Small-Portions Harvests

0

For a variety of reasons, our garden this year (as in many other years) yields "small-portion harvests" -- just enough during any given week to treat us to home-grown fruits and vegetables that subsidize the rest of our meals, but not enough to store away and preserve.  Every year I work towards a more productive harvest, and each year it does get a little bit better (except maybe this year -- drought, ya know).  Nevertheless, despite the frustrations, I am filled with gratitude and wonder at each small-portions harvest that comes from our land.

Isn't it beautiful?  Colours, textures, scents, and flavours....
Four kinds of tomatoes, 2 kinds of potatoes, husk/ground cherries, buttercup squash, and the inevitable egg (though the hens are starting to molt and egg production is decreasing).  Not shown are the Astrakom eggplant and the German Englischer custard squash (which have been suffering mold problems) that we already ate this week.

Many more tomatoes to ripen, more squash and eggplant, and at least 2-3 more buttercup squash on the volunteer vine that this one came off of.  Our best produce is grown from the compost pile.  If only my whole garden were as rich as our compost pile....

(I am considering for next year limiting the scope of my garden, so I can spend more time and have more earth to amending and enrich.  And if there's little planted, I can let the chickens in to help me out with that -- they would love that!)

Read More »

Easy-to-Peel Hardboiled Eggs

1

In the spring and summer, we get eggs.  Lots and lots of eggs.  I am always looking for new ways to fix eggs -- scrambled, fried, poached, in breads, in desserts, in stir-fries, in souffles, in bulls-eyes.  Egg salad is a popular option at our house, but hard-boiling and then peeling the eggs always seems like a lot of work -- especially since fresh eggs tend to be more difficult to peel.

My solution?  Steamed eggs.  They are tender, look and taste fresh, and are a dream to peel.

Here's the deal:
Bring a pot of water to steaming.  Add a single layer of eggs in a steamer.  Cover the pot and steam for ~13 minutes.  In the meantime, prepare a bowl of ice water.  When the eggs are done steaming, let them cool in the ice water and then start peeling.

Don't throw out those shells!  You can compost them, feed them back to the chickens to keep their calcium levels up, or put them around your tomatoes.

Read More »

Blueberries Are a Go

1

In my previous blueberries article, you saw the prep work it took to create a space for the blueberry bushes we were receiving.  And they have been received (patriot, blueray, and jersey varieties), or rather, picked up.

After the space was cleared of the bounteous bushes, the soil had to be prepared.  I dug holes and a trench and filled them with stinky, fresh compost, burying that with dirt, and finishing the fill with more mature, bagged compost from the garden center and more dirt.  I planted four blueberry bushes where the land had been cleared (the patriot and blueray), and tucked them into their new beds with bark mulch.  The other two (jersey) I planted in the back of the yard, along with a miniature blueberry that had be floundering by itself in the front yard.







One week later, they are all leafing out, apparantly enjoying their new homes.  The two (three) in the back of the yard may not receive enough sun, but they should carry on perfectly well until I find a better place to put them (if a better place is indeed needed) -- I just had to get them in the ground somewhere, since there wasn't room in where the others were.



Now that the blueberries are in, I have been spending my time chopping up the branches of the bushes I removed; no small feat, that!  Amazingly, a bush that was 5 feet tall and 4 feet wide chops into a single wheelbarrowful of short twigs.  Cutting up the branches makes it easier to dispose of them in our heap of debris or in the composters.  (Unfortunately, at this time we don't have a chipper....)

Strawberries are coming along, as are the elderberries.  More on those later.

Read More »

April Vacation Week: Blueberry Prep

2

Ground & soil preparation.  That's what it's all about.  When you're receiving new blueberry bushes in a couple of weeks and don't have anywhere to put them, it's time to think and prepare.

We are picking up 6 blueberry plants from the local grower Nourse Farms* in a couple of weeks.  And though our yard is fairly good-sized, finding the right spot for the blueberries was not a simple task.  We finally settled on a long, sunny space at the back of the house which, unfortunately, has been home to flowering quince and a burning bush of advanced age and size.  With depleted soil and big bushes in the way, preparation had to begin.

I have some experience pulling out shrubs by hand.  When we moved into our home six years ago, I spent the entire first spring and summer pulling out overgrown yews that had blanketed the shady front of the house (that space is now filled with ferns and astilbe and monkshood and toad lily and such).  I sawed, chopped, cut, dug, and pulled until I had removed at least five huge yews.  This time I had fewer shrubs to remove, but they were just as old -- and two of them were thorny.

Ornamental quince stumps.

Quince & burning bush branches.

