Port Potager

Although it is much warmer this weekend that it has been — dare I suggest that winter has finally loosened its grip? — we weren't able to make much headway out in the garden. It just would be too much to hope for to jump right into a sunny, 60 degree stretch of days, right? We're squarely in the midst of some cold, soaking rain. Not that I'm complaining. After all, it's not snow. The rain has washed away almost all of our last bits of the white stuff, and I imagine the rest will be gone by Monday. Things are starting to thaw, and the soaking rains will definitely help bring things back to life as we ring in April. We did manage to get our week's worth of sap boiled and also opened up the cold frames to catch some of that free water falling from the sky (before closing them up again to protect delicate seedling and as-yet unsprouted seeds from the downpours we're meant to get over night and tomorrow). Still, we had to give up on our planned planting of ...

The Colonial Nursery is a actually one of the sites that you can visit without purchasing a ticket to all of Colonial Williamsburg. This is because, in addition to being a period garden, it is also a store. All the shops are open to the public at large, so it is possible to do some sightseeing on the cheap if you are so inclined.  Below is a photo of the fall garden. You can see, of course, lots of greens and brassica. In the center of the bed are leeks: We have been thinking about leeks in the last few days. Kirk is currently reading John Seymour's The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It , and his description of leeks is worth sharing: In cold, wet areas, this is one of the most useful plants, for it stands the winter and provides good  food and vitamins in the months when little else has survived except kale. Onions are hard to grow  and to keep, but leeks are an easy substitute. The Welsh are very sensible to have this excellent plant  as an em...

I have a feeling most visitors to Colonial Williamsburg do their ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the pleasure gardens at the Governor's Palace, not the vegetable garden . They are lovely, although definitely less lush in November than they must be in the height of the summer. Still, the "bones" of a Colonial garden, especially in the South, consists of its boxwood hedging and edges, and that part is every bit as green and beautiful at this time of year — perhaps more so, since without all the flowers, the architecture of the boxwood gets top billing. First stop? The maze: This photo gives a good idea of the scale of the privet maze. The kids really enjoyed it, although I don't think it was as challenging as I remember it being. As you can see in the photo just to the left of the children, not all of the hedges are fully filled in. I'm not sure if this was due to the time of year or a recent pruning, or if the bushes are just in a phase of being thinner than in...

After exploring Great Hopes Plantation , we continued on into Colonial Williamsburg proper to the Governor's Palace . After the tour of the inside of the building (which has been recently redecorated, by the way, to reflect what it would have been like with a family living there instead of just a bachelor governor), we went out to the grounds. In the South, colonial kitchens were housed in an outbuilding. Below you can see the (quite large) kitchen for the Palace: The brick kitchen buildings stand at the top of a terraced kitchen garden that extends quite a distance down the slope to a pond. It is hidden from passersby on the street by the brick wall. The Palace itself is behind what we see of the kitchen here. Not surprisingly, we see kale and collards in these beds, as well as some fruit trees on the ends that are going dormant (my guess was figs and peaches, but it's hard to tell when they are almost bare). This view of the kitchen is from the bottom of the...

If you've been wondering why I haven't posted in a while, there are two reasons. First, I have been in and out of the hospital for a heart condition (no worries — I'm cured!). Second, last weekend we traveled to Richmond, Virginia to visit friends and for Kirk's first marathon (no worries there either — he finished!). Since I am staying home to rest from now through Thanksgiving weekend, I will share some of the excellent gardens and farms we visited on our trip. First up, Colonial Williamsburg. Kirk and I have been to Colonial Williamsburg several times, but this was the kids' first visit. It had been about a decade since our last visit, though, so we were excited to find a new area: the Great Hopes Plantation . This is a re-creation of a Virginia farm around the 1770s, and it shows traditional gardening and farming techniques as well as what life would have been like for slaves of the era. There's still quite a bit going on in the farm garden. Will...