peas trellis up
We have gotten several days of well needed rain. My peas are happy and growing fast. I put some string trellis up for them.
tomato cages
I have a stack of bright new tomato cages on my patio waiting to be used. I haven’t ever used cage before, but these new colorful ones are hard to resist.
inside my coldframe
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My cold frame has a patch of greens, some herbs and a few cayenne pepper plants that are still growing from the summer. Lots of open space that I can fill in early spring/late winter. In late February, the sun will hit the frame nicely again. (Now its mostly below the neighboring house.) This will be the second winter for my cold frame. My husband made it in March 2010. This fall, I mail ordered some green house plastic and we replaced the top panels, which had grown brittle and…
sunflowers under bulletin board
I found some nice Teddy bear sunflowers in a garden store last weekend and bought plants to go under our community garden bulletin board. I had these in my plot last year. They stay short but fill out and keep blooming.
espaliered pear trees
I have two espaliered pear trees in my community plot. This week I pruned them and tired up some stray branches. My new pear tree has 5 little pears that set. The older Bartlett tree again had no fruit – like last year. It has crossed my mind that maybe its because I am pruning them wrong. Could this be? Maybe I should prune earlier in the year.
skirt for garden bulletin board
My husband made a nice skirt for the base of the garden bulletin board that a Belmont boy scout recently made for us. He used pressure treated 2 by 6’s and filled with topsoil. I’m deciding what to plant in it. What do you think? Black-Eyed Susan’s? Daffodils and day lilies? Native wild flowers like tansy or Joe Pye weed? A couple low blue berry bushes? Marigolds, cosmos… sunflowers…. there are so many choices.
my cold frame after vacation
Everything is growing fast now. The lettuce, spinach and escarole are filling our salad bowl. These are plants from last fall, that overwintered in the cold frame. My overwintered beets are also doing well with nice greens now and just starting to form roots. The overwintered broccoli did not do well. It grew nicely, but then “buttoned”, that is, it formed tiny little broccoli heads. I picked them a couple days ago and they made a single small serving. I’m told that broccoli will button when its stressed. I’ll pull…
replanted cold frame
I took all the overwintered plants (lettuce, spinach, beets, broccoli and endive) out of my cold frame in the beautiful warm weather on Friday, added six bags of manure and compost mix, turned it under, and then replanted everything. I also planted the seedlings I started on Jan 28 (leeks, onions, lettuce and escarole). There’s a tray of seedlings (onions, arugula spinach, kale, dill and lettuce) that has been out in the frame since midweek that is doing well. The cold frame is turning into a perfect place to harden…
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!
