Brussels Sprout Soup without the Sprouts

{Four posts in one day, must be a record!}

Like most kids, I despised Brussels Sprouts. Now I love them, that burst of flavor, and even the mild bitterness. Bitter is a big gap in our diet, which is unfortunate, since bitter foods are important for our digestive systems.

So I grew Brussels Sprouts from seeds, in my basement, on my porch, in the garden beds. They grew and grew, leaves, yes, and a thick stem, but never any sprouts. I think I was supposed to remove the leaves at some point. No  harm done, since the surviving leaves taste – who would have thought – like Brussels Sprouts, only much milder!

I chopped up homegrown Brussels Sprouts leaves, onions and leeks (yes, all from the Fall garden), sauteed them a little, then added equally homegrown carrots (first harvest!), poured in  my homemade vegetable broth, and added a pinch of homegrown Rosemary. I let it simmer for 30 minutes, until the potatoes were done.

The only things that were not homemade were the chickpeas (bulk) I still had in the fridge from another dish, the potatoes (locally grown, though), and the salt and pepper.

But the soup bowl is mine!

Winter Hot Box with Horse Manure

(Wow, three entries in one day!)

I have lights specially fitted to the bed up front, so it can easily be converted to a cold frame. I’ve successfully grown lettuce in it in April. Now I was thinking of growing something there  from November to March, the coldest months.

The hotbed, finally!

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A, the owner of the horse stable, uses our property to get to conservation land where she can ride. In return I can go and get as much manure as I want. The stable is about a quarter mile away, and I do the entire trip in twenty minutes, if I’m not held up chatting with A or the neighbors. Fortunately it’s downhill from my house, so I get there real fast. Unfortunately it’s also (go figure) uphill to my house, and that makes for a great work out.

the manure, the bed, the lights

I sort of, to the best of my abilities,  followed these instructions.

The bed is 3.5 – 7 feet, but I started with a little less than half of it, as I had only the one 6 cu.f. wheelbarrow of manure. The instructions call for a drainage pit with gravel or cinders, but by the time I dug 14″ deep (from the soil line), I hit rock bottom. There I used my fork to open up the stony soil a bit.

Then I added 10″ of horse manure.  It turned out to be exactly the entire wheelbarrow, though I’m sure it’s going to compact quite a bit, that stuff is so fluffy with all the woodshavings, hay and straw in it.  I made it all sopping wet.

(Sorry, DH, I promise I’ll clean it off)

Then I added 4″ of the original soil and put on the lights.


Now I need to monitor the temperature of the manure. At the moment it is 70 F (by comparison, the soil in my   hoop house beds is at 76 F). I expect it will start heating up soon. As soon as it drops back down to 75 degrees, and stays there, I can put in the spinach and lettuce seedlings.

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I’m going to get a lot more of that manure. Perhaps I’ll convert the entire bed to a hot box. But I definitely want to  use it to dress the other beds that I won’t use over the winter, then to tuck them all in with blankets of cardboard and straw. I like the synergistic straw culture that Emilia Hazelip promotes in the video I posted earlier.  Not to touch the soil at all, just to keep adding, adding… I’d like to play around with that in my own setting.

Winter Beds and Goldenrod

All the seedlings were transplanted into the Winter beds – the beds that will be under the hoop house once we move it from its Summer position, after the tomatoes, peppers and basil are done.

These are all under one layer of row cover now (Agribon, from Johnnie’s). A third bed is loaded with kale and broccoli. The fourth bed holds onions, scallions, chives and sorrel that I sowed at the beginning of August.

I’ll reserve the empty spaces (about 4 sq. f.) in the fourth bed for transplants from the other beds (I put the broccoli and kale a bit too close together), and I might use some of it to keep some compost from freezing. Some empty space will also come in handy in Spring when I can move the more hardy seedlings there and out of the basement growing area.

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Yesterday I found myself back  in Amie’s school garden. “Back” is not quite the right word because it turns out that the garden I weeded last week was not the garden the teacher meant for me to clean up! (No harm done, I did what I love for a couple of hours and got  to harvest all that dandelion). In any case, there I was, staring at the other garden, trying to decide what they would consider “weed” and “legit”. A lot of the plants were borderline, in my opinion. Luckily the other volunteer came up to help, and she said to pull the lot.

“Even the goldenrod?”

“Of course, that’s  a weed!”

“I’ll take it home, then – they’re great bee plants.”

