First Planting of 2009!

Let the growing season begin!!!

During an unseasonably warm afternoon yesterday, I seized the torch of optimism and sprinkled the first seeds. Here's short video I did about my planning and process. Hope you enjoy! (And yes, I know my outfit is ridiculous.)

If you're interested, or could use it, here's the planning template I designed. Feel free to use it!

Winter vs. "two but's" (part 1.7 of 2)

Back to business.

So as I was saying, the plants in the coldframes? Not dead. In fact, they're startlingly alive considering how brown the landscape is around here.

I dusted the snow off one window, took it off and braced myself for the pile of ex-plants inside. Instead, this:
(turnips and an occasional radish)

And this:
(lettuce and chard)

And this!(baby turnips!)

Of course, the lettuce has pretty well checked out. That's fine with me, though, because I was never a huge fan of the variety I planted anyway. Too limp and wussy.

And the garlic - it continues to try to sprout through the 6 inches of compost I piled on top of the original sprouts.
I nervously went back and re-read the planting instructions for German Extra Hardy organic garlic. Indeed, I planted it none-too early (October 25), and the instructions warned me that the cloves would try to sprout before winter and advised to pile on the compost or mulch. But it's January, and they're still poking through? All in the name of experimentation.

Oh, yeah! I pulled up a couple turnips to prove to myself that there's action going on below ground too.They're small, but tasty. I put them in soup.

And did I mention that it's freezing outside? I bring this up only to brag about my new outfit, courtesy of my mom. She custom embroidered a very warm pair of cover-alls for me for Christmas. Though not flattering (won't be wearing these to any cocktail parties), they are WARM. Plus there's a chicken.
They're lined. In hot pink.Just what every city-farmgirl needs. Thanks mom!

Now to the "part 2" portion of "Winter vs. 'two but's".

The mailman cometh. And he bringeth - garden porn.
The seed catalog.

Not to be a major tease here, but I have to go to work - again. So though I have pages of notes for this next post ready to go, it will have to wait - again.

Back soon!

It's cold, and I'm being a baby.

Cold outside. How unusual for New England in December.

So why does this somehow shock me each year? We built cold frames to anticipate, what? July? Well, this blog post was supposed to be a blog boast about how friggin' cool the cold frames are because my lettuce and radishes and turnips are all still growing! And it's 16 degrees out there!

Last night, we had dinner with friends, and brought a spinach salad. Before getting in the car, I pulled up three gorgeous radishes and brought them with us for dinner. They were a hit.

Next year, now that I know that these cold frames work pretty well, I'll try to plan better and plant more winter crops in early October. That way, they have 2 full months of good growing weather before it gets beastly outside, at which point they can just hang in until their dinner time cometh.

When I'm feeling like less of a baby, I'll go out there and take some pictures.

But for now, I'll just change the subject.

Argentina, anyone?

I just wanted to share two pictures I liked from my reunion with black and white film and my Leica. (You can click on them to enlarge them.) The first is of the caregiver of a vineyard and her son right before nightfall. The sky was dynamic and forbidding, and this child was so full of light and love.


And this picture is from the 106,000 acre estancia where Erik and I stayed for two glorious days with Walter and his incredible family. This is his daughter, Delfina, asleep on a sunny and perfect summer afternoon, in her father's pickup truck. I took this picture to try to capture something - that the world, this existence, is caring for us in each moment. It holds us, and holds up life's richness, and we are all, throughout our lives, just children.

Out of Fall, Into Coldframes

I signed off last with a long to-do list, and I'm happy to report that the list is now bordered by a long vertical column of red check marks. It is done and things are good.

1. Turn compost and collect finished compost.
Admittedly, that's not me. But I talked him into turning the front composter because it's completely full. I took care of the back one, which over the past few months has produced gorgeous, pitch-black finished compost.
As an aside, I really recommend having two composters going at all times so you can have an "active" pile (one that you add stuff to) and a "cooking" pile (one that you're waiting on to finish up). And when you harvest all your finished compost from one of them, leave a little at the bottom to get the next pile of gunk cooking faster.

2. Level with the damn brussel sprout.I killed the poor plant once, around July 4, when I decided it was never going to do anything that resembled producing a sprout. I tore up all 6 plants and my father-in-law gently pointed out that it was about to start bud formation, so I promptly stuck the most intact plant back into the ground. Lesson learned. Brussel sprouts take their good old time.

But really. It's freaking October 24 and the thing is still not done? I'm never planting these dumb things again, or maybe I'll do a little research first (novel idea) and plant them either very early or very late in the season, when they do best.

One piece of advice I found in the great cybergarden was to lob off the top of the plant so it stops growing up and starts getting down to business. So I did.Who knows if that will work. (?)

3. Harvest basil, coriander (cilantro gone to seed) and random other things to prepare beds for turning and enriching.
Here is about 1/20 of the basil I harvested. I got adventurous and harvested my two ginormous "ornamental" basil plants (the purple kind that's described as pretty but not tasty) and tried it out in my pesto recipe. I used walnuts instead of pine nuts because I figured the heavier flavor of the walnuts would work well with the stronger basil - and because walnuts are cheaper. So if I blew it, I'd be less mad.

Anyway, it rocks. And now I have enough pesto for . . . well, just look at my freezer:We could literally eat pesto for 15 days straight.

For the recipe and pictures, click here.

4. Enrich beds with finished compost.Here you can see that I removed the grid (and most of the plants) to prepare the bed for a major redig and enrich. It's sort of like exfoliating and moisturizing, but with dirt instead of your face.

Exfoliate:
Moisturize:and admire critters:- I planted a bunch of the vacant squares with more hairy vetch (a green manure) and some with more with turnips and radishes just for the heck of it. -

5. Rip up squash vines (and discover squash!)

6. Plant garlic.

I ordered "German Extra-Hardy certified organic garlic from Seedsavers.org, and it arrived in the mail a few days ago.Garlic over-winters in the garden, and you're supposed to plant it sometime after the first major frost of the season (which was the night before).

Inside the package were 2 bulbs and an instruction sheet.It said to separate the cloves only at planting time, and to plant them 4-6 inches apart and 2 inches down.These cloves (which you must plant root-side-down) will sprout before the winter, but if properly covered (by mulch or a cold frame) will go dormant and survive the winter - even in New England.

After planting, I covered the squares with extra compost (instead of mulch).
I'm saying all this, but honestly, I have no idea whether this will work. Theoretically, I should be digging these up next June!

7. Check in with fall crops.Here's the lettuce in the front garden. I harvested the lettuce in the rear garden because the sun patterns have changed such that it's not going to get any full sun until spring. Also, I needed some lettuce for the fajitas I made with all the zillions of bell peppers I just harvested.

The turnips and beets - and the 3 radishes that survived the squirrels - are doing great, too. The beets were "topping out," or basically growing themselves out of the ground, so I packed some finished compost around the tops. This happened on my early crop of beets, and it worked just fine.

8. Admit defeat with the carrots. Again.I failed. Don't know why, but both crops this year have ended badly - with short, confused looking carrots. I've varied the soil textures, the sunlight, the amount of compost. They taste good, but it's embarrassing. I have to tell people that I planted dwarf carrots or something. More research needed.

9. Harvest the marigolds.
They were going to get squished by the coldframes, and their main job, which was to repel harmful bugs, is not as important now that it's fall. So now I'm just giving them away.10. Finishing touches, then tuck into bed.Add the coldframes. . . and then the windows.And then wait for things to grow!