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Garlic and squirrel war
Here’s the garlic, all cleaned up and tied into a nice, neat (huge) bunch: Thank goodness the garlic turned out, because everything else has been rather uninspiring. Here’s yesterday’s harvest: Those...
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Vine-ripened tomatoes
Green zebra tomatoes - a little trickier to know when these are ready! A neighbor asked me recently when was the best time to pick tomatoes. In the past, I always left mine on the plant until they were...
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Garden Plan 2012
Time for my favorite post of the year: my garden plan is complete! Check it out: DETAILS (let’s start with the stock tanks, shall we?): Stock tanks Inspired by Eliot Coleman, I’m going to try and get...
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Growing tomatoes on a trellis system
Here’s something new we’re trying this year: a tomato trellis! We bought six 8-ft cedar 2×2′s, cut 24 inches off of two of them and about a foot off the other two, then fastened it all together with...
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Blanching leeks
When you buy a leek at the grocery store it usually has a beautiful, long white stem. That’s achieved through a process called “blanching” and there are several different methods—most involve hilling...
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High Season
Now that raspberries are done, I have a moment to catch my breath. Let’s take a look around: I was hoping for jaw-dropping before-and-after pictures of our back yard landscape project by now, but I...
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August so far
We finished off July with a weekend “up north,” where the kids caught some impressive sunnies right off the dock. They are such good little Minnesotans. Not bad, eh? When we got back from the lake,...
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2012, my best garden year yet
Time to start on a wrap-up of 2012′s garden. It’s not over yet, but we’ve just passed the average first frost date for Minneapolis, so it’s nearly time. What a year it’s been! Trellising my tomatoes...
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A weird season
But really, what year is not weird in Minnesota? Last year we had an early spring and a hot, dry summer. This year, it was a late spring. We had a little bit of heat in mid-July, nothing...
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Season of bounty
We are in the thick of harvest season, which is going to come to an abrupt end in too short of a time. A sampling of what’s going on: My best friend and I harvested most of our pie pumpkins from our...
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Here we go!
Gardening season is a go! A slow go, but it’s started. We even ate some pea shoots out of the garden this weekend, and they were tasty: I’m going to have to thin these one more time in order to make...
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Eight tips for new Minnesota gardeners
I’m not trying to create link bait or anything here; I know SO many people that are vegetable gardening for the first time this year, so I wanted to create a resource for them. So here you go, Lisa,...
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Landscape plan: closer to reality
We moved into this house 8 years ago this weekend, looking at the blank canvas of a yard and dreaming of the possibilities. We worked at things really slowly at first (because, hello, TWIN babies). Two...
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Harvest time
It’s time for me to come clean. After last week’s native plants manifesto, I realized I’m a giant hypocrite because I plant an entire garden of non-native annuals every single year. Yep, that would be...
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Garden Plan 2015
It doesn’t seem like that long since we planned and mostly executed Crazy Garden 2014. I’m afraid I don’t have a name for our 2015 garden; the closest thing I have to a concept is to call it “keeping...
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Mega Garden Update: Memorial Day
Hello! Now that my garden is almost completely planted…wait, is it ever completely planted? No, but I’ve planted many things since my last post. Here’s a small slice of what’s been going on here this...
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Gardening Calendar
Last year I created a month-by-month gardening calendar for myself, because of the amount of work I wanted to accomplish. We also had an early spring, so that gave me ample opportunity to do some...
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Memorial Day Garden Update
Spring is finally underway, after an abundance of cold and wet weather. From a phenology perspective, we’re all over the place. Some things are 2+ weeks later than last year; other things are early....
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In the mid-summer garden
If you’re going to have a garden, and you’re going to have kids, I highly recommend marrying a teacher. Adam has been busy all summer long working on landscaping projects, and by the time he’s done our...
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It Might Be Over Soon
I finally got a chance to see one of my favorite bands live a few weeks ago—Bon Iver played an incredible set on a beautiful evening at the Walker Art Center. It took me a long time to warm up to the...
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