I hope these do better than the ones I grew from seed this Summer. Those got all those juicy little green buds, but they never flowered into yellow before withering to nothing.

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I also disconnected and rolled up and stored all the garden hoses. Man, that 50 foot long one was a pain! I’m keeping a weather eye on the forecasts. Soon I’ll be empty the rain barrels and store those too.

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Did you know that oil companies won’t come and do a burner tune-up unless you have an oil delivery contract with them!

Gardener Heal Thyself: Calendula Poultice

I work with my hands a lot. Household chores, gardening and especially throwing pots are hard on the hands. I don’t use hand salves, lotions or creams. You put that stuff on and a minute later you need to wash something or pull a bush out of the ground. I’m also a little clumsy, only when I’m distracted. I was distracted several days ago when I grabbed a pan that had just come out of the oven at 450 F. No oven glove. Youch!

So first I put the calendula salve  from a tube on the blister. It didn’t help, the blister kept returning. I tried the antibiotic cream, but that just seemed to make it worse.

And there were those flowers, in my very own garden, beautiful yellow and orange calendula blossoms, not totally open yet, so not pollinated yet, and so at their medicinal peak. Sorry, can’t show you a picture of them in their garden setting because I plucked them. But here they are in my kitchen setting:

I simply crushed them, petals and sepals alike, and applied the colorful, juicy mess to the blister as a poultice (from the Latin puls, pultes, meaning porridge).

Then a band aid to keep it from falling into my keyboard.

And blog about it.

Hoop House Fall Garden / Overwintering Peppers and Herbs

My Fall Garden? I guess most of it looks like my Summer Garden, only inside the hoop house (where it was a balmy 85 F today, contrasting with the 56 F outside).

eggplants in hoop house

Yesterday I moved most of the (sweet and hot) pepper plants from the outside beds into pots and then into the hoop house. When that gets moves onto the Winter Garden beds, I will move all the potted plants to the Annex (the guest suite, which we heat minimally in Winter) and overwinter them.

potted peppers in hoop house

I was really happy to have overwintered those two pepper plants last time. They were my best producers, giving me two rounds of fully red peppers, and I just harvested another round of green peppers. Peppers are, after all, perennials, so why not bring them inside, if you have the space and the inclination to water them once and a while?

herbs in the Annex window

I’m also overwintering most of my culinary herbs. They are inside already, the prettiest ones in the living room, the rest in the Annex, which has a large south facing window. I’ll be happy not to have to devote so much space to oregano, thyme and rosemary seedlings when I turn on the lights in February. There will be more room for medicinal herbs and flowers.

I harvested 3.5 lbs of green tomatoes (both large and cherries) and pulled the vines, as well as the one cucumber vine, on which I discovered 4 cukes, one of them an overlooked one weighing in at 1.2 lbs.

So most of my beds are empty. The only things that I sowed in Summer, outside the hoop house, and that are left to harvest are the carrots, leeks, and celeriac, all of which improve in taste with a light frost, and kale.

The Winter beds – awaiting the hoop house but covered with just row cover at the moment – hold spinach, kale and broccoli. Tomorrow I might have the chance to also transplant the Minutina, Claytonia (Miner’s Lettuce), Tatsoi and Pac Choi. I am reserving the lettuce and some more spinach seedlings for the hotbed under the cold frame, but more about that soon.

Neighborhood Pumpkin Composting

On a cold, gray day Amie and I composed, copied and colored in our yearly let-us-compost-your-pumpkin fliers.

Today, a wonderful day, sunny, blustery, just about nippy, Amie and I took a walk to deliver them. It was lovely to talk with the neighbors and hear their enthusiasm for the project. They usually leave their pumpkins to rot in the woods (everyone around here has a little bit of woods), but now that they know we’ll turn them into veggies, they will come and drop them off at our house when the time comes.

{Update} We composted about 50 lbs of  donated pumpkins that year!

Tool Shed (in Progress) and Hoop House Doors

Taking advantage of a beautiful Sunday morning some weeks ago, DH and I started building our garden tool shed. We both love this project because (1) it will collect my tools right next to my garden and (2) it makes room for a functional workshop for DH in our old and more “serious” shed – currently clogged by all my gardening tools and supplies.

As this shed is in the middle of the woods, the work was hindered by acorns and twigs. Those little nuts are like missiles when they fall from 30 feet high. We often had to beat a hasty retreat. Then my parents came (and have in the meantime left) and they helped as well, getting the structure into a minimal shape so the garden things could go in. This is the state of it at the moment:

As you can see, it’s  a simple lean-to that still needs walls and a floor (at the moment the floor consists of loose pallets, ankle-benders I call them). They will have to wait until Spring. For now we’ll hang tarps all around it.

