Port Potager

In addition to the heirloom tomato seeds we bought in Pennsylvania last spring , we also picked up a packet of melon seeds. Jenny Lind melons are a variety of cantaloupe from the 1800s, and we gave it a try on a whim since it was described as cold-hardy. We always had trouble getting melons to ripen in our relatively short growing season, so this seemed like a reasonably good bet. We picked the first one at the very end of August: As you can see, they have a funny shape. The bump on top is not the end that connects to the vine, by the way.  The inside is also different: It’s a cantaloupe, but it’s green instead of orange. (This one has already had its seeds scooped out.) I’m not a huge melon fan — with the notable exception of melons we grow in our garden. These are sooooo sweet and juicy and fragrant that they’re really a totally different thing from the sad melons you get in a restaurant fruit cup or from the grocery store. This didn’t disappoint...

Working our way around the garden, we come to the workshop quadrant. I guess we could also call this the office quadrant, since it forms the bulk my view during the day. Here’s what I’ll be gazing out at when I’m procrastinating: In the center C are celery and parsley, zucchini, cantaloupe, and a Sungold tomato plant. The Sungold, celery, and parsley are partially shaded, which should be fine. It should help slow the ultra-prolific Sungold down to a manageable harvest level, and celery and parsley will do well with some shade in the summer anyway. Across the top, as always, are our perennial grapes and herbs. In the upper portion of the right side is a succession planting of dill. This is the shadiest section of the garden, but dill is basically a weed and will do fine here. Below that is a semi-shaded section that will lie fallow for most of the season until we plant next winter’s spinach and mache in a cold frame. Across the bottom is a long trellis of peas and a r...

This year we planted a different variety of cantaloupe. In the past we planted a  much smaller  variety called “ Sweet N Early .” It was really convenient to harvest a small fruit that you could hold in one hand — especially since cantaloupe isn’t my favorite fruit.  When it came time to order seeds for this year, we went to Johnny’s  and chose Earlichamp, since it has a short growing season. It’s doing very well, despite the drought: The trouble is that we now have these gigantic melons that are all ripening at the same time. It’s one thing when you have a bunch of little personal-sized ones, but it’s not possible for us to eat these fast enough.  The ones that are splitting we’ve been tossing to the chickens, though if they’re not too far gone, we cut off the good half to keep: If you look closely, you’ll notice that the yellow jackets also really like cantaloupe. They aren’t too hard to work around since these melons aren’t righ...

We’re a little behind the eight ball this year on the garden planning. Usually we start a new plot of all the vegetable beds on New Year’s Day (or very shortly thereafter). This year we only just got around to this, so we’re about three weeks behind schedule. Though that doesn’t seem like a big deal (we’re nowhere near planting seeds outdoors, after all), it puts us behind on ordering the seeds we need to start. Still, it’s hard to get too  worked up about it when the wind chill outside is just 10 degrees. Anyway, we finally did get our act together and lay out the plans, so here is the patio quadrant plan for the spring: On the left-hand side there is a long row of strawberries. Though we considered moving the strawberries to the other small fruit beds to replace our struggling cranberries , we ended up keeping them right here, where there’s much more room to devote to a crop that has been quite successful for us over the years. Provided everything survives the wint...

We're making our way down the shore for the holiday weekend, and I have packed a lot of garden road food for the trip: Roughly clockwise from the top, we have cherry tomatoes, cantaloupe slices, strawberries and a few early-ripening grapes, green beans and carrots, peaches and apples, a box of salsa, and more green beans.  Also, I made sandwiches for the road — we're not a picket-line crossing kind of family (it's Labor Day weekend, y'all), so road food is going to be homemade today: Cucumber and dill sandwiches and caprese sandwiches with Ukrainian yellow tomatoes. And plain butter bread for Jonas, who inexplicably does not like sandwiches. But with all the snacks above, we should be in good shape!

