Weekend Gardening: What Survived the Winter In Our Outdoor Garden
March 21, 2009 by Andrea 
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Herbs. That’s pretty much it. We cooked with our sage, parsley, and thyme throughout the winter. We didn’t get the cold frames finished in time to have a successful winter garden, but that didn’t stop me from trying. We got one little leek and one tatsoi plant, but the cold frames are ready for next winter and we hope to have much more. The arugula picked up some kind of pest late in the fall that sapped the life out of it before we could get a second harvest, but we’ll plant more this weekend. The saffron never bloomed but did stay green the whole winter, so it probably had too much water last summer. I’m moving all the corms to a new location away from the beds we water so hopefully they will flower in the fall.
We will also transplant all of the herbs to their new home in a raised bed and plant some more cool weather herbs (dill, cilantro) as well as spring vegetables and fruits (two kinds of peas, eight kinds of greens and lettuces, shallots, strawberries, blueberries, and hopefully some rhubarb) in the other new raised beds.
Weekend Gardening: Starting Seeds Indoors
March 15, 2009 by Andrea Print This Post
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Over the last few weeks we have started seeds for our summer garden. We’re right on the border for Hardiness Zones 6 and 7, so I follow the rules for Zone 6. Because we often still have very cold temperatures in early May, our safe outdoor planting date is around the third week in May, and depending on the type of plant we start seeds as early as the beginning of March. I separate our seeds into three groups: 1) start indoors (early March to early April), 2) plant direct in spring when the soil is workable (third week in March), and 3) plant direct after danger of frost has passed (third week in May).
In the last two weeks, we have started celery, leeks, sweet peppers, chile peppers (jalapeno, ancho, serrano, anaheim, poblano), tomatoes (San Marzano, roma, grape, Brandywine, Jubilee yellow), eggplant (Black Beauty and lavender), marjoram, cilantro, stevia, and lemongrass, and in a few weeks I’ll start the basils (Genovese, lemon dani). Several of these can also direct seed when the weather is warm enough, but I always start some early in the hope that we will have something to put in the ground and have an early harvest. It doesn’t always work and last year not a single bell pepper sprouted so we had to buy plants, but most years we have seedlings ready to plant in May. Read more
Weekend Gardening Photos and 7 Random Things
December 20, 2008 by Andrea Print This Post
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We keep an indoor garden year round, growing mostly herbs but also some greens. We don’t have an elaborate setup, just a couple shelves positioned at western and southern-facing windows with inexpensive grow lights attached.
We run the lights from sunset to sunrise to help give the plants plenty of growing time and warmth.
This year we are growing basil, cilantro, mint, thyme, dill, parsley, romaine lettuce, butterhead lettuce (just seeded after spinach crop failure), scallions, and leeks. We also have a bay laurel in a pot, and although it’s twice as large as it was in the spring, it won’t be ready for another few years.
The Saffron Experiment: One Year, New Sprouts
October 11, 2008 by Andrea Print This Post
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I’ve been holding my breath since mid-September, waiting for signs of life from the saffron corms I planted at this time last year. Honestly it’s been a bit of an obsession, though I have refrained from checking every hour. Just once a day has been enough, and yesterday I was finally rewarded when I found two little sprouts in one of the pots and one more in the other.
Weekend Gardening Photos
September 14, 2008 by Andrea Print This Post
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Our harvest of shallots.
Last Monday we planted the ends of some scallions I had used, just the roots and about 2 cm of the white part. Top Gun helped me put the soil in the container and the roots in the pot, then we watered them. Just three days later we had little green tops peeping up out of the soil and now just six days later we have good growth. This was so easy even my four-year-old could do it! We plan to add more so we have a running supply.
Weekend Gardening Photos
September 7, 2008 by Andrea Print This Post
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Part of Labor Day was spent putting in the fall garden. Most of the vegetables and herbs are still growing like crazy, but we had harvested the lemon basil and most of the Genovese basil, so I had a couple of empty spots in the garden. We also started some herbs and greens in pots. (Above) Swiss chard plants sprouting.
Butter lettuce sprouts
Some volunteer dill sprouts.
Spinach sprouts
Thyme sprouts
After losing every single leaf to a parsley-loving critter while we were on vacation, the parsley staged a comeback and looks great.
We cut down the basil a couple weeks ago but didn’t pull the stalks out of the ground, and now we have more basil coming in. It should do well in the cooler weather for the next few months.
I used to have this stevia plant in the house, then it almost succumbed to a white fly invasion, so I cut it back and moved it outdoors, and now it’s flourishing.
The sage bush looks bushier by the day. I can’t wait to use it in fall roasting recipes.