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As anticipated, we did get the door onto the hoop house yesterday evening. We agonized over how to build that door. A door that swings open is not possible, as the house is wedged between beds and there is not enough leeway. A sliding door came out too  complicated, e.g., snow on the rail and, no matter how we designed it, there was always too wide a gap between door and jamb. It’s not so much cold as draft that kills the winter veggies, so it’s best to make the house as tight as possible.

During a trip to Home Depot we spotted this zipper that you stick onto a plastic or a tarp, and voila. We’re skeptical about whether it will hold, especially in sub-zero, snowy and icy weather, but were game to give it a try.

The other door we just closed off. Same system (a frame made of pine straps, plastic stapled to and around it, then the frame screwed into the end wall/door jamb), but no zipper.

I visited this morning to take these pictures and it felt considerably warmer in there.

The plants in there seem to like it.

Dandelion Tincture (Part 1) and Today’s Harvest

Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) Tincture

  1. wash leaves and roots
  2. chop
  3. put in jar with its menstruum or solvent, 100 proof alcohol (for the record, I had only 80 proof available, but that should be do)
  4. blend to expose more surface are to the solvent
  5. wipe ridge of jar, put wax paper over top (as a gasket), close tightly with lid
  6. shake, shake, shake
  7. label (name of herb, part used, date fourteen days from now)
  8. shake 2 to 3 times a day for 14 days
  9. TBC: after 14 days, line a strainer with muslin over a stainless steel container, strain and squeeze, separating tincture extract from marc (depleted plant material)
  10. pour into bottles
  11. store in cool, dark location.

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The harvest today is mainly lots of basil, for pesto this evening, with the remainder going into the freezer. The small red berries are cowberries or lingonberries (Vaccinium vitis-idaea). There are still peppers in all stages of development, and basil, all in the hoop house, which will get its doors this evening – right in the nick of time, I should say!

I cut the last flowers. And the first, I should clarify.

I was never a flower person, but I’d love to have more flowers next year, edibles like nasturtiums, violets, and marigolds, and medicinal ones like chamomile and calendula.

Dandelion Harvest, Defensive Bees and Garden Blankets

I was bummed to find that there are not a lot of dandelions on our property. One of the first exercises in one of my herbal medicine  books is a dandelion tincture. I had to skip it because I couldn’t find any at hand.

Today I went to Amie’s kindergarten school to pull the weeds in the little garden – that garden is entirely a volunteer effort and of course I volunteered. What did I find? Heaps of dandelions!

I pulled all of them, since they’re considered weeds, but left some roots and pieces of root in the ground (sometimes by choice but mostly because they’re difficult to pull in their entirety), so they can come up again in the Spring. I’m waiting to hear from the school whether any herbicide, pesticide, fertilizer, etc. has been used on that garden in the last few years. If not, I’ll make tincture and dry some of the roots and leaves.

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It was over a month since I last checked up on my bees. I got a chance to do so this morning: no wind, sunny, 62F / no coughing, runny nose, head ache / a stretch of free time. I planned a nice long, full inspection of both nest boxes.

But man were those bees defensive! The moment I started prying off the inner top cover at least ten of them came flying at my veil, aiming straight for my face. It got worse when I pulled out the first frame. I’ve never seen them (and heard them, a crazy hum) like that. So I chickened out decided it was probably a bad time for a big inspection. Their stores are full with essential food  for the winter, no wonder they don’t want anyone pulling frames!

Yesterday I dropped my parents off at the airport and then drove into Cambridge to see Thomas Seeley speak about his latest book, Honeybee Democracy, at the Harvard Museum of Natural History (yes, parking was crazy but I was lucky). Fascinating! I’m writing up a report of the talk for my local Beekeepers Association and will publish it here as well.

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We’re having some nice weather but the temperature drops a fair bit at night. No frost yet, but close. So the newly transplanted spinach and broccoli seedlings got fresh blankets. My mom and I translated the spinach , broccoli and kale, and still have to move in the mache, claytonia and chard. Then I will also sow carrots and peas, etc. in beds outside the hoop house, for the coming Spring. The tomatoes, peppers and eggplants in the hoop house and even in the outside beds are still going strong. Hopefully we’ll have the doors on the hoop house in time for the first frost.