Port Potager

If you’ve noticed I haven’t written at all this month, I apologize. And if you didn’t  notice, well, I can only assume that you were as consumed with current events as we have been. It has been an incredibly long — and, to our minds, disorienting and sad — week. None of that has been made any easier by the fact that we are still without heat. I mentioned it in passing in my previous post , and our furnace is still broken. This is no fun at all.  So far we have managed to muddle through with space heaters borrowed from generous friends, and the house hasn’t dipped below 50 degrees inside — yet. We are still anxiously waiting for National Grid to send a crew to put in a gas line so we can switch from oil to natural gas. This will all be incredibly expensive, though we do live in a state with an excellent rebate program for energy-saving upgrades. But if we have to replace a furnace, we figured we should at least get a better fuel choice in the bargain. In th...

March has it backwards this year. Our lamb-like weather was all at the beginning of the month, when we actually hit ~80 degrees and had to prop open the cold frames so as not to fry our early spring spinach salads: We are also pleased to have some kale to eat until we need that bed to plant something else later in the spring:   But then, if you wait a day or so, the temperatures will plummet and send you squarely back into lion territory: That’s the same kale, this time with several inches of snow on top. The snow came down so hard on Monday that the kids had a snow day: It all melted by the afternoon, but since then it has been much cooler. Seasonable, I guess, but I’m looking forward to April, when spring can begin in earnest and we can start getting some peas and more early greens going.

The kitchen renovation that made it so difficult to take care of canning  and cooking this fall did have an upside for the garden (you know, in addition to looking so much better ): We replaced our exterior kitchen door with a much better one, which leaves the old storm door available for cold frame duty. While it’s not a perfect fit, it’s pretty close. It’s also a major upgrade, since it’s so much heavier than the old windows we had been using (as is the old window on the far end, which is also from the kitchen reno). This thing holds in much more heat, and it’s not about to be blown away by the wind anytime soon.   And because it’s so much better insulated now, we still  have cilantro. This photo isn’t great because it’s reflecting the sky above, but you can see lots of green cilantro in there. This gave Jonas some fresh ingredients for a very carefully crafted tray of nachos: Since it’s supposed to snow again tomorrow, it may be a whil...

It's that time of year again: Frost is on its way. That means it's time to get our butts in gear and protect our fall veggies from getting nipped back by the cold. With proper care, leafy greens should last through year's end, and leeks and carrots will be fine all winter (though there's no guarantee we'll be able to get to them , but they'll survive nonetheless). We never, ever manage to take care of this until the very day temperatures are expected to drop below freezing. This year there's the whole kitchen thing , but there's always something. The trouble with that is that, without fail, the day we put up the tunnels us the windiest, coldest day of the fall. Today was no exception. The streak is alive. Still, we got it done. This year we put our longest ever tunnel in place: This stretches the full 27 feet across our longest bed along the brick path. Inside are leeks, beets, turnips, bok choy, mesclun, and a handful of carrots. ...

… just wait a minute.  Or so the saying goes about the fickle New England weather. Trouble is, I was enjoying the weather this afternoon, and didn't need a change, thank you very much. Tiegan and I took a walk after school and had a lovely time: balmy breezes, warm(ish) sunshine, pleasant conversation. About a block from home, though, it started to sprinkle. By the time we got home, it was lightly raining. No big deal.  I went to check the sap buckets, and they were overflowing thanks to the warm afternoon. I was getting a little wet while I transferred the sap to the big buckets, and since we had so much, I had to get another one to of the basement, wash it out, and dig some more holes in our snowbank/refrigeration system: Just as I was sliding that last bucket into place, an icy gust of wind nearly knocked me over. And then I was pelted in the face with a barrage of hail. Um. The temperature dropped like a stone: 20 degrees in just ...

I apologize if you're bored of reading about the weather, but that's kind of all there is to talk about right now. I guess you can just take a break and come back in May? (I wouldn't mind doing that in life, thank you very much.) Though today was cold and blustery as per usual this winter, yesterday was amazing: sunny and 55 beautiful degrees! So we shoveled the remaining 32 inches of snow off the lettuce bed: You can see by the way that Kirk's feet aren't sinking into the soil that the ground is still frozen. We've had a lot of melting in the past few days, though, and we are hoping to speed along bed prep by getting rid of the snow so the soil can dry out more quickly. We lose the insulating power of the snow in trade, but once the snow is gone completely we'll put the cold frames on that spot and speed up the warming through the magic of glass. This snow is now heavy and icy, and there's still plenty of it. I'm sure this w...

Though the bulk of this month has been ridiculously frigid, once in a while we get a "warm" day. Take last Sunday, for instance:  After an early morning icy-snow situation, the afternoon temperature got up to almost  the average high that we could normally expect. We used the brief warm-up to dig out the tunnels and check on the leeks: As you can see, the plastic is a little worse for wear after being beaten down by by the snow. Once inside, Kirk really had to wrestle with the leeks to dig them out. Though we've had one warm day, the ground is still mostly frozen, even in the tunnels: He managed to get a few big ones out, though. The leaves aren't too much to look at, but the thick stems are still fine: Even the part under the soil was mostly frozen, so these are definitely for cooking: they'll be soft when they thaw. That's ok, though. When's the last time you used raw leeks for anything? We also took a look at the carro...

