March 3, 2013

reinforced cold frame

The problem with my cold frame was mostly that the center front wooden support rotted and the weight of the snow crushed it. Once it was gone, the side bowed out and then the covers sunk in. I propped up the covers and used string to pull in the sides. Once my husband saw this, he got out tools and fresh wood and fixed it properly. Now it has a reinforced center post, reinforced sides and a brace running across the middle of the frame.

February 15, 2013

collapsing cold frame

Today I checked my cold frame and saw it is collapsing. 🙁 The left side of it has bowed out and the top panels are sinking in under a full load of wet snow. (I’ll add a photo here tomorrow.) It had 3 feet of snow fall on it over the weekend – and then we had rain. The frame is a few years old now and was not designed to bear weight. I should have shoveled a path to it and cleared the panels of snow right away –…

January 25, 2013

cold cold frame

My cold frame temperature is getting up to 27*F (-3*C) or so with the midday sun on it, but it goes back down to bitter cold at night. It hasn’t gotten above freezing in several days now. The greens are wilted. I have broccoli, escarole, bok choi spinach, lettuce, parsley and rosemary growing inside it. I don’t know if anything will survive. It hasn’t gotten this cold since we built the cold frame.

January 11, 2013

tomato supports in the snow

…. waiting for spring….

January 1, 2013

my garden plot in the snow

On this last day of the year, Skippy, Steve and I walked though our community garden plots and the adjacent fields and woods. We got about 7 inches of snow yesterday – our first real snow of the season. Everything was beautiful. Bright blankets of white, song sparrows and chickadees out and about, and lots of dogs and their people out enjoying it all.

December 4, 2012

December cold frame

My cold frame is full of greens. The baby bok choy is a good size for eating now, and I love the thought that it should hold at this size for months in the cold. The other plants are a bit small for harvesting. They’ll grow more in March, when the sunlight increases. There are a couple of pots of greens that I didn’t have room to plant. I am reminded now that I juts left them in the center of the frame. They don’t enough soil and are dying.…

October 27, 2012

bluestone patio

When I published a photo of these great bluestones that I recovered from someone’s trash earlier this year, a reader commented that he/she would lay them in a pattern with stones between. This sounded like a great idea to me. I’ve never done this, so I am experimenting. I loosened and racked the soil, laid the bluestone and then piled on extra dirt. After stomping it down and working in more soil under stones that wobbled, I swept the extra soil of off the patio. I’ll gradually work in more…

September 30, 2012

i’ve got mail

There’s been a field mouse in my garden mailbox for a couple years now. I looked in today and seems he is gathering extra fluff for the winter.

June 21, 2012

new bluestone patio

Here’s the new patio I made from bluestone I salvaged from the trash. Just a little surface for my garden chair. For now, the stones are just laid out on top of the salt marsh hay. Later, I plan to pull back the hay, flatten the area and set the stones so they are flush with the dirt of the path.

May 7, 2012

new arbor

I have a new addition to my community plot. My husband made me an arbor. We found a couple of trellises on sale at a local garden shop. He made a cross pieces for the top. I am looking forward to planting squash or cucumbers up and over this.

weeks and counting until my last spring frost

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