untangling the overgrowth

Last year was rough for the garden. My old position at work required so much overtime that very little was planted in time. When season ended and the summer heat arrived, I was so angry about the shit life-work balance I had that I took it out on the garden, lacking the motivation to endure […]

today I learned…

I was today years old when I learned that okra was part of the hibiscus family. Looking at the photos from our garden, you’ll understand why I went to Google… Also, rose of sharon, which also makes sense.

today’s small bounty

It’s time to pull the potatoes. From a coworker: “After they bloom and lay down.” I have two 2×4 foot elevated beds that I’ve begun alternating with onions and potatoes. This year, I went with blue fingerling potatoes and red and white onions… Today, I pulled about half of the potatoes, and I thinned out […]

first harvest

The first pick from the garden: Pink Beauty radishes! They were delicious in a slaw with cabbage, cilantro, and green onions. Pink Beauty radishes are fast spring radishes. They are mature at different rates, so hopefully we can stretch out the batch. A definite keeper!

fall beds, fall cooking

Today is a chili kind of day, but dinner got started late, because darkness at two-thirty is messed up and tomatoes need to cook down. While the remainder of our green tomato harvest roasted with onion and garlic, I headed outside to tend the fall beds. We’ve already had snow and numerous frosts, so I […]

end of harvest soup

I harvested delicate things prior to the snow: tomatoes and herbs, planning for a batch of end of harvest soup. As the green tomato base roasted in the oven, I headed into the snow to harvest some hardier veggies: bok choy, carrots, and kale. (We opted to save the kale for something else.) Ground beef […]

the last fair day

Tonight is expected to hit freezing. So today, I pulled the rest of the non-hardy crops: tomatoes, hot peppers. And basil. I made my first pesto. We had no pine nuts in our pantry. Fortunately, pesto has become more of a framework formula than specific recipe: herb + oil + garlic + nut + sharp […]

the first fall harvest

My husband’s Southern farmboy-ness is finally rubbing off on me. While I have attempted cooking my own mustard greens before, this time was wholly successful. The mustard greens are from our netted fall beds. While we nibbled out of it when I thinned the sproutlings, this is the first mature harvesting. My husband makes amazing […]

greeeeeeeeeeeeeeens!

The bug netting experiment seems to be a huge success. I think I’d like to explore an alternative to shoving the netting edge back into the dirt. Perhaps boards attached to the netting that clip to the bed… The PEX piping functions well, even if it doesn’t exactly hold the original shape. I’m rather proud […]

out of the garden…

…with the tastes of summer October! Pulling vine-ripened tomatoes on October 6th. The basil got blasted in the last cool spell, so I have to seek out good leaves, but about half of the tomato plants have lost their place on the calendar. This. This is the garden living we’ve been moving toward…