shady garlic

During the winter, the sunlight in the backyard changes radically. The raised bed, which typically gets a lot of sunlight in the summer, goes into complete shade. The north bed gets more sun in the winter than it does in the summer. It's taken me a while to get used to the changing sun/shade patterns.

I've debated about what to do with the raised bed when it gets full shade in the winter. I decided to try planting a crimson clover cover crop to fix nitrogen over winter. The clover has sprouted and looks like it's doing okay without sunlight:


On November 26, I also planted 15 cloves of garlic. Checked on them outside just now and they have all sprouted. Need to keep the garlic weed free, because as my friend says, "you can grow garlic or you can grow weeds but you can't grow both." Given the relatively narrow rooting of the garlic, it doesn't compete well with other plants. Garlic is planted in the fall/winter and won't be ready to harvest until July. Big commitment but I think it will be worth it. I planted a variety that we received in our CSA, from Riverdog Farm in Guinda, California.

where the wild things are pumpkin carving

I spent several hours carving the Wild Things character (Carrol from the movie, Moshe from the book) into a pumpkin. A lot of people remembered my Obama pumpkin from last year. I try to make my pumpkin carvings "timely."

chard harvest and cucumber snacks

The garden continues to give. Our first chard harvest:


A crisp, healthy, cucumber snack with a sprinkling of lemon juice, salt and pepper:

oregano flower bouquets

When herbs are ready to reproduce, they send out flowers. As I pruned the massive oregano plant, I cut off all of the tiny purple flowers so that the plant would continue to grow.


The bees were swarming around the flowers and werent' thrilled about me taking the flowers away.

full bed in august

Here are a few pictures from early August. The raised bed is looking full and healthy. The bluish dinosaur kale looks great:

Here are some good-sized dragon carrots that were planted months ago:


But now the kale has been attacked by aphids so it is time to remove the kale plants and trim back the tomatoes and oregano plants.

a week at smith farm in central maine

I just returned from a 3 week visit to the east coast. I spent one week working on my friend's farm in Troy, Maine. It was inspiring to see the diversity of delicious vegetables produced on the farm. I assisted with harvesting, weeding, cultivating with a horse-powered cultivator, washing, bundling, selling etc. Farming is hard work, but spending time there motivated me to keep working hard on my modest backyard garden.

On the farm, we woke up each morning at 5:30 to harvest vegetables in the cool morning air. Here are some carrots, chard and chinese cabbage:


Here is the cart full of the morning's harvest:

The garlic is hung up to cure on the rafters of the barn:

Here is the horse with the cultivator attached. One person steers the horse with the reins, the other steers the cultivator with the handles. The cultivator has metal blades that dig up the ground, ripping up the weeds between the rows of vegetables.

We spread out the bounty on the tables at the farmers' market:

a pile of pits

Over the past year, occasionally I would save the seeds and pits from fruit that I ate....cherries, apricots, peaches etc. In April, I dumped all of the pits into a 1x1 square foot plot in the backyard just to see what would happen.

In early May, they started to sprout.

Now the mystery fruit has grown quite a bit. At first I thought they were cherry trees based on the size of the sprout, but now they are looking more like melon...who knows?