Port Potager

Continuing around the garden to the swingset quadrant, we have our planting plan for the 2018 season: On the left, as always, is the asparagus . It’s not nearly as productive as it once was, so this spring we will try renovating it by resetting the crowns lower in the earth and adding some lime to counteract the soil acidity from a nearby evergreen tree.  Across the top are perennial grapes and herbs — nothing to see there.  Along the right side is space for Jenny Lind melons, which is a new variety of small, green fleshed melons. This is an heirloom variety popular among the Pennsylvania Dutch, and we got the seeds on a trip to the Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum last spring. There’s also a potato patch. Along the bottom is a very small length of trellised cucumbers, which will be for slicing. We have tons of pickles from last summer, so we won’t be planting any pickling cukes at all. There’s also an assortment of dill, arugula, beets and cauliflo...

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.

Something’s eating our potato plants: At first Kirk assumed it was cutworms because the stems looked sheared off, but we also have a whole bunch of these guys: That’s a pair of Colorado potato beetles , working pretty frantically to make lots more little potato beetles.  These bugs are notoriously destructive, and we’re losing potato plants by the day: I’m not sure if they’ll sprout again or not, but even if they do, I doubt we’ll have much of a yield by fall, especially given our short growing season. These are our red and white potatoes, but our blue ones are in a different bed — one that so far seems to be in the clear. This weekend we’ll add some row covers to the blue potato bed to try to keep it that way. We suspect that these potato beetles rode in on a load of compost from the city yard. This is ordinarily an excellent resource, but we’ve never had a problem before, and we were fine right up until adding city compost to hill up these plants....

Like last year, we’ve decided to continue with the expanded planting of potatoes. That extra bed allows us to have enough to enjoy almost throughout the whole winter — until we have to stop eating them to have enough left to plant in the spring. Last year our purple potatoes didn’t do very well, so we had to order seed potatoes for those. The red and white potatoes, though, lasted really well in storage, and we got them in the ground nice and early (in fact, the leaves just popped up this weekend). The reds and whites are planted in the big box hilling system we used successfully last year. When the blue potatoes arrived in the mail, Kirk dug up the last spindly, pathetic cranberries  and prepped the bed for potatoes instead. This was no easy task, as the bed was filled with tree roots from the nearby evergreen: Kirk was not happy about the prep work, but I’m optimistic that potatoes should do okay despite some leftover root issues. They were often a first crop plante...

Week two of maple sugaring is in the books. It was a quick boil today, since we didn’t have all that much sap this week. What we did have was partially frozen this morning, which makes it even faster to process. Unless it’s sub-zero, sugar won’t freeze, so you just toss away the bits of ice that have formed — it amounts to the same thing as boiling, since nature has separated out the sugar, just with cold instead of heat.  Anyway, we used the coals of our fire to make dinner: Notice that we’re all holding our hands way  off to the side: That fire is hot .  Dinner featured a remarkably summery spread made of our winter vegetables. The hot dogs are garnished with homemade, canned dill relish and tomato ketchup . We still have red and white potatoes for frying (though we’ll have to take an inventory before we eat any more to make sure we have enough seed potatoes left for spring planting). There’s also coleslaw from one of our storage cabbages, garn...

Another section of the garden plan for spring is the quadrant near the workshop and chicken coop: The right-hand bed of this section is under a small maple tree, which we keep around because it shades the chickens nicely in the summer. It definitely limits our options in that bed, though — no full sun to be had. We've found that salad greens (spinach, arugula, mesclun lettuces, beet greens) started in a cold frame do well here, since they get sun until the tree leafs out in May. If they're reasonably sized, the shade then works to our advantage to keep them from bolting. Weedy cilantro and dill also do well here, so we amend with lots of compost and just have the herbs and greens switch places each year, and it seems to work well. Along the top are still perennial grapes and herbs, which will remain in place (give or take a few small shake-ups of the herb garden that I'm mulling over). On the left at the top is a section for potatoes, though we'll als...

Our potatoes this year grew quickly, flowered, and died back, leaving us a pretty decent harvest under the ground. We've left them there because they're nice and safe under ground until we're ready to cure them for storage. We did dig up one bed that was planted with Kennebecs and Adirondack Reds: The Adirondack Reds are new to us this year. I ordered them from Johnny's as a replacement for our Red Pontiac potatoes , which we ate last winter instead of saving any for seed. Unlike the Red Pontiacs, these red potatoes are colored all the way through the flesh, which made for some colorful mashed potatoes: This meal brought back a strong, visceral memory of the first time I ate dinner at a friend's house. My first grade best friend Wendy loved mashed potatoes (I did not), and she especially loved them with ketchup. She stirred huge squirts of ketchup into her snow white mashed potatoes until they turned bright pink. I had never seen such a thing, and ...

Our seed potatoes arrived from Johnny's on Friday — just in time to plant them this weekend. We are planting Kennebecs and Adirondak Reds that we bought, plus our own purple seed potatoes that we saved from last year's harvest: This year we decided to try something new for hilling up the potatoes. In the past we used 2-foot square potato boxes that we gradually built the sides up on as we hilled up the plants. This was never all that successful. The idea is that the plants should keep producing tubers up their stems and they are covered, but we never really got many potatoes above the original soil line. So this year, we'll being hilling the plants in a more traditional way by just heaping some extra compost around each one. To keep the extra dirt from spilling into the paths, we used parts from the old potato boxes to build a wooden wall: We also have way more seed potatoes than we could fit in that space, so we decide to add an extra potato bed whe...

