the eve of the big snow storm?…

 
 
All day today I’ve been hearing the words “historic”, “epic”, “snow-mageddon”, “a top 5 storm”. We are predicted to get 2-3 feet of snow with 50 mph winds all night and all day tomorrow. Other words I hear are “hunker down”, “school closures”, “state-of-emergency”, “power outages expected”. Wow. Well, I think we’re prepared. We have a generator and plenty of food (and beverages) in the house. The gardens will be happy with the snow cover. The chickens are snug. Their small coop is solid wood, their big run has a…
 
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new seed trays to try out

 
 
Here are the new seed cells I’m going to try this year. I’m still deciding what to plant in which. ‘Til now, I’ve only used the bottom right trays, which have 48 cells per 10-20 tray. The new trays I’ll try have 24, 128 and 200 cells per 10-20 tray. I got my seedlings shelves out and stacked the trays on them. They’re ready and waiting. I’ll look for some soil mix. I think I have some out in the shed leftover from last year. I’m working on setting up…
 
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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…
 
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new computer – new seed cells

 
 
I have a new computer. I’m inside on a snowy day, working on setting it up. Its a fantastic touch screen, high-res Dell running Windows 8.1. (I had a hard time deciding Mac vs PC, but have run PC’s for the past 20 years and didn’t want to make the switch – learning windows 8 was enough – a one day effort with on-line videos. So I will have the “worker drone” image and not the “creative” image computer. Oh well.) The challenge for me now is to get the…
 
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chicken coop with a glass covered run

 
 
I think this is the reason my chickens are laying nearly an egg a day in the coldest and darkest days of winter. Its my husband’s invention and creation. During our house renovation, we needed up with two unneeded large panes of glass. A wood frame was designed to fit these panes. The panes and heavy and weren’t easy to hoist up onto the frame. I love the result! Can’t say I’m hearing any complains from the hens. In this last picture, snow has covered the roof. We clear this…
 
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dreaming…..

 
 
In the middle of winter, its a perfect time for a gardener to dream. (On MLK day: I have a dream.) I dreamt a lot last night. Dreamt my piano teacher kicked me out of class, dreamt I forgot to feed my chickens for a week. My night time dreams tend to be my little worries. I thought today was a good time to think about bigger dreams. Maybe not anything I can do anything about, but if they’re written down, maybe it means something. I have a dream… –…
 
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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…
 
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new year’s vegetable garden resolutions

 
 
1. More lettuce. I say this every year. I get a good spring crop then get distracted with all the other plants and forget the succession planting. Lettuce and other salad greens are something we eat a lot of. 2. Also more beets, carrot, garlic, onions. And less winter squash. 3. Grow beautiful tomatoes, which means solving the problem I had with bad compost. I’ll move them to a bed that didn’t get the bad stuff. I hope some of my home compost is ready this spring. 4. Grow bigger…
 
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Kathy Martin
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

What I planted recently

Jan 21
thyme, lettuce, escarole

Feb 21
celery, celeriac, parsley, leeks

March 11
cabbage, kale, arugula



What I'm planting soon

April 1
peppers, eggplants, marigolds, beets

April 12
tomatoes, basil, sunflowers

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My garden this week

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17 years of archives!

Check out the food pantry farm I helped to start up:

Aurelia's Garden

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

“I envision a day when every city and town has front and back yards, community gardens and growing spaces, nurtured into life by neighbors who are no longer strangers, but friends who delight in the edible rewards offered from a garden they discovered together.” – Greg Peterson

"What can happen to a seed is a miracle."

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