Garden Week in Review

By John, on May 16th, 2011 | 2 comments

radishes - Rover, Icicle, ShunkyoThis week’s harvest. The second round of asparagus is in full swing and we are taking full advantage. I sure will be sad when we stop harvesting at the end of the month but at least I’ll be able to say that I had my fill. The radish bed continues to produce a nice bunch every day or so which makes Phyllis extremely happy because she has never been successful with spring radishes before. We are now lightly harvesting the earlier varieties of our lettuces and arugula. We planted five varieties of lettuce this year and the growth rates are varying widely. The Black Seeded Simpson is definitely growing the fastest followed closely by Panisse, then Green Butterhead Nancy, and Summer Crisp. Finally the Sargeant took a while to get going but it is gaining momentum. …continue reading

Category: Chard, Gardening, Grapes, Seeds and Planting

Garden Week in Review

By John, on May 1st, 2011 | One comment
apache blackberries

sauteed asparagus with a dash of butter, salt and fresh lemonFirst asparagus harvest of 2011. The asparagus is now growing furiously. We had our first full harvest on Monday and by this weekend we’d had another two additional harvests (I consider a harvest enough to feed our family of four). Our favorite way to prepare fresh asparagus is to cut the spears into bite sized pieces and lightly saute them in butter with a dash of salt and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice when they come off the heat. If you harvest promptly, when the spears are about seven inches tall, even the bases of the stems cook up nice and tender. Can’t say that about store-bought asparagus. …continue reading

Category: Asparagus, Gardening, Peas, Tomatoes

Garden Week in Review

By John, on April 18th, 2011 | 5 comments

mid-April asparagus, 2011On Monday I went out to the asparagus bed and counted eight spears poking their way up through the soil. By the weekend that number had tripled and most of them look to be nice and fat. I’ve read that asparagus planted too shallow will result in thin, spindly spears. Planting deeper yields fewer but fatter spears.

With asparagus, the third season is supposed to be the first full harvest. Last year was our third season but, after a promising start, it ended up being disappointing with a lot of thin and misshapen spears. I’m praying that we don’t have a virus. I lavished some extra attention on them over the season last year in the hope of coaxing them into a better harvest this year. Within a matter of weeks I’ll learn whether those efforts have paid dividends or whether our asparagus has a problem. So far, so good. …continue reading

Category: Asparagus, Gardening, Rain Barrels, Tomatoes

March Garlic and Over-Wintered Kale

By John, on March 14th, 2011 | 3 comments

garlic mid-MarchBack in November I posted about my experiment planting garlic purchased at Costco. I followed that up in December with a post about how rapidly the garlic was growing despite the cooling weather and my fear that it wouldn’t survive the long New England winter.

Well I am happy to report that all of my garlic seems to have weathered the winter without apparent harm. The soft neck garlic has resumed it’s rapid growth rate, as you can see from the photo (right side is soft neck, left side is hard neck), apparently undaunted by the cold. Granted, this hasn’t been a particularly harsh winter even though we’ve had a lot of snow. …continue reading

Category: Gardening, Garlic

Peas In The Ground Today

By John, on March 12th, 2011 | 4 comments

peas planted March 12, 2011I must say that it is such a delight to get back out in the garden on a sunny and mild March Saturday even though things didn’t quite go according to plan. It now seems that plantings will be a bit later this season compared to recent seasons. Though all of my beds are now snow-free, most still have a layer of permafrost several inches below the surface. Hopefully, one more week of moderate weather should melt that down.

The good news is that the bed allocated for peas this year is completely thawed and ready to plant. So I cleaned up last season’s leftovers and top dressed the bed with compost. I used a fork to loosen the soil and mix in the compost. I then cut a furrow down the length of the bed along the west side (toward the house) and planted two rows of peas. Varieties include Sugar Sprint (snap), Snow Sweet, and Maxigolt (shelling). The east side of the bed is reserved for kale and broccoli raab to be planted 60 days from now. …continue reading

Category: Gardening, Peas
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