Boxspring for Springtime ~ Part 1

When a friend offered my daughter a bed with drawers in the base, we ended up with an extra boxspring mattress. The cloth covering happened to have a tear in it, so I peeked inside. "Looks like an excellent cold frame to me," I thought...

I cut and pulled the fabric off...

...and was surprised to find the flat surface to be nothing more than cardboard. 

Hey, a matching piece of cardboard -- I can sheet mulch with it to keep weeds from growing in the cold frame -- bonus!

Here's how it looked with the fabric cover removed.

I slid it down the driveway today like a sled, and it was a piece of cake. 

Perfect conditions for boxspring relocation! 

The sun even came out briefly for the occasion.

I just happen to have a garden bed that is exactly the same dimensions as a twin bed, with drip irrigation already in place. Serendipity! I had to dig around a bit under the snow to find the boundaries of the bed, where the pine needle growing mulch meets the wood chip walking path.

Here is the naked boxspring in its new home, starting its new life. 

Next comes the makeover, which will involve: 

   - Building a slab-wood base frame
     (to keep the boxspring from rotting so quickly, 

     and to create more vertical growing space)

   - Creating two hinged panels for the roof, 

     with either growing fabric or plastic on frames

   - Adding triangular side pieces for the roof panels to rest on

   - Stapling plastic along the sides

   - Driving rebar into the ground at each corner and securing the frame

      so that it doesn't end up in a tree like last year's mini-greenhouse did...

I'll post again once I've made progress on those steps. This mid-winter project gave me the feeling of gardening again, which was a real pick-me-up on a foggy, snowy day.

Let me know if you have any mid-winter gardening projects going that help bridge the gap between frozen ground and lush green garden beds!

Eat Like a Rainbow

How do you "eat like a rainbow" in snow country... in January?

I do purchase veggies at the grocery store and co-op, but I'm always striving for a greater percentage of our vegetables to come from home. Homegrown pretty much always tastes best, is most nutritious, most fresh, and feels just right too.

Enter Radishes

Radishes alone can provide a broader spectrum of colors than you might think. In September, radishes are so plentiful in our garden that it's hard to know what to do with them all. It turns out that simply putting them in a ziploc bag in the crisper drawer of the fridge is all it takes to enjoy them when each radish seems utterly precious -- in January! Maybe next year I will try storing some in the ground with a thick layer of leaves on top, in the traditional method for winter harvest of carrots.

If my garlic cloves are getting soft, I like to pop them into a pot of soil somewhere in the house. The greens are scrumptious and you can actually plant several in one pot if you're growing them mainly for the greens and stems. Fresh green seems to be the one color in the rainbow that I miss most on my dinner plate this time of year, and garlic is a no-fuss way to keep home grown fresh green on the menu all year long! Minced garlic greens are delicious over baked potato, and in salads, soups, sandwiches... you name it.

Parsley also seems to do fairly well indoors, though it's a little more prone to insects and disease than garlic. So far so good this year. Parsley is packed with Vitamins A, C, K and folate, and also has calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, copper and manganese... its nutritional profile will blow you away.

Green onions will grow happily indoors with limited sunlight. These are torpedo red onions started from seed a couple years ago, and they just keep chugging. I put them on the deck in summer and bring them in before it freezes.  It doesn't matter if they go to seed since I'm keeping them going for the greens (which also provide Vitamins A, C and K). 

And how about that cabbage base I pulled out of the fridge and planted in a pot indoors toward the end of last winter? It's still going too! The greens are great in both soup and salad, or any way you enjoy cabbage.

You don't need a formed head to make use of cabbage! 

And the taste was not affected by it going to seed.

Okay, we've got green covered, but what about the rest of the rainbow? 

Well, there's pink rhubarb from the freezer...

 

...and few things are more cheerful than red peppers growing in your house in the winter. On the left is a lipstick sweet pepper from a plant that has been growing in our house for a few years now. The leaves get a bit sickly looking each winter, but I prune the plant annually and it always makes a great comeback in the spring. I think I will pick this pepper and eat it tonight in our salad! On the right is a tiny, very hot pepper from a plant I am babysitting while the owner, my neighbor, is away. I've had it for a year and it's been interesting to watch. These mini-peppers are my kind of Christmas lights!

Today I pulled out the last remnants of my partially formed red cabbage from last summer's garden. For some reason, it just wasn't a great cabbage year, but fresh purple was still a sight for sore eyes this morning after a snowstorm. I'm including this photo as a reminder for myself during the height of harvest season, about just how wonderful every home grown fresh morsel seems in the winter time.

