today’s harvest
Carrots: I’m just thinning them so for, but the little ones are tasty. The varieties from left are: Bolero, Mokum, Oxheart. Beets: This is my first beet harvest. Four varieties from left: ???, Chiogga, Blankoma, Merlin. And it’s my first TOMATO of the season. Yippee, but WOW, really late. (A previous harvest photo had a couple tomatoes that another gardener gave me.) The tomato variety is Tiren. The seedling was grown by Jane, a friend of my mom’s. It’s a Roma type. A super looking plant with fruit hanging heavy.…
a whole bunch of little onion seedlings
I’ve got the seed tray on the kitchen windowsill above the sink so I can watch them grow, just for a day or two. Seems like pretty good germination, except for the shallots and the White Wing. They must be old seed. I’ll have to throw those packets out. (I’ll get them under lights soon, as the sun isn’t very strong here yet.)
my last clove of garlic
I planted 75 cloves of garlic last fall. It gave me a pretty good harvest. There were a few more rotted coves than usual, but my main wish is that I had more heads. I’ve had years when my harvest lasts til April. I was jealous to read a blog where the gardener planted 500 cloves of garlic!! Wow. This fall again I planted 75 cloves. I’ll have to think about a way to plant more next fall. I would need to use a second bed. Just over 100 cloves…
how to grow “comically huge” onions
I was so thrilled with Sara’s comment on how to grow “comically huge” onions that I have spent some time reading up on onion culture. Sara wrote: Onions: plant very shallowly, feed, feed, feed and water to put on as much leaf mass as possible before your daylength reaches the # of hours that your variety requires to bulb. Used organic fertilizer and compost last year and grew HUGE onions. Comically huge. These are my tiny onions: Here’s a really great link I found: Growing Onions, TexasA&M The size of…
potatoes in storage are sprouting
I’ve been storing my potatoes in the kitchen since I have no basement or garage (yet). Its usually 65-70*F in here, and warmer sometimes. Potatoes are ideally stored at 35-40*F for long term storage. So I plugged in a small refrigerator, sorted my potatoes by variety (I have All Blue, Burbank russet, and Yukon Gold), found three old mesh vegetable bags I saved, bagged them up and popped them in the fridge. This reminds, me – I should go check on them now…. they’re good. I ended up with SO…
potato bed ready for planting
Finally, I have a potato bed ready to plant. I’ve gone over to my community plot several times to work on it, but each time I go there is some other task that needs to be done. Like removing salt marsh hay mulch from my garlic and onions and layering it in my garden paths, emptying my compost bin and sifting the new compost, pruning my pear trees and raspberry canes, top-dressing my asparagus with compost and pruning lots of winter kill from my lilac bush (it sure was a…
potting up sprouted sweet potatoes
I have lots of little sprouts on my sweet potatoes so today I potted them up in soil. My first pot under the seed lights! I’m saving those big plastic lettuce and spinach containers for potting this year. They are a nice size.
sweet potato sprouts
About 5 or 6 of my little sweet potatoes have sprouted now. They’re in a pan with a little moisture, partially covered with plastic, in a warm spot.
This is a journal of my vegetable gardens. Skippy thinks the garden is his, even though I do all the work. We're located near Boston, in USDA zone 6. I have bees, chickens, fruit trees and berry bushes, too. I use all sustainable organic methods and strive to grow all of my family's vegetables myself. -Kathy
weeks and counting until my last spring frost
My garden this week
Skippy’s vegetable of the month – Egyptian walking onions!
