August 20, 2010

crops for the cold frame

I am thinking about what to grow in my cold frame this fall. I’d like to keep it active as long as I can. I found this advice from Johnny’s website interesting: “If you have a hoop house, you can grow many cool-weather crops for harvest right through December. The trick is to get your crops established before the day length drops below 10 hours; after that, plants won’t grow much, but they will tolerate cold temperatures until you’re ready to harvest them. Some of the vegetables you can plant…

August 18, 2010

fall planting

I have so many empty spaces in my community garden plot that I would love to fill with greens. I have seeds ready for about 10 of my favorite lettuce varieties, as well as arugula, spinach, frisee endive, cilantro, and radicchio. I’d love to have a garden full of these like I did this spring. But with such hot dry weather, its hard to get them going. I’ve been planting weekly for 3-4 weeks and not much is coming up. Its hard for me to get to my plot to…

August 9, 2010

fall planting

Its mid summer and I’m well into the fall planting. I had a email today from Lesley who just moved from Arizona to MA and is wondering what she can plant in her new zone and new vegetable garden. Here in Belmont, my first fall frost is usually early October (maybe Oct 10), so we have about 60 days of growing left. Today I planted seeds for: Carrots (St Valery)Lettuce (Oak Leaf Mix and Prizehead) I’m also watering every day to try to encourage seeds I planted last week (beets,…

June 22, 2010

popcorn seedlings

This is my popcorn. I have about twice as much this year as last year. So far, so good.

June 12, 2010

today’s sowing list: sunflowers and soybeans

Normally I would direct seed sunflowers and soybeans, but because of my voracious chipmunk, I am sowing them at home in trays and will transplant. Sunflowers:Tahumara white (Sand Hill)Ling’s Grey Stripe (Johnny’s)Elf’s blend (Botanical Interests) Soybeans:Butterbeans (Johnny’s)Envy (Johnny’s) My soybeans that I planted 2 weeks ago had a germination rate of about 3/30 – bad. Today I remembered that I specifically bought the soybean inoculant and I forgot to use it. Today I added it to the soil as I sowed. I also went ahead and planted 3-4 seeds per…

May 24, 2010

planting sweet potatoes

I’ve never grown my own sweet potato slips before and I suppose I used a non-traditional method. They aren’t really slips, but little plants that I transplanted today. I transplanted about a dozen. I think I heard that they do OK in the shade, so I planted them next to my corn bed.

May 11, 2010

transplanting

I am transplanting my tomatoes, peppers and eggplant seedlings to bigger pots. It seems the weather will be too cool for planting out for a week of so, at least. SO – everything gets to move into big pots. I am trying to figure out what I can do with all these seedlings. My parents have reserved theirs, and my brother says he wants some. I just was invited to talk at the NOAA Fisheries Environmental Fair (Wednesday, May 19 in Gloucester), so this may be a good place to…

May 7, 2010

wall-o-water tomatoes

Today I checked on my four tomato plants in Wall-o-Water protectors. The Ulra early Beaverlodge seedling is nearly emerging from the top of the unit and has two clusters of many blossoms. Half are budded and half in full bloom. I shook them – pretending to be bee-like – hopefully getting them to self pollinate. The Cherokee Purple and Box Car Willy seedlings look good, though no blossoms, not as big, and a bit of mold in some spots. The protectors seem to trap too much moisture around the plant.…

May 2, 2010

cold frame greens

April 28, 2010

fava seedlings

These are crimson flowered fava beans. The seeds were collected and sent to me by Dan. I planted them on March 17 – St Patrick’s Day. I love the full roundness of the leaves. Prettier then regular favas it seems. I’m looking forward to the red flowers.

weeks and counting until my last spring frost

crops for the cold frame

fall planting

fall planting

popcorn seedlings

today’s sowing list: sunflowers and soybeans

planting sweet potatoes

transplanting

wall-o-water tomatoes

cold frame greens

fava seedlings

My garden this week

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17 years of archives!

Skippy’s vegetable of the month – Egyptian walking onions!

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My garden this week

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17 years of archives!

Skippy’s vegetable of the month – Egyptian walking onions!

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