This bed was started last Spring. First we did some deep tilling (with rototiller), then we installed the boards and …