Finally! A weekend warm enough to get outside and dig in the dirt!  You may recall that last weekend the weather was terrible, our soil was still partially frozen, and we weren't able to adhere to our original planting schedule. Well, in a week's time the crocuses have bloomed and the soil has warmed (well, most of it, anyway). Because we had some catching up to do, our first weekend outside was a big one. Here's the run down of all the stuff we did. 1. Uncovered the fig tree: Back in the fall we stacked potato boxes around the fig tree  and filled them with leaves to protect the tree from the cold and wind. As you can see, the leaves kept the shape of the box. I guess we'll see in a few weeks how the tree fared as it leafs out again. Despite some droopy branches, there's at least one bud on it that looks ok so far, and if it made it through this harsh if a winter, I think it'll be a keeper. 2. Lots of garden bed prep. This means turn...

It's the last weekend of winter! Next weekend we'll be beyond the equinox, and the days will be ever-so-slightly longer than the nights.  We still have snow on the ground, lots of wind, and temperatures in the 30s, but we plowed ahead with our almost-spring garden chores anyway. Here's what we did this weekend: 1. Got the chickens out on the raised bed where to prep the soil for planting greens: 2. Poked around the greenhouse tunnels to harvest the last veggies: parsnips and a couple leeks, plus a few leftover fall cabbages for the chickens (which they were very  excited about). We do still have some spinach, mache and kale left as well, but not much. 3. Improved the maple sugaring set-up by building a bigger firebox: Kirk used leftover bricks we had lying around to make a floor (so as not to ruin the bricks on our patio), then got nine cinderblocks to make the three walls of the firebox (solid side toward the fire). He also picked up some steel...

I was definitely not expecting to have to shovel more snow when I got home from work today, but there you go. It was another couple inches, but luckily just very fluffy stuff that was easy to push aside. I probably could have skipped it and let it melt on its own on Friday, but I wanted to make sure the cold frames were clear so they could soak up every bit of sun that might come their way — we need that dirt warmed up to plant seeds! When I cleared the snow frames, there was a treat beneath the glass: Each window had an icy pattern on it, on the underside of the glass. I think this is caused by traces of moisture and/or organic matter leftover from when carrot leaves used to touch the top of the glass back in the fall, before we picked them. It's kind of too bad that these pictures aren't really doing justice to how pretty and how intricate the crystal patterns were. I think the one above looks like a medieval drawing of a tree, the trunk of which is growing out ...

When we sit down and do all the garden planning for the year , we are sure to label each section with not only the plants required, but also the dates that seeds are started and transplants are set out. Then I add those dates into iCal and set up alerts, so that we know what we need ahead of time for each weekend's task. This makes staying organized and on top of our seasonal rotations a snap.  This weekend had just one item on gardening our to-do list: Alas, this was not to be. The original idea was that, at the very earliest and with good luck, we could get seeds for spring greens started outdoors in a cold frame the first weekend of March. So we added it to the calendar and forgot about it. As you know, this winter has been a beast in the Northeast, and we are nowhere near ready to plant, even in cold frames: As you can see, there is still ice on the ground, both inside the cold frame and out, and there's plenty of snow in the background as well. Th...

We had a lot of melting this weekend, thanks to bright sunshine and temperatures in the 50s.  The 50s! It would appear that I have fully acclimated to life as a New Englander. When we first moved here 16 years ago, I would shiver in my car in the mornings, and end up with cramps in my legs from all the tension in my muscles trying to ward off the cold. For real. Now I find that with the right gear (fleece, ski jacket, lined hat, lined boots, insulated and waterproof gloves), I can shrug off all but the worst of the polar vortex like a native. But the real sign that I've acclimated? I didn't even glance at most of those items today. It was just shy of 40 degrees outside when I left the house yesterday morning, but the sun was out, and a fleece and sneakers  (and regular clothes, of course) were plenty to enjoy a good long hike around town today.  I ended up taking off the fleece about halfway through. I'm not the only one enjoying the sudden warm...

I know, I know. How can I be thinking about frost on a day, during a week like this ? It's so hot that the ice rink down the street can barely keep it together for skating classes. Still, our average first frost date is October 15, and that's just 90 days from today. That all seems very far away until you start reading the backs of seed packets. When some of your cabbages take 90 days to mature, and your broccoli is looking at 75 days, it's time to get fall planting plans underway. If you care about eating once it gets cold and dark, that is. Our peas have just finished for the season, and over the weekend we pulled out the trellises to make room for some fall crops. Ditto on the garlic, which is harvested and curing in the workshop. That leaves us space to get cracking on our fall plantings, most of which I sowed over the past couple of days: I realize that empty dirt isn't all that exciting to look at, but that's where the action is. In ...