Of course, another way to have a fresh veggie rainbow at home this time of year is in the underground cold frame. The great news is that none of the plants froze, even during our cold snaps of -5 F or -21 C. The bad news is that it looks like a war zone in there -- and in a swiss chard against rodents fight, you can guess who is winning. I also see slug sign, so I guess my slug trap needs some fresh beer. Silly me for thinking the slugs might just hibernate!

These cold frame photos were also taken today. Yes, it looks pretty sad... but actually for my first winter with this experiment, I'm just excited to have live plants that did not freeze. The only heat sources are the manure piled deep beneath this bed, and the low winter sun. The brown mulch consists of plants I chopped out of the garden in fall. The green parts are the remnants of my swiss chard and other hardy species that survived the cold but have been ravaged by the wildlife. Now that temperature isn't an issue, I'll have to work on rodent proofing with another large cage I guess. I don't call it "Vegetable Jail" for nothing. Whatever works!

Note: The name of this post comes from one of my daughter's favorite songs, by Jay Mankita (Putumayo), "Eat Like a Rainbow."

What is your favorite way to eat like a rainbow in the winter?

The Greens Keeper Season Extender

When your cold frame is frozen shut with ice, 

it may feel like season extension has come to a close.

Enter: the "greens keeper" in your fridge.

I do not know why these work so well -- or why they cost so much. However, I do know they are worth every penny. (No, I do not sell Tupperware... I just grow fond of things that work really well in my kitchen.)

Traditionally, the lettuce keepers were shaped to fit a head of iceberg lettuce. As all foraging gardeners know, this shape does not necessarily match the dimensions of the goodies we bring into the kitchen.

Instead, the old style rectangular celery keepers work great, or the fancy new veggie keepers with either one or two vents to open or close, depending on what kind of food you are keeping.

In the dead of winter, the greens from my garden are as crisp as the day I picked them -- as long as I have remembered to pick them before the first deep freeze. I missed a lot of greens this year because the weather turned so cold so fast. I'm grateful for what I did harvest, though. My last harvest day was November 9th, and most of these greens were picked in the week before that, all from protected beds. A month after being picked, they are still in perfect condition (above). 

Today it occurs to me that a lettuce keeper and a cold frame have a lot more in common than you might think. Using either a cold frame outdoors or a greens keeper in the fridge, the process hinges on:

1. Growing your plants so that they reach maturity in the fall. (Either way, having winter greens in a Northern climate is not about planting seeds in autumn... it's about planting them in July.)
2. Protecting plants from a killing freeze.
3. Maintaining (not really growing) fresh mature plants so that they can be eaten during winter.

♢     ♢     ♢     ♢     ♢     ♢

My experience so far shows the following results...

Greens that last exceptionally long in a veggie keeper:

✯   Kale   ✯   Swiss Chard   ✯   Many lettuce varieties  ✯  Dark purple beet greens

Greens that keep reasonably long:

✯ Green Orach

✯ Regular Beet greens

✯ Love Lies Bleeding Amaranth leaves

✯ Chives

 ✯ Carrot greens

✯ Some lettuce varieties

Greens that must be kept separate because they are the first to go:

✯ French sorrel

Of course you can use these keepers for other veggies such as carrots and celery, but I find those do fine in the crisper drawer of the fridge. For the valuable real estate inside my keepers, I prioritize greens.

♢     ♢     ♢     ♢     ♢     ♢

Food for Thought:

As exciting as it is to have food alive and growing in December 

even after a hardcore freeze 

-- and yes, this means a lot to me --

For the volume of greens I am keeping alive in my cold frame this winter and for the amount of work that went into this project...

A greens keeper can actually hold quite a lot! 

(And I have several -- mostly second-hand purchases, a couple bought new)

I'm willing to acknowledge the square footage and work vs. yield ratio, but I'm not giving up the underground cold frame for anything. It's too much fun having live plants outdoors during winter! There is no plastic needed for cold frames, they don't take up space in your fridge, and they require no electricity. I'm also learning that you can transplant a higher number of plants into the cold frame in autumn: each plant does not need a lot of space as they are not doing much growing during winter. This practice would increase the yield. 

Plus in the spring, the cold frame will begin to produce 

before anything else even gets started. I can't wait...

Honeyboat Ride

Once upon a time, our friend John came to visit for Thanksgiving. He was working on an organic farm and brought along a honeyboat squash to share. As soon as I ate it, I knew it was the ultimate squash.

We saved seeds from the honeyboat, in an attempt to grow some ourselves. The plant was vigorous and the blossoms were so beautiful that they attracted fairies to the garden.

Unfortunately, the squash from which we saved the seeds had hybridized with a neighboring plant, and the fruit (below) tasted, well... borderline edible. Fawn and I learned an important lesson about seed saving and hybridizing that year!

Despite its lack of service on the dinner table, the hybrid squash plant was gorgeous, and we especially enjoyed the twisty spiral tendrils that year. However, it is always even better if we can eat food from the plants we grow.

