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Salad in a closet

Belgian endive grown as a root crop.

Imagine a care free-crop you can grow all summer, pick in the fall and store in a closet for winter harvests of  fresh, crunchy salads. It’s not a dream but a Belgian endive!

I’ve just started harvesting my 2010 crop this month. It all started […]

Beans – the magical fruit

Beans at various stages of maturity from scarlet runner and other pole bean varieties.

Beans have me entranced.  Each year I plant ever more varieties for drying and shelling. The colors, patterns and sizes, the smooth coolness clicking through my fingers, the ease with which they grow, and the tasty and nutritious […]

Ground Hog Day for Gardeners

A groundhog, outstanding in its field.

Gardeners unite in observing the second of February as the start of spring! Despite the annual, mindless media babble at Ground Hog Day, the party line that pegs the start of spring to the equinox, and the persistence of the northern winter lasting many more months, spring’s […]

Giving thanks for the 2010 harvest

Green tomatoes picked before frost, ripening on trays

We’ll be staying close to home for Thanksgiving so can source the majority of ingredients for the feast from our 2010 harvests. As with every growing season, there were notable ups and downs but thanks to unusually good weather for plants, the successes far […]

Civilizing the brambles

Raspberry row BEFORE pruning

Faced with a long list of seasonal garden tasks in the fall — from planting garlic to capturing leaves, to preparing the garden beds for spring — the long row of raspberries often claim attention first. Pruning raspberry canes makes them more productive and easier work around when the […]

Sliding into fall

Transplants in peat pots ready for fall.

August — the best of the summer months, when the weather more often than not cooperates for outdoor fun, the biting bugs diminish and the great season of bountiful harvests begins. But I can already feel the hours of daylight diminishing rapidly. Crickets now dominate the […]

A couple quick garden tips

Spring harvested scallions, from bulblets formed by perennial multiplying onions.

Scallions or green onions are among the most versatile vegetables one can grow in the garden. And one of the easiest too. We like them grilled whole, cut up and stir fried or minced for garnish, to name just a few uses.

[…]

Raspberry jam daze

Boiling juice first and adding fruit at the end to preserve color, taste and texture of raspberries.

Hot, sticky, sweet Jam in July.Â

Raspberries ripen fast in a heat wave, at a rate of 2 quarts a day from my 40′ row. With no chest freezer at our house, making jam has […]

When Summer Comes

Snow pea blossoms (dwarf grey sugar) on eve of summer solstice 2010.

Summer solstice, the longest day, reaches it’s apex at 7:28 a.m., Monday, June 21st. This point in the revolution of our tiny planet around the sun is notable in Zone 4, not only for the luxuriously extended hours of daylight and […]

Timing is all

Jumble of transplants — basil, tomatoes, eggplants and peppers — waiting for the right time to get planted.

To plant or not to plant? That is the question. Whether it is wiser to plant now and risk the slings and arrows of outrageous weather or to wait, potentially squandering the too-short lease of […]