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Archive for April, 2009

On the first foods of spring

Posted in food on April 28, 2009 | 9 Comments »

When you grow your own, you can’t truly expect uniformity
Wow:  a weekend of warm temperatures, and it’s like we’ve traveled to a different country!  (And all without leaving home, how cool…)  It helps that the majority of the blooming trees are blooming.  Because we live in the fruit belt, we pass probably more different kinds [...]

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The greenhouses in early spring

Posted in greenhouses, seeds on April 27, 2009 | 13 Comments »

Early spring outdoors means late spring in the greenhouses!

“Old” greenhouse:  You’re seeing 7 of 9 beds, most are 3′x6′
The old (Oct ‘07) greenhouse has been acting as our seedling house:  it’s kind of boot camp before life outdoors.  In here, I transfer all seeds I start indoors.  Some of these seedlings have already done [...]

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On the gardening workload

Posted in sweat on April 25, 2009 | 15 Comments »

Flea beetle damage on the mustards, the little buggers
For the last two months since the snow melted I have been doing the gardener’s equivalent of thumb-twiddling.
I have limited my exertions to weeding the paths, tidying the beds, doing minor repairs, putting in new fencing, digging new beds (yes in wet clay soil bad me) and [...]

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On spring’s progress

Posted in weather on April 23, 2009 | 12 Comments »

Saved from the frost!

Things are proceeding apace this spring, despite the small fact that it’s been a very chilly season this year.  I occasionally listen to Chicago Public Radio and am always struck by how much warmer it is on that side of the lake:  Lake Michigan is cold, see, and casts us still in [...]

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On ectotherms

Posted in nature on April 22, 2009 | 9 Comments »

From the archives:  our daughter at 2
Yesterday was a downright chilly day with a high of 40*F., and rainy too.  Our lone resident frog in our pond still sang his lovely tune, albeit much more slowly.  I took our daughter outside to hear it and to see if she had noticed the difference.
“It’s cold out [...]

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Natura abhorret a vacuo

Posted in death, nature on April 21, 2009 | 9 Comments »

Bubbly trouble
We have a little pond that I dug in the yard outside our dining room four years ago.  It’s a blobby Y shape, holding about 750 gallons of water, and has been home to various amphibians, snails, bugs and some goldfish; it’s also chock-full of water plants and bordered by a decent-sized perennial garden [...]

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On new harvests

Posted in food, weather on April 20, 2009 | 11 Comments »

Last weekend we were all due to be away from home:  my husband as an instructor at a swanky design camp, and we girls off to a weekend of cardplaying and gabbing with the women of my mother’s family.  Our daughter got sick, though, so she and I spent the weekend at home.
Yum.  But look [...]

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On broody hens

Posted in chickens, etc. on April 17, 2009 | 17 Comments »

Ruby isn’t our only broody girl around here.  Our should’ve-been-dinner pullet Chicken Patty is feeling the urge too!
Maggie, our black Australorps, was the only other girl that we’ve had who’s ever sat for more than a day.  And Patty, who is such a dear of a bird, is the funniest Angry Hen that you could [...]

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On baby brassicas

Posted in seeds on April 16, 2009 | 5 Comments »

I don’t know how anything can grow in this blue light of the fluorescents, but it does
I confess I love the sprouting enthusiasm of the brassica family, don’t you?  It’s something I need to learn every year:  that the cole family with their cute little round brown seeds are ALL FABULOUS SPROUTERS, and I needn’t [...]

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On adventures in seed-saving

Posted in nature, seeds on April 15, 2009 | 9 Comments »

The Milkman’s child amongst the green Amish Deer Tongue seedlings
I’ve been saving most of my seeds from one year to another for a few years now.  In some instances, growing things to save their seed is actually more arduous than growing the plants to simply be eaten…but some veggies are not so very hard or [...]

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On nature, tooth and claw

Posted in chickens, etc., death, nature on April 13, 2009 | 15 Comments »

Sad Ruby on Friday
I have a bit of an update on Ruby and her eggs.
Early Friday morning, I exited the house on critter chore duty and I was greeted by the sweetest sound.  “Goodness,” I thought, “Earl has learned to imitate Ruby and her sweet coo,” when actually it was our Ruby that I was [...]

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On the chicken rush

Posted in chickens, etc. on April 11, 2009 | 12 Comments »

The child and I went online last weekend to put in this year’s chicken order (meat and egg birds).  The online catalog at our normal place was down (weird, but perhaps just a fluke) so we went looking around the other online hatcheries to see what we could see.
What we could see was booked chicken [...]

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On starting new gardens

Posted in books, school garden, sweat on April 9, 2009 | 20 Comments »

Planting red set onions.  Set onions (little bags of seed onions you’ll find at garden stores now) can be eaten at any size, and the greens can be eaten at any time too.  They’ll never get as large as onions you grow from seed but they’ll do in a pinch.
I thought I would give a [...]

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On a better way of seed-starting

Posted in greenhouses, seeds on April 8, 2009 | 12 Comments »

The seedling transfer bed, bottom to top:  Amish Deer Tongue lettuce (two leaves seen), arugula, spinach, unemergent seeds of spinach, Red Sails lettuce, orach, broccoli, minutina, mizuna, more spinach, more Red Sails and Grand Rapids lettuce.  Those are two beds of garlic you see beyond, as well as the overwintered fig trees.
Outdoors in the greenhouse [...]

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On sweet spring bounty

Posted in food on April 7, 2009 | 6 Comments »

We liked it so much I made it again
Ah, the beauty of the spring garden!
Of course as I type this MY spring gardens have barely budged past the crocuses:  my forsythia stubbornly remains closed, the daffodils up but not blooming.  So what could I possibly be talking about then?  Ah.  The gleanings of the greenhouse [...]

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On that nesting instinct

Posted in chickens, etc., nature on April 6, 2009 | 13 Comments »

Doesn’t she look cozy?
Our girl turkey, Ruby, has gone broody.  Nothing would make us happier than if all the hard work of sitting on a nest for 28 days actually yielded a turkey poult or two, but I’m not overly hopeful.  I don’t know how effective our tom, Earl, has been as far as mating [...]

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On school gardens

Posted in school garden on April 3, 2009 | 19 Comments »

That’s me pushing the wheelbarrow
We’ve been busy lately, leaving me too busy to do much blogging!  The school’s garden is up and running.  This Thursday we had our first “Weed and Feed” event, which is simply a dinner picnic/gardening session.  Some wonderful parents, teachers and their children helped to fill our 16 raised beds (3′x8′, [...]

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On seed stories

Posted in seeds on April 1, 2009 | 16 Comments »

Baby asparagus
We’re in the asparagus patch on a warm, windy day in February.  There’s not much to see but last year’s dead growth.  Not much, that is, except these bright-red berries.
“OOO!  Berries!  Mama, can I pick them?”
“Sure, honey.  But are they berries?  Do you remember what these brown plants were?”
“Artichokes?”
(Smart kid!  They’re in the bed [...]

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