Port Potager

We made our garden plan back in February, but I forgot to document it. I was reminded of this when we pulled out the plan to actually start planting. It hasn’t been warm — it’s snowing as I write this — but the ground has thawed and we can get started with our hardiest cool-weather plants. The leeks we ordered came in the mail, so we had to get them in the ground. We bought transplants instead of doing them from seed this year, and they are about as big around as a pencil — much bigger than the tiny strings we’ve managed to get starting them on our own. These are much easier to work with, and I’m certain they’ll have a better survival rate than our tiny seedlings, so this looks to be a good investment. Behind the cold frame you can see a few of last year’s leeks — these are the stragglers we haven’t harvested yet. Usually when we plant in March, we’re out of luck when it comes to compost. That’s because the City Yard doesn’t open until April and our pile is usually frozen....

The big story of the end of the year is the weather; specifically, the frigid temperatures that we’ve been forced to endure for the past several days. It’s been a struggle to get out of the single digits this weekend, and the cold snap is expected to last well into the New Year. By the time it warms up again, we’re likely to have ridden out 12 days in which the highs didn’t crack 20 degrees. This arctic blast means that our carrots and parsnips are well and truly frozen underground, and all of our greens are probably done for. Even kale will struggle under cover with that type of deep freeze, though it will begin to put out new leaves as soon as it warms up a bit. I’m not sure about the leeks, but the underground bulb will probably be fine once we are able to dig them up again. In the meantime, we're staying inside as much as possible!

The section of the garden near the swings is always on the easiest to plan. It’s reliably sunny, but two large swathes are already spoken for, with asparagus along the left side and grapes and herbs across the top.  To the right will be Brussels sprouts and a row of fennel bulbs, along with a large bed of leeks, which hopefully do better this year. Along the bottom is a trellis of peas and a row of Amish paste tomatoes for saucing.  In the center C are beets, chard, okra, and potatoes.  And that’s it! This section is full of big plants, or big patches of some of our favorites, so it’s just not very complicated — which is a nice change of pace.

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...

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...

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...

It is cold. As I sit typing away, the wind is shrieking straight out of the north. It is a mere 6 degrees in the garden right now, and it's likely that the last turnips and greens will be dead tomorrow, even if the plastic tunnels don't come undone in the wind . Many schools in the area are closed tomorrow due to -30 degree wind chills, and though mine isn't one of them, hope springs eternal. So, yeah: it's cold. Definitely a soup night. And a soup lunch tomorrow, whether I get to eat it at home or have to carry it to school (I pre-packed to appease the gods of the jinx): This is a great  soup for a cold night. Kirk riffed on a Jamie Oliver recipe (brought to our attention by a good friend), and it is delicious: a sweet and spicy soup that warms you twice over. Here's Kirk's take on it, which makes use of our winter veggies and adds some sundried tomatoes for a summery kick. He also decided against pureeing the whole thing, which was a great ...

We've been on a springtime weather roller coaster here the past several days, bouncing from balmy to brisk and back again. It was another big weekend in the garden, with lots of bed prep and planting (leeks, onions, carrots, parsnips, radishes, Brussels sprouts, Swiss chard, and potatoes). My hamstrings and hands are still sore, but we got a lot done. It would be a shame, though, to focus only on the to-do list without enjoying all the little changes that spring brings to the garden. Here's what's blooming: Bulbs are up in the perennial border, and these blue glory-of-the-snow get better each year. We inherited them and they have naturalized nicely. There are also some darker blue Siberian squill, which are just starting to come up. We removed the spills from the sugar maple now that sugaring season is done. The wound should heal over by autumn. More blue! These sky blue muscari bulbs are in the cutting bed, but I never actually cut them down.  ...

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...

Another day, another six or eight inches of snow. This brings our snow pack on the ground to somewhere around 18-20 inches, as you can see by looking at the roof of the chicken coop: It's more like 2-3 feet in the front yard, where every fruit tree's trunk is covered up to where it begins to branch out. It's a lot of snow, and I'm looking forward to the warm temperatures (almost 50 degrees? Bring it!) and melting we're supposed to get for the next few days. Since our coop is built better just about as well as a regular-people house, I'm not inclined to take a roof rake to it. The snow will actually help insulate it and keep the chickens a little warmer in there for the next couple of weeks.  And, despite what look to be frigid, wintery working conditions, the ladies are laying again! As I mentioned last week , Sally started on the first day we turned the light back on, and she hasn't missed a day since. Not far behind her was Abigail, who i...

