Port Potager

It's easy to forget that the vegetable garden has lots of beautiful blossoms too! Here's what there is to see in the way of flowers out back: The nasturtiums are doing really well. We have a mix of reds, oranges, and pinks, and they've gotten so big that they are all mixing together now: The big, yellow flower in the back near the top of the photo is a zucchini blossom — probably one of the last we'll see this season. Here are the blossoms of some of our annual herbs. In the foreground are blue borage flowers. In the middle are tiny, daisy-like chamomile (there are usually many more, but I just harvested another round to dry for tea just yesterday). In the background are the yellow, umbrella-shaped flowers of dill. This patch of dill I am allowing to go to seed so we can collect them. We'll use whatever we need for pickling and cooking over the winter, and we can use whatever is left over to plant our new crop next spring. Finally, we...

Farewell, thou latter spring! Farewell, all-hallown summer! ~Henry IV, Part I, Act 1, scene 2 It's the last night of summer vacation, and I'm sitting up — later than I should — to squeeze out the last drops of it before I go back to work tomorrow (I'm a teacher for money and a farmer for love). We had a last-hurrah Labor Day cookout tonight — burgers, caprese salad, and a ginger cucumber salad (we're still trying to work our way through all the tomatoes and cukes!). But the very best of all was dessert: homemade strawberry ice cream! I spent the last month or so hoarding, puréeing, and freezing most of our strawberry crop until I finally had four cups of gorgeous, red strawberry sauce:  I saved so much so that we could have strawberry ice cream at Tiegan's birthday party. This recipe made almost a gallon, so we had enough for kids and parents alike, and we still have some leftover for the rest of the holiday weekend — a sweet way to say ...

The cutting garden that we've been picking away at all summer is finally (almost) finished. There's still one little 4-foot x 2-foot bed to fill with dirt, but otherwise, it's ready to plant. It's way too late to sow any seeds for this season, but it's the perfect time to pick up half-price perennials at end-of-season sales at local nurseries! A few that I snagged are even still blooming: In the background is veronica "Royal Candles;" in the foreground is a small gaillardia called "Peach Gallo." This is a variety of echinacea called "Marmalade." Its blooms range from dark orange to the salmon-peach you see here. It also has this puff-ball shape instead of the more typical daisy form. Finally, this is a close-up of the chrysanthemums I put in containers for fall . I probably won't end up cutting these, but I could fill some mini-vases if I wanted to. If I take care of these over the winter, next season they c...

Happy Labor Day! Lots of flowers in the perennial border have come through summer for a second blooming. It's looking pretty good, probably due to our extra-warm spring pushing things a couple weeks ahead of schedule this year. That leaves us with more warmth and sun for the second bloom, so it's looking quite lush. After a mid-summer pruning back, the Japanese daisies are re-blooming as fully as if it were June. Our white echinacea is aging, but I like the dark seed heads for fall. So do the birds, but Fletch has taken to sunning himself on the stones right in front of this plant, so it's not getting as picked over as it otherwise might be. The leaves of the stonecrop in the foreground are getting pink around the edges now that the nights are cooler. It's a great color combination with the spiky, bluish carnation leaves. Father back you can see a few red blooms of the bee balm I added when I overhauled the border back in July . Next year that shou...

Most of the noticeable changes between the August aerial view and now are ones of subtraction rather than addition. You can see blank spots where things have been harvested as the summer has gone on. You can also see small seedlings emerging for fall plantings (especially in the cold frame, which for this winter will be along the center path of the patio quadrant). Also, the blurry green patch by the swingset isn't bad photography — it's the soft, ferny leaves of our asparagus patch, which has really filled in well overt he course of the summer. Click the links if you need a refresher on the planting plan. The swingset quadrant . The patio quadrant . The garage quadrant . The workshop quadrant .

When we moved in, we inherited several outdoor planters full of dirt. We added the dirt to the compost pile and tossed the containers aside. I gave several away, threw out the broken ones, and the kids used the remaining pair as outdoor chairs for most of this summer. Finally, though, I decided to put them to use for their intended purpose: In the center is a small plant of hardy chrysanthemums that I picked up for a few bucks at a local nursery . Those should give color throughout the fall, and I may try to tuck them into a cutting garden bed to overwinter and see if we can save them for next year.  Around the edges of the container is some pennyroyal that I have been growing in pots this year. It was really tiny transplant when I bought it, but now it is big enough to divide into smaller pieces to set around the edge of the pot. Hopefully it will fill in and we'll have a lot more of the trailing stems cascading over the edge of the container.  We now have two matching co...

We harvested the last of our garlic back in July, and it has been curing out in the workshop ever since. It's been ready to store for several weeks, but I finally got around to it today. A few steps of cleaning it up. First, I snipped them off the braids and dropped them into a basket. When the basket was full, I took them out on the porch of the workshop (in the shade!) to snip off the roots and give them a good once-over with a stiff brush to get rid of the dirt that was still on them. I was fairly gentle, but sometimes the outermost layer of skin came off as well. Once they were clean, I sorted them by variety and bagged them up in these mesh bags I got. (They are made of recycled plastic and are nice and sturdy, so we expect to be able to reuse them for several seasons. They are less than $1 apiece on amazon.com .) So here we have it. The bags in the back are for eating. From left to right, there is a bag of late Italian, Spanish rosa, and early Italian. In the front...