This past growing season I decided to buy honeyboat seeds, 

and it was worth every penny.

I'm pretty sure I will never need to grow another variety of squash again! 

Here's why:

Honeyboat squash is a wonderful addition to any meal, 

but it's also sweet enough to eat for dessert! 

Halved, it fits perfectly in my 7x11" baking pan, which fits in my convection toaster oven. This size makes them naturally "individually packaged," meaning that you are not faced with a big squash project after cutting one open. 

You can see from the oblong shape and stripes that it's a delicata-type squash. 

Note that it still tastes great even when marred by rodents, which all of my squashes and pumpkins were. As a result my harvest may not live up to its storage reputation this year... so I'm enjoying them now.

It's easy to separate the seeds from the flesh, by pulling the 

seeds out with a spoon before scraping the insides clean...

...and they are delicious toasted in the cast iron skillet with a little salt and olive oil!

(not to mention the seeds provide great fatty acids, protein, Vitamin K, iron, phosphorus, etc. for your body to use)

You have to admit, it does look like a honey boat (dugout style).

Being a winter squash, I'm guessing it is a good source of:

• Vitamin A (super duper)
•  Vitamin C
•  Potassium
•  Manganese
•  Vitamin E
• Vitamin B complex
• Calcium
• Magnesium

• Iron

• Fiber 

and lots more excellent nutrients

Even though our first attempt to grow honeyboat didn't work out for eating (due to hybridization of the saved seed), I'm super glad we tried. Otherwise I might have missed seeing this fairy as she soaked up the beauty of the blossoms. The experience also helped build a foundation for Fawn's understanding of plant reproduction, and sparked her investigation of potential hybridization of other plants, which she did as part of her Grade 3 home study curriculum. 

I'm very happy with this variety of winter squash, so I thought I'd share some of the reasons why. I tried honeybear the growing season before last and it was good, but honeyboat still takes the cake for me. 

Thank you so much, John E, for introducing us to this fantastic garden food!

What is your favorite winter squash?

Harvest Time ~ 2014

The garden has been good to us this year, and the rotting wood has come through with some delicious and nutritious food to eat. (This photo is from October.)

Fawn helped haul the potatoes up to the house in her wagon. It took two of us to get it up the hill!

The carrots didn't seem to mind hugelkultur at all...

...they just kept right on growing!

I was happy to discover some one-clove garlic heads again in the garden this year. Does anybody know if this is a specific garlic variety or if it is just a mutation? Despite being fall-planted, they came up much later than the rest of garlic and I didn't harvest them till November 11th.

This mild autumn has been great for the tomatoes. I still had to ripen every tomato indoors, because the chipmunks eat them otherwise. This beefsteak tomato was ripened indoors in November and still tasted delicious. I have found that the key is to bring tomatoes in only after they change from green to pale yellow. Any sooner, and they don't ripen nearly as nicely since they are not mature enough.

Radishes seem to do best in early spring and late fall. They are perfect right now! I pulled the last of the radishes out today, since all the plants had finally completely frozen.

These unripe chocolate cherry tomatoes reminded me of grapes.

Fawn and her sunflower umbrella

Perhaps the final garden harvest, except for the underground cold frame and the kale. Today I picked swiss chard, cabbage, the last of the onions, my one beet that survived the marmots, and anything else that had eeked out its last few weeks with the help of some old sheets for cover. I look forward to more harvesting next year! 

It's always hard to say goodbye to the year's iteration of the garden, knowing it will never be the same again... but that is also the fun and joy of this process.

Fall Garden

Last year, a few vegetable plants persisted into autumn, and I was hooked on the idea of having a fall garden. The weather this season has been outstanding, and after a first light frost on September 11, it has been surprisingly mild. It was the perfect year for having a fall garden!

Sometimes poppy seeds germinate partway through the summer and provide the most wonderful fall colors. Someday I should plant them with the fall garden seeds on purpose!

The marigolds just keep giving. 

Even the bolted lettuce seems beautiful this time of year... it won't last long now. 

I didn't realize the roses could keep going for so long...

A single radish with lots of room and no crowding can create some neat patterns... and the blueberries provide wonderful autumn color.

Nasturtiums are quickly becoming one of my favorite flowers, and the asparagus plants turn a lovely shade of gold this time of year.

Kale makes the fall garden feel really productive with its beefy, hardy leaves.

Rainbow swiss chard, another star in the fall garden, has made up about 50% of our salad greens lately. It is surprisingly tender, ever since the weather turned cool.

Another plant that is winning my heart with it's profuse sprays of fuchsia colored blooms ~ Love Lies Bleeding Amaranth. The leaves have been making up the other 50% of our salad greens these days.

What are your favorite fall garden plants?