Value of harvest as of 7/20/10: $563

A kitchen gardener's blog

Cold Snap Kills Winter Garden

December 30, 2008 - It got up to 69 degrees today. I took advantage of the warmth and sunshine, to do a little garden clean up. I had a lot of dead plants to remove due to a recent cold snap

Last week, on the first full day of winter, we had a low of 7 degrees and a day time high of only 24. Usually day time highs always go above freezing and rarely are the lows in the single digits. As a result, I lost a lot of my winter garden.

Most of the plants in my two cold frames, like this oak leaf lettuce, are ok, but everything under row covers and in the hoophouse is dead, except for the kale and ... MORE

First Snow

December 12, 2008 - It snowed last night. In the five winters I have lived here, we have never had snow this early in the year. Actually we've hardly had any snow at all. Never once has it been deep enough to cover the tops of the blades of grass, but it is enough for the schools to close. Can you hear my kids cheering in the background?

I worry about my rosemary. I have two plants heading into their fifth winter, that stand three feet tall. All the gardening books say they are not hardy to zone 6, so I guess I have been lucky. But my luck may have just run out. The snow was wet and heavy and most ... MORE

Ever Feed Your Family Food From the Compost Pile?

December 09, 2008 - Recently I noticed onions sprouting from one of my many compost piles. So when a recipe I was making called for a cup of scallions, I went straight to that pile of cooking compost, and pulled out a few of the onions. Shhh! don't tell my kids.

This is not the first time I have fed my family questionable food. A few days ago I found this unidentifiable green growing in my vegetable garden. From looking at it and tasting it, I figured it was in the brassica family, maybe a mustard or turnip, but the leaves were not like any I had ever seen. I determined that it must have been a self... MORE

Leaf Mulch: My Moral Dilemma

December 01, 2008 - I believe there is a special place in hell for the person who invented the leaf blower. How is that noisy, polluting, fossil fuel burning contraption any better than a rake? I refuse to use power tools in my garden, I prefer the quite simplicity of a rake to a blower, a hoe to a tiller, and a human powered push mower to a gas powered mower. So why am I now the proud owner of a Black & Decker Leafhog: high performance blower/vac/mulcher with anti-clog vortex and metal impeller?

Well for one thing I prefer to think of it as a vac/mulcher, rather than a blower. I have given my son an... MORE