This Sunday we enjoyed some football food while we watched the AFC Championship game: sliders! Our mini-burgers were topped with bacon and cheddar, plus caramelized red onions, bread and butter pickles , and homemade ketchup from the garden. Well, pickles and ketchup don't come directly from the garden, but their ingredients do. We also had purple and yellow French fries and a light slaw. Our storage cabbage is still doing well in the basement, and Kirk made a new winter slaw with shredded cabbage and carrot, plus a couple of thawed cilantro cubes , salt and pepper. The dressing is a light vinaigrette of olive oil and vinagre de banano (banana vinegar) from Costa Rica . It's a really delicious vinegar that tastes like a fruity, caramel-y malt vinegar. I've never seen it in around here before, and if I can't find any, I may have to try to make some when we run out. Anyway, it's just the thing for this crispy winter salad. And to drink? Chocolate mi...

Last weekend Tiegan and Jonas worked together to make Kirk's birthday present: Sunday dinner! Tiegan spent some of her Christmas money at the book store, and one of the items she was most excited about was The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook: From Cauldron Cakes to Knickerbocker Glory: More than 150 Magical Recipes for Muggles and Wizards . After paging through it, the kids decided to make Beef Stew with Herbed Dumplings for Kirk. And with only a quick consult with me about how sear the meat, they did it all on their own.  I didn't even hear any shouting, so it must have been fun. Here's how they did it: Tiegan: We cut the onion, carrots, and the celery into kind of big pieces. We also made dough for the dumplings out of flour, eggs, milk, and herbs. I picked oregano, sage, and thyme. Then we covered the dough and put it in the fridge. Jonas: I cut the potatoes by taking each potato and cutting it in wheels. Then I cut each wheel into quarters. It...

Last night we had a pretty excellent Sunday supper. It was all delicious, but can you spot the star ingredient? Our colorful wintertime plate included herbed mashed potatoes and gravy, a really tasty rosemary roast dressed with horseradish, roasted carrots and parsnips, and (drumroll) Brussels sprouts! If you have been following this blog for some time, you know that growing Brussels sprouts has been an ongoing challenge for us. This year we finally had some worth harvesting, and last night we enjoyed them sautéed with just a touch of maple syrup. They were sweet and tender after spending a good month out in the cold, and I will give a full accounting of the successes and failures of the Brussels sprout crop later this week. For dessert we opened up the spiced peaches that Jonas made back in the summer: True to their name, they were very, very spicy. Luckily, these were very ripe and very sweet peaches that could stand up to the powerful amount of cinnamon we ...

Yesterday, after completing our last bit of gardening for the year , Kirk made a really delectable lunch from some odds and ends. Not that you could tell — it looks like a fancy-schmancy tapas plate: These are two potato cakes garnished with some creamed spinach with carrot ribbons and turkey gravy. The kids were about to head out to the third performance of their Christmas play, and we wanted them to have a hot lunch to tide them over, but didn't want it to be too heavy. This was perfect. It was also a perfect way to use up the inordinate amount of mashed potatoes and gravy we still had left over from Thanksgiving, so I highly recommend it any time your eyes are too big for your stomach in the mashed potato department (which is really just about every time, right?). Potato Cakes 1 cup mashed potatoes 1 egg 1 tsp. baking powder 3/4 to 1 cup flour Mix mashed potatoes, egg, and baking powder in a large bowl. Gradually add flour until the mixture feels ...

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.  ...

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...

This week we're putting into practice an old fashioned food plan. I'm pretty sure my grandmothers planned a week's worth of meals like this all the time, but nowadays we don't do it much. That's too bad, because it's a really cost-effective way to eat well, it forces some creativity, and it encourages using all of an animal rather than letting less popular cuts of meat go to waste. I'm talking about using a whole bird over the course of the week. We could be talking about any big cut of meat, but we're going with a turkey this time around — mostly because it's big, so we'll get a lot of meals out of it. If you only ever cook a whole bird (of any kind) on Thanksgiving, think about giving it a try on a regular old Sunday, and see how far you can stretch it for the rest of the week. The first meal? A classic Sunday dinner: This is roast turkey, mashed potatoes, turkey gravy, stuffing with sage and celery , steamed green beans, and ev...

That's "Happy New Year" in Pennsylvania Dutch , the fast-dying dialect spoken by the frugal Germanic oldsters where I grew up. The tradition, which I've written about before , is to ring in the new year with a big plate of pork and sauerkraut for good luck. Judging by my Facebook feed , I am not alone in maintaining the tradition! Here's what we ate last night: Das ist gut! If you could use a little luck to start 2014 off right, you can't go wrong with this dish!  On the plate: Sauerkraut (fermented and canned —  here's how ) Applesauce (also homemade and canned —  more how-to ) Smothered Pork Chops (Kirk uses an excellent recipe from America's Test Kitchen , but we also modify it with whatever herbs and veg we have on hand — I believe chopped apples and some mincemeat were added to the sauce this time around. One part you should never, ever change, though, is the crumbles of bacon for garnish.) Mashed potatoes (You don...

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...

This season we planted 24 seed potatoes in six potato boxes, which we layered with compost until the boxes were filled to their tops. The vines have been dying back for a good month or so, but we left the potatoes in the boxes to allow their skins to thicken underground for storage. (Well, we dug up some to eat right away, but mostly we were planning ahead to have winter stores.) Since we've reached frost, they are definitely dead: Today we dismantled two more potato boxes and dug up the potatoes in them. After digging up somewhere around 15 pounds of red and white potatoes, we spread them out in the sun to dry out. Normally we would do this on our patio table, but that was already in the shade by the early afternoon. So we set them on the top of the portable chicken run instead:  At first we thought the chickens would be jumping up to peck at them, but the ladies were far too interested in gobbling up the last cherry tomatoes in that area (we put the girls out t...