Forks in the Dirt

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Low tunnels help to protect plants that are sensitive to frost and to keep cold-hardy plants in the garden longer.

Season Extension: Garden + Harvest into Winter

September 28, 2023 / / 2 Comments
The author harvesting vegetables from her garden in the wintertime thanks to her season extension techniques.
One last harvest deep into winter from all my veggies grown under cover

Fall temps can quite literally cool our northern garden jets once fall hits its stride and apple season arrives. But for those of us that enjoy those frost sweetened