Put a little gardening chat on while you wrap those presents or bake those cookies or spin that dreidel. (Or, hey, while you dance in Celtic colors around an ash yule log – I’m not here to judge.) This time of year is so busy, we all need to multitask. So while you’re attending to…
Gardening
Grocery Shopping The Winter Garden
In the summer I harvest daily. I have to, or the green beans crawl into my house and take over my couch and the zucchini turns into an uncarved canoe. In the winter, the veggies more or less hang out waiting for me to get off my butt and come pick them. Many days, it’s…
25 New Year's Resolutions For The 2012 Garden
This morning a crust of frost danced over the uncovered raised beds and painted the grass with mercurial shine. The garden sits placid and independent under the chill of winter and it seems a bit easier to carve out those chucks of time to reflect upon the year almost past, and the year that is rushing towards…
Garden Fresh Produce For Thanksgiving
In the Maritime Northwest, with only the most basic of season extension techniques, you can celebrate Thanksgiving as a true, local harvest festival. Kale needs no protection, and looks glorious bathed in crackling frost. Chard won’t make it unassisted through a snap of real cold (teens/low-twenties around here) but protected by a cheap plastic tunnel…
5 Ways To Be A Better Vegetable Gardener Without Lifting A Shovel Or Spending A Dime
1. Order seed catalogues. Amateur gardeners buy seed packets off the rack at Home Depot. Serious gardeners place orders with trusted seed houses. Once you’ve placed a major order with Territorial, Johnny’s, Irish Eyes, or your favorite regional seed seller, you’ll be on their list and – soon – on everyone’s. This isn’t a bad thing. Seed catalogs…
An Ode From The Savoy Cabbage Patch Girl
I have grown the perfect Cabbage Patch Kids Cabbage. I could fit my 14 month old into the wrapper leaves of this beast without too much work. I don’t want to fish for complements here, but really – have you ever seen a nicer cabbage? The cabbage in question is named Melissa, and she is a savoy…
Cross Dressing Fruit and Frustrated Apple Maggots
One of my readers, Robin, left this comment on the October Garden Tour post, where I showed my espaliered apple tree full of apples wrapped in pantyhose footies: I’m really curious about the cross dressing apples as well. I must’ve missed the post that explained it. Why the sexy legwear? And how big were they when…
An October Garden Tour
Beds are thinning out. Things that are picked are not being replanted. The loss of the beans and squash certainly changed the profile of the garden. But there is still so much good stuff out there. Here’s how my garden is looking right now: First planting of savoy cabbages look – sorry, this isn’t very…
Fall The Wife
I’ve been thinking about this. Fall is my favorite harvesting season. If I had to marry a vegetable growing time of year, it would be Fall. Spring is a virgin. She makes you wait. You want Spring in April, but she doesn’t actually put out until late June. I’m all for keeping it buttoned up…
Tools For A Hand Job
Good tools are essential to any job, and work in the garden is no exception. I’m one of those girls that likes a good workout session with a garden fork, but the longer I garden, the more I find small tools get most of the work done. For my last birthday, my best friends gave…
Midnight Marauders In Suburbia
I’ve had some people ask if maybe it wasn’t a wee bit overkill to enclose our chicken coop in 1/2-inch mesh hardware cloth. That stuff is expensive, after all. Here’s my answer: A few nights ago, as I was working on a blog post, Nick mindlessly said, “Hey, I’m going to go make sure the…
The Great Cover-Up: Carpeting Your Garden Floor
I have noticed that keeping my garden’s paths well-mulched does a ton for the overall appearance of my garden. This makes sense: if you walked into someone’s living room and they had tasteful, comfortable furniture, well-displayed books and artwork and walls painted in a stylish but personal hue, but the floor was rough, bare plywood, you’d probably notice that…