Port Potager

Last weekend was a fairly big planting time for us, and just about all of it happened in the central "C" of the workshop quadrant: In this central bed we have Swiss chard, early and late carrots, cilantro, mesclun lettuce, head lettuce and spinach. Most of this bed is really only in partial sun once a nearby maple tree leafs out, but that usually works for leafy salad greens to keep them from bolting in the heat. I also used some onion sets as dividers between these plantings to mark the rows. Across the top of this quadrant are still perennial grapes and herbs. The right side and bottom are largely empty. We have a few repairs to do in these sections, and after that we’ll plant a cover crop of clover to give these beds a rest for the season. That leaves the left side, which is a much-reduced tomato section. Because the area is so much smaller, we’re not planning to do much tomato canning this year, but we should have enough for plenty of fresh eating and froze...

Insects aren't   our only problem  this season: we’ve also got some border enforcement issues: All of our butternut squash (above) has been nibbled on, as have our pumpkins and black beans (below): While these aren’t completely destroyed, the same can’t be said for our green beans: Also coming under heavy fire: sweet potatoes, cucumbers, Brussels sprouts, and lettuces — all of which are in the quadrants farthest from the house. We’ve seen a groundhog around as well as a skunk, and both are good suspects. The damage is all pretty dainty, though, and some of it was done by scurrying under a very small gap beneath the temporary (and ineffective) chicken daycare cage . We’re thinking rabbits running bold, thanks to a barn cat who is rather timid about hanging out in plain sight in the yard during the day (though he has left plenty of evidence of mice and bird kills — and is coming a little closer to us every day, so we remain hopeful). Anyway, it’s tim...

The final quadrant of our planning for the upcoming growing season is the one nearest to the driveway: Along the top is a long trellis of peas, which is on the northern end of the bed so as not to shade the zucchini and annual herbs grown in the rest of the area (basil, fennel, parsley, and celery). To the right is another 27-foot trellis of peas. We don't usually orient them this way, but since it's to the east, we are confident that the Roma tomatoes behind it will get enough afternoon sun. The peas will also be gone by July, well before we expect to harvest any tomatoes anyway. Along the bottom are crops that can handle a bit of shade from the house as fall comes. Here we have another zucchini plant, summer carrots, beets, mesclun lettuce for the summer, and a short trellis of snap peas. We also have a block marked out for something new: cauliflower. I have never been a big fan, though my distaste has probably always had more to do with the whiteness of the wh...

Continuing with the garden plans for the spring, here is the swingset quadrant diagram: The full left side is the perennial asparagus bed, so no changes there. Ditto for the top, which is still grapes in the back and perennial herbs in the front. I may end up moving around some of the herbs once they come up in the spring and I see what's there. Anyway, the upper portion of the right side is mostly head lettuce, which will be shaded by a trellis of pickling cucumbers (on the long side) and slicing cucumbers (on the short side). The shade should help keep the lettuces from bolting in the summer heat, especially since the trellises are oriented to block out afternoon sun. The lower half has pole beans along the right side, which will vine their way up poles that arch over the center path. We did this in the past closer to the house, and it worked well to form a shady arbor to support all the beans — like the bean house , but over the path instead. The rest of the bed i...

So there's no more fuss and there's no more scenes and my garden thrives! (You should see my nectarine.) But I'm telling you the same I tell Kings and Queens don't ever ever ever mess around with my greens! ~ from Into the Woods , by Stephen Sondheim We're still slogging through our kitchen renovation , and it's sucking up a lot of time that we would ordinarily be spending on preserving the last of our summer fruits — not mention cooking delicious meals using all that garden produce. An embarrassing amount of apples, pears, and tomatoes have been fed to the chickens due to our inability to eat them in a timely fashion. One thing that's doing well and can be stored in place outside  are the cool-weather greens. Though the back half of the summer was a dry one, we had a fair amount of rain early this month to get us back on track. The moisture and the cooler temperatures mean happy greens: Cilantro, because it's related to carro...