We busted our asses today to finish the walls of our renovation so that we can have our kitchen back as soon as possible. We should be able to clean everything up by tomorrow night and be back in business for pickling and otherwise preserving all the food that is currently just sitting on the dining room table. This is not to say that our project is done — ha! — but at least we'll be able to use the kitchen while we finish. In the meantime, though: no cooking. To get any food at all requires peeling back a bunch of dropcloths and digging around to find things we moved to another room. It's not that fun. Still, we managed a pretty great dinner anyway. It's simple but delicious, because it allows some fresh garden ingredients to shine without much preparation: Our first cantaloupe was ready today (you can tell they are ripe because they slip from the vine without any resistance), so we picked up some proscuitto to wrap around it — salty-sweet perfection! We ...

Now that we have eggs, it's possible to have meals that are (almost) entirely homegrown, if one is so inclined. And this morning, I was. Here's what I gathered up for breakfast: Ingredients here are green pepper, red onion, sun dried tomatoes, thyme, eggs, and a bit of goat cheese. (Full disclosure: the goat cheese, salt, and pepper are not from our garden. Although I could have made my omelet without them, I didn't want to. Once I remembered we had some goat cheese, I wanted to use it.) Anyway, this is the first dish made with  our first eggs , and they have nice, strong shells. I would say they are "medium” eggs, as opposed to large or extra-large. The yolks are about half the size of a large egg yolk, though. The rest of the volume is egg white, so my breakfast is probably a little more heart healthy than it otherwise would have been. The eggs should get up to size in the next couple weeks.  I also added our smallest cantaloupe to my plate--we ...

The garden can be a lot of work, especially at this time of year. Although we've got the weeds under control, there is so much to harvest and then preserve that it can feel a bit overwhelming. Sometimes, though, you don't have to do anything except pick and eat and perfect fruit: This is our first cantaloupe (ok, technically muskmelon, but whatever). We had a really tiny one once at the Red House, but this one is just right. It's a smaller variety than the giant ones you'd find in the grocery store, but that's needed this far north to end up with ripe fruit before you run out of warm summer days. The flavor is much, much better than anything in the grocery store. I'm not a huge fan of cantaloupe, but this I like. It's sweet (but not too sweet), and the best part is the texture — smooth and firm, not at all grainy (which I think is why I never liked cantaloupe in the first place — because the ones in the store are crappy). And here is one bi...

Not all of our plants are struggling with the dry weather we've been having. Heat-loving melons are taking advantage: These are the leaves and a few blossoms of one of our cantaloupe plants. I took this photo the day we got back from New Jersey. I was inspired to grab the camera because all the leaves were ringed with tiny, perfect raindrops. We had never seen anything like it — it was really beautiful. These plants took off in the heat we had while we were on vacation, and we came back to much bigger vines and tons of small, yellow blossoms. We also spied our first melon:  It gets bigger every day, but it's still green. This is our first time out with cantaloupe, so I'm not sure how much longer we still have to go.  The watermelons also really spread out while we were away: Before we left, these were still fairly compact, but now they are vining and have blossoms as well. Yesterday afternoon I spotted our first watermelon: It is about t...

It started raining here Friday night, and it hasn't stopped yet. The weather radar shows the storm as already having moved out to sea, but it's still drizzling here in Newburyport. Back on Friday afternoon I quickly planted all the seeds on the schedule for this weekend to take advantage of the coming rain. In the ground and soaking are more corn and Brussels sprouts, plus new hills of cantaloupe and watermelon. I also had to replant almost all of our sunflowers and one of the borage plants — something pretty efficiently mowed the newly-emerged seedlings down. I didn't have time to cover them, but the first dry(ish) day we have, those things will get row covers to deter what I assume is the work of the chipmunks. I have to admit, getting to watch movies with the kids and take a four-hour nap instead of going like gangbusters outside all weekend has been a nice change of pace. My back is mostly better now, but this rain delay has probably been good for my aching body! A...