First I removed the flowering quince.  Two plants that were in reality three or four.  They had been left to their own growing for a number of years (other than some minor prunings) and had tall, straight, thorny branches, as well as some decoratively twisty ones.  It took me three days to remove them and most of their roots.  (You should have seen the worms I found!  As big around as my thumb and twice as long!)  I dug some chicken compost from the chicken run and started layering it into the old, undernourished soil, along with not-yet-totally-composted compost and some purchased organic compost.  Layers of dirt and compost to fill in the holes left by the quince.

The burning bush before.

Burning bush after.

Next it was time to work on the 10 foot+ burning bush that sat at the corner of our house.  The branches are all gone and the digging has begun.  The first "real" root I ran into (about 30 seconds into digging) was a twist of two roots, which combined were thicker than my arm and much longer.  I don't know if you have experience with burning bush, but its roots go on and on -- I dig new roots from it out of the garden every year (that's where all the nutrition I pile into my garden every year goes), and they are never smaller around than my fingers -- and many of them are webby and difficult to dig through.

The dreadful weather has put a serious pause in my work -- I started over April vacation week, but have had nothing but rain and chill since with no opportunity to work more.  I think the burning bush will take multiple days of hard work, digging, hacking, chopping.  The chickens, at least, are looking forward to it.




*I love Nourse Farms -- they have blueberry picking in the summer and sell tons of fabulous fruit plants -- we purchased their strawberry collection a couple of years ago and this year purchased their blueberry collection.  We have also purchased gooseberry and elderberry plants from them -- which are legal in our Massachusetts town.

Read More »

April Vacation Week: Garden

0

This year, during April vacation week, I finally pounded fence posts in around the garden and put up an almost respectable looking fence -- a necessity since getting chickens and newish neighbours (it never hurts to make your garden and property look a little nicer, even if it is being productive and efficient).  The fence has done a wonderful job of keeping the chickens out and has allowed me to to *finally* get my spring planting started.

The garlic has been coming up nicely; it gets planted in October after the Garlic Fest, and we always have great luck with it.  It's very exciting to see those green shoots coming up in the spring before anything else is growing.  Though this year, I will admit, the lettuce also made a big showing -- I let it go to seed last summer and some of those seeds starting growing and leafing out pretty early this year.

Also recently planted is the spinach, which is starting to come up.  This week saw the additions of more lettuce, kale, beets, peas, and potatoes (purple and golden).  Hopefully, I have amended the garden soil sufficiently and the plants will have enough nutrients to grow.  I am so excited to get those seeds into the ground and to see them start sprouting.  I have never planted potatoes before, and can't wait to see how they turn out.  They have been planted in the newest part of the garden, though -- the part that has been improved the least -- so we'll see how it goes.  Carrots will go in soon.

I started the tomatoes and eggplant inside.  This is something I usually do much earlier in the year, but I had an ailing cat that occupied my time and energy, so I didn't get to them.

A new addition to my garden is an in-garden compost.  I dug a shallow hole, took extra chicken-wire and formed a wide tube around the hole, and dumped compostables into it.  I plan to move this one to a new location in the garden each year to further improve the quality of the soil. 
(Some of our compost goes to the chickens, some to our black bin composter, and some into the garden.  More on that in a later post.)

Tune in next time for the final post on what happened during April vacation week!

Read More »

April Vacation Week: Dandelions

0

What a week for April vacation -- warm, sunny, and perfect for high productivity.  I took advantage.

With all the dandelions making their appearances, I decided to take Saturday afternoon to pull -- and pull and pull.  Our front yard looks like a dandelion garden, which isn't so bad when they are yellow, but I'm not fond of them when they go to seed, which they do all too quickly.  And since dandelions are such great sources for tea and tincture herbs, I didn't feel like I was wasting my time plucking so many of them from the ground (roots, blossoms, and leaves can all be used).

I pulled nearly a basket-full, using one of those special dandelion-picking tools that help get the roots out.  Our lawn is in dire need of help (which it will continue to be until I can get it turned into a garden of sorts), and I was very pleased to realize that I was aerating it with every dandelion I pulled out.  Then, to make the task even more beneficial, I filled each hole lightly with compost, to add a little extra nutrition to our under-cared-for lawn.

So I now have a load of dandelions to trim and wash and dry.  I look forward to trying different herbal remedies with them.  Unfortunately, I didn't take the time to behead them, so I could use the blossoms to make dandelion jelly, but I can still dehydrate the leaves and roast the roots for beneficial drinks and medicinals.
And in case you were worried, there are still plenty of them in the lawn, should I need more -- plenty so that the bees have something to eat while they wait for all the other flowers and blossoms to bloom.

Tune in next time for more April vacation week updates!

Read More »