May in the Garden

The past week has really felt like a time of transition. On Saturday we ate stewed rhubarb over vanilla ice cream for the first time this year and the temperature hit 89 degrees today. Spring has most definitely given way to summer. Continue reading →

Emergence

Last week I was listening to a recent episode of the A Way to Garden podcast, in which the host Margaret Roach was talking to her sister Marion about what she’s dubbed “urgent garden questions.” Marion was saying that this time of year she spends a lot of time wondering if things are dead. This struck a chord with me, because like Marion I tend to be impatient, and I have a hard time believing that my perennials will have survived the winter. Continue reading →

February in the Garden

Yesterday morning I awoke to the worst kind of weather, a couple inches of wet snow overnight followed by pouring rain all day long. It was a slushy mess. The ground is still covered with a few inches of snow leftover from the blizzard a few weeks ago, despite plenty of above freezing days since then. The seeds have been organized, charts and plans have been made, and the onion seedlings are coming along nicely, but it’s going to be a while before I’m able to dig in the garden. Continue reading →

October in the Garden

As the end of October approaches, the garden has been more or less put to bed for the winter, but there’s still quite a bit growing.

The Friday before last a frost was predicted, so I went over to the garden and picked one last bouquet of flowers, big bunches of herbs, and most of the chard. I didn’t quite believe that we would really get a hard frost, but that night the temperature dipped down to 25 degrees.

The last of the chile peppers and beans and flowers were zapped, and even some of the kale had a little bit of frost damage. That weekend we finished clearing out the most of the beds, and prepared two big beds for garlic.

The garlic went in the ground last Wednesday, over 100 cloves of 4 different varieties. I may have gone a little bit overboard, but I don’t think you could ever have too much garlic. Maybe everyone will get garlic for Christmas next year.

Before the frost I put a row cover over the lettuce, and it’s nice and cozy under there. The lettuce didn’t seem to be bothered at all by the cold, and when I peeked under the fabric yesterday I couldn’t believe how much it had grown.

One of the new cold frames is in place over a bed of mustard greens, chard, tat soi, and carrots. The second cold frame isn’t quite ready yet, but when it’s finished it will go over another bed planted with lettuce, chard, arugula, spinach, and parsley. There’s also still plenty of kale and leeks, so I’m hoping we’ll be able to keep eating from the garden til it’s all buried in snow.