During the winter (thanks to our No Buying Veggies Challenge ), the variety of available food is way  down. We are out of onions and sweet potatoes, and our greens are buried under several feet of snow. We still have a bunch of fresh pumpkins and butternut, potatoes, and leeks, plus frozen green beans, okra, and sundried tomatoes. That's just about it, except for various herbs and some dried peppers to spice things up.  So ... what to do? You can only eat roasted vegetables so many times before you get a little tired of them, not matter how tasty they are. Luckily for us. Kirk came up with some creative dishes this week to breathe some new life into our winter staples. Spicy Pumpkin Bisque 1 small pumpkin (the baking kind)  1 head of garlic, broken into cloves  1 Tbs. olive oil 1 cup heavy cream 2 Tbs. Peanut butter 1 small leek Salt, pepper, cayenne, and ground chipotle to taste 1. Cut the pumpkin in half, scoop out the seeds, and s...

So last night, after we were done with or delicious turkey dinner , Kirk put the carcass directly into our stock pot with bunches of dried herbs (sage, savory, thyme, and rosemary), a leek, and a couple ribs of celery, then covered it all with water and let it simmer for the rest of the evening. This, of course, is how you make turkey stock. That's really all there is to it (well, you also have to strain it into a container once it cools). If you need more details, you can read about it here . The turkey stock was ready to go as the base for tonight's dinner, the second dish from the whole turkey we made on Sunday: This is  sopa de lima , which is a traditional turkey soup from Mexico. The literal translation from the Spanish is "lime soup," and indeed, that is its secret, awesome ingredient. This was what I had for dinner our first night in Mexico ( where we enjoyed our fifteenth anniversary trip last April ), and it was delicious. I've been wanting t...

Ok, so the kids weren't all that psyched about tonight's dinner until I reminded them of this: Justin Timberlake - Cup O Soup by tony0413 Then they got on board. Anyway, you shouldn't need any convincing to be excited about this dinner: Kirk made a chicken barley soup and some sage rolls, and it was all delicious — perfect for an icy-cold day between snowstorms. Chicken Barley Soup 3 chicken breasts 2 stalks of celery 3 leeks 6 small parsnips 1 Tbs. peppercorns 1 lemon dried herbs 1-2 Tbs. olive oil 2 large turnips 3/4 cup barley 8-10 sundried tomatoes  1/2 cup frozen peas salt and pepper to taste To make the quick stock, fill a large stockpot with 3 quarts of water, 3 chicken breasts, plus a stalk of celery, 2 leeks (cut into large chunks), 6 small parsnips, 1 Tbs. crushed peppercorns, 1/2 a lemon, and a handful of dried herbs of your choice (we used sage and thyme).  Bring to a boil, then simmer for 1 hour....

Ah, Thanksgiving. Have I mentioned how much I love it? We were lucky to be hosting some great friends who also happen to be transplanted Pennsylvanians like ourselves: Good friends and good eats made for a great holiday! Let's get a closer look at the dinner we enjoyed: Clockwise from the top, we had turkey (of course), green bean casserole, parsley mashed potatoes, candied yams , cranberry sauce, and turkey stuffing . This is all pretty standard fare for Thanksgiving, and we wouldn't have it any other way. Tiegan made the cranberry sauce by following the time-honored direction on the bag from Ocean Spray (we only had a handful of cranberries of our own this year, which I have other, more garnish-like plans for). Kirk added fresh parsley to the mashed potatoes to use it up, but it was a nice addition. The green bean casserole, though, is a homemade riff on the old Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup-using invention (which I will admit to loving). It...

Although for the most part this fall had been mild and calm, that all changed last weekend with ( surprise! ) a gusty wind storm that tore up one of our greenhouse tunnels: This one houses our leeks (to the left), plus some root veg, bok choy, arugula, and cabbages. Well, it used to. Now it's the home of bok choy popscicles: The picture doesn't quite get across that during the rapid temperature drop into the teens, the bok choy was frozen absolutely solid. I could have broken pieces off with a snap, like that experiment where a scientist dips a rubber ball in liquid nitrogen and then smashes it on the ground. So much for the stir fry we were planning on. The leek leaves are similarly frozen, but since that's not the part we eat, it's not a problem. Underground, the fat white bulbs are still happy. Kirk was able to fix this just to cover the leek half up before the big rain storms hit last night. The leeks would likely survive the winter uncover...

Amid the failures of this weekend  (I haven't been able to bring myself to document all of them yet, but will soon) was one shining success:  Usually for Sunday dinner we have some really classic combination of a roast meat and several veggie side dishes. That sounds a lot like what we'll be preparing on Thursday, though, so this Sunday we went with a vegetarian option instead. Kirk made this Mushroom and Leek Galette with Gorgonzola from America's Test Kitchen , and it was fantastic (as are all recipes from America's Test Kitchen). But I bet even they don't know that the absolutely most perfect side dish for this is a serving of peaches.  Canned  peaches.  I was skeptical (or maybe just really tired) back in the summer when I was blanching and peeling and canning all of those peaches  that they would actually be all the great to eat in the winter. I mean, how could they ever compare with the delicious fresh ones from the summer? At...