April in the Garden

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Things are really starting to happen now.  The water doesn’t get turned on at the community garden until mid-April. Normally this isn’t a problem since we’re usually knee deep in mud this time of year, but our last significant rainfall was on March 3rd. This means ever since I planted my peas I’d been hauling a couple of watering cans and whatever containers I can find around the house to the garden each day, and my peas and spinach were getting just barely enough water to stay alive. I wasn’t sure if my poor little perennial herbs were going to make it. As you can probably imagine, the email I got at the end of last week announcing that the water had been turned on was pretty much the most exciting email I’ve received in a long time.

Now that they’re getting enough water, the peas are noticeably taller every day. I’ve enjoyed fresh spinach for dinner twice now. What a treat after a steady diet of kale for the past six months! I’m ready to not eat kale for a long time now. On Saturday I transplanted my lettuce, mixed greens, kale, and chard from the cold frame. I sowed beets and carrots too.  I’m hoping to plant my leeks and onions this weekend. There’s still more brown than green in the garden, but now I have something growing in each of the beds.

Sowing Peas

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St. Patrick’s Day is the traditional pea sowing time in the Northeast, though usually there’s a pretty good chance that the garden is still buried in snow this time of year. Lately the weather has felt like late May and the garden is ready to go. This year I’m growing two kinds of regular green shelling peas, Green Arrow and Laxton’s Progress No. 9, plus Sugar Snap and Blue Podded Shelling Pea. This last one was a last minute addition. When I went to the garden center on Saturday, I couldn’t resist browsing the seed racks and ended up picking up a couple more packets, even though I already have too many seeds. It’s a soup pea rather than a fresh-eating pea. I’m looking forward to making pea soup from homegrown peas next winter! Continue reading

Sugaring Season

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After a few days of snow and rain and fog, the sun broke through this morning and we took a drive up to South Face Farm in Ashfield for a sugar shack breakfast. We ate maple syrup on pancakes, French toast, bacon, sausage, and corn fritters. And pickles too. Pickles are the traditional antidote to all that maple syrup. When sap is being boiled down great clouds of maple-scented steam billow out of the roof of the sugar shack. It’s the best smell in the world. Continue reading