After a month of late nights and less-than-healthful eating choices, it feels sooooo good to be back to grocery shopping in the garden. One big success this season has been our head lettuce: This is one beautiful head of Buttercrunch lettuce, and we put it to good use in some lettuce wraps: This is a great way to eat stir fry on a hot day because it's lighter to have lettuce than all that rice. It's also nice when you're in a hurry and don't feel like waiting 45 minutes for brown rice to cook. Kirk made the filling by marinating chicken in soy sauce, ginger, and garlic. He then fried up the chicken with a mixture of cashews, pineapple, shitake mushrooms, and a spoonful of peanut butter for extra richness. Once the stir fry was almost done, he added some fresh cilantro at the last minute. Yum! The things we have in the garden right now  lend themselves well to Asian dishes, so we had a proper stir fry last night as well: This one featured chic...

Despite everything that has made this spring kind of sucky, we have managed, as we somehow always to do, to have food. The rains came, the sun shone, and we are finally in the eating season. Do they give prizes for broccoli? This might be the best head ever. Now we just need to find time to cut it and eat it (or freeze it ) before it blows open in the heat. Timing is everything. The peas are filling out their pods, and are super sweet. We've managed to stay on top of picking them for freezing, but I'm hoping to enjoy some fresh as well. Our snap peas are doing really well this year. These are a variety called "Shiraz," which we like because it's so easy to see them among the vines for harvesting. They aren't quite as sweet as green ones, but when you eat them young, they're great. We had trouble getting the lettuces started, but now we have a bed of really beautiful butter crunch and romaine heads. Almost too pretty to eat! ...

We chased the bees and plucked the flowers In the merry, merry month of May. ~Stephen Foster I haven't written in some time because it's been pretty lean around here. Sure, it seems  like April is springtime and that gardens would be up and running, but that's true only up to a point. You can plant out a lot of things in April and get plenty of work done, but in April all the winter stores are gone (with the exception of parsnips , that is), but nothing is big enough to eat yet. Our cold, snowy winter and very dry spring have made this April even leaner than usual.  But now it is well and truly May, and now that we have food to eat and flowers to enjoy, we're all smiles (tinged with sighs of relief) that spring has finally arrived. Here are scenes from our merriest month in the garden. Tulips in the cutting garden have suddenly bloomed, and we have a bounty this spring since I refurbished the bulb bed in the cutting garden last fall .  ...

It occurs to me that my last post was a little depressing , what with all the broken glass and hail. Things really aren't all that bad. Despite the way this winter insists on hanging around, we have a lot of new growth on our seed-starting shelf : Four whole trays of onions and leeks are getting bigger each day. They have their secondary leaves now and have been fertilized once already with some nutrient-rich aquarium water . These are brand new salad seedlings, which include arugula, spinach, lettuce and beets for greens. These germinated quickly, but will need to ride out several more weeks indoors until the cold frame soil warms up. The weather the past few days has not  been helpful in this department as lows have been in the teens. We also need to replace some glass on the cold frames to trap the heat they'll need to survive, so we're not expecting fresh salads any time soon. Our cabbage and broccoli seedlings are looking really good this y...

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...

After a week in which we were struggling to acclimate ourselves to the blustery cold, today we were granted a sunny, almost-warm day. It was actually pleasant to be outside again, so we wasted no time picking up the last of the leaves and cleaning up the last bits of herbs that finally died in the freezing temperatures of the past week. We also were able to bring in a surprisingly ample post-frost harvest. There's still plenty of food out there under the cover of glass, plastic, or straw, so we should be eating well for the next few months. It may well be the last nice day, but it's not the last harvest. Here's what we brought in today: This kale bouquet is just a small bit of what we have. A lot of the Russian kale got nipped back by the cold since we left it unprotected, but we fixed that today, and there are still a whole lot of leafy greens left for the winter. Our last three cabbages were unaffected by the freezing weather, but won't last forev...

I'm trying to remember the last time we had carrots. It must have been some time over the winter that we ate the last ones we had — maybe February? Those are the breaks when you're (irrationally?) committed to seasonal eating : the ups and downs of feast and famine. So when I was out in the garden thinning the carrots today, they looked (and smelled!) so tasty that I couldn't bear to compost them. Instead, I saved the nicest ones:  These are what  real  baby carrots look like, by the way. Well, almost. This photo was taken after I twisted off the leafy tops: So the bucket of greens and too-tiny roots went straight to the chickens. Next to cherry tomatoes, carrot tops are their favorite treat. The big baby carrots were washed and trimmed and added to our dinner salad: They are tiny, so oh-so-delicious — especially after several months without carroty goodness on my plate.  Plus it gave a nice vitamin boost to our summery hot dogs (which...

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...