Port Potager

This weekend we got our cold frame back in place over the soil we managed to turn last weekend : As you can see, we added a new frame on the end. We have what seems to me much more than our fair share of blustery days here, and back in December  the wind took out more of the old storm windows that we use to cover our cold frames. That incident finally left us with no more back-ups, and one less than we need to cover the whole cold frame.  For a free fix, Kirk used some scrap wood to build a frame the size of the gap, then stapled some plastic around it. It's not at all pretty, but it should serve the purpose. We'll see how it holds up in the rain and snow — we may need to put some leftover chicken wire or a crosspiece to support the plastic if it starts to get weighed down in the middle. This should get us through the spring, and over the summer we plan to build some new cold frames that will be sized properly for these beds anyway. Once the cold frame was re...

Summer is on its last legs, and we have just one weekend left to enjoy of it. It's a long weekend for me, since we don't have class on Rosh Hashanah — a perfect time to get in our gardening chores while it's still nice out.  Some clean-up from the summer garden is already under way: Kirk pulled out a spent zucchini plant, as well as our pickling cukes and one of our tomatillos. I also yanked four Roma tomatoes that were blocking the sun from new lettuces. Last fruits were saved (including some green tomatoes — more on our plans for those later), and the rest is compost. A lot of our work now is around our fall plantings — and all of the water, since I'm no longer irrigating summer plants. Here's what's starting to come into its own as cooler weather sets in: The cold frame is in place, and seedlings of mache, mesclun and spinach are doing well. I filled in some gaps today, sowing our last seeds of 2012. The glass that is on the cold frame isn...

The further we get into May, the more our garden really looks like a garden. Lots of seedlings are filling out, and it feels like we are on the verge of having more menu choices than just lettuce by the time June gets here. A look at where things stand right now: Our cabbages are doing quite well. The largest ones are starting to form small heads — well, their inner leaves are curling up to start that process, anyway. Not quite all of them survived, but most are looking sturdy enough. I hate to jinx it, but cabbage loopers don't look to be a major issue for us so far this spring. Most of the broccoli is also doing well, and the biggest seem almost ready to send up their central stalks for the heads of broccoli. A few are still tiny because they were started from seed to replace lost seedlings, but if they make it without bolting in the heat, we'll have a bit of an (unintentionally) staggered harvest. Here is our allium bed. To the right, our garlic is ...

This would seem obvious enough, that bit about the rain making things grow. But when you haven't had much rain, it can be shocking how fast things will shoot up after just one good day of rain (which we had yesterday). The most obvious beneficiary is our salad cold frame: It's just about bursting at the seams with lettuces and spinach, and the radishes are big enough now that they need to be pulled and kept in the fridge so they don't get overgrown and terrible. You can compare all this growth to a photo from just a week and a half ago if you don't believe me. Our next section of salad greens and cool weather crops has all come up with the rain as well: This looks to be good timing, as it should be ready to eat when we've picked over all the good stuff in the cold frame from the previous photo. This is one succession planting of what we've been calling our "cool season rows." It is, from left to right: radishes, carrots, lettuce,...