November 11, 2008

on Veteran’s Day

… to pay tribute to all of those who have served our country! This is a late fall mum that is beautiful in my parents garden now. Its a great salmon color, with daisy type flowers and a loose natural form. Hardy and comes back every year. I’d love to get a big bunch of these for my garden. The name is Sheffield Pink and links I found are Burpee or Triple Oaks Nursery.

November 10, 2008

garden photos

Here are photos I took yesterday of my two vegetable garden plots. The top one is my home garden and the bottom is my community plot. Not much work going on in the community garden. I brought home the last of my garden tools and pulled a bunch of carrots yesterday. I still have several crops growing: broad leaved escarole, snap peas, Chinese greens, arugula, kale, lot of beets and radish. I got my home garden winterized yesterday. I heavily mulched my kale, parsley and gnome (poor gnome). If the…

November 10, 2008

November harvest – carrots

Yesterday I harvested a big bunch of carrots. My only harvest this week. I still have so many vegetables between my gardens and my half winter share from Belmont CSA. My vegetable drawer is full to overflowing. We eat a lot of veggies, but there’s a limit. The nice thing is how well most of the winter vegetables keep. I noticed these carrots are kind of hairy. This can happen in soil that is too fertile (too much nitrogen) or waterlogged (not recently). Hmmm. I thought my N was low…

November 6, 2008

autumn roses

There’s not really much to do in the garden now, so Skippy and I were out admiring the last of the roses. There is something special about an end of the season rose blossom. It gets that delicate crinkly look to the petals. Against the dying foliage, they look ethereal – an out of context reminder of summer. These roses are a planting in a park in Cambridge where Skippy and I walked this afternoon. Probably a variety of hardy shrub roses. Very pretty. Over the past few weeks my…

November 6, 2008

too late broccoli

Dan in Ontario asked me about my fall broccoli. His is doing good. Mine is not 🙁 I wasn’t going to show mine because it looks like I didn’t plan right. Its just now getting ready to form heads. Way too late. With the cold weather, its not really doing much growing. It’ll be killed by the winter weather soon and will be added to my compost pile. Next year I’ll plant my fall crop of broccoli earlier. I planted these broccoli on August 27. Next year I suppose I…

November 5, 2008

but what kind of puppy will he get?

So on to the big question – what breed of dog will he get his girls? I have a suggestion, a Portuguese Water Dog! first Portuguese water dog

November 3, 2008

thick cover of clover and rye

I’m pleased with the patch of green manure I planted early this fall. The clover and rye did very well though the field peas and vetch didn’t do much. My later sowings (too late) did not sprout as well.topic: soil

November 3, 2008

my last garden tomatoes

This is about it for my garden tomatoes. The green tomatoes I picked a couple weeks ago are now ripening and we’re enjoying them in salads. Though this year’s wet weather gave me a small harvest, the variety was nice. I grew ten different types of heirlooms and hybrids. The late producing varieties (in this photo) are Purple Calabash (purple and green fruit) and Oxheart Red (wonderfully meaty and tomato red). I’m partial to the ‘tomato red’ colored fruits. tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum)

October 29, 2008

video – white house veggie garden

This is a great video! It shows a time-lapse of a man digging, planting and harvesting a new vegetable garden in his front yard (a small “white house”). An analogy is made to THE white house. He makes a lovely garden with great beds and rows of veggies. Tomatoes and radish are harvested. Watch it if you like to watch a garden grow. Its also a nice “how-to” if you want to start your own garden. This is just what I often imagine when I see a nice sunny green…

October 28, 2008

a rainy late October day in my vegetable gardens

Photos of both of my vegetable gardens – I love taking pictures in the rain. My fall greens are doing GREAT in this dreary cool weather. I haven’t had time to go to my community plot (top photo) in several days. But what a nice surprise to see how everything has grown underneath the salt hay mulch. There is some evidence of more frosts. The peas are pretty badly damaged, as well as the tips of some beet leaves. I picked a good harvest of salad greens and radish.

weeks and counting until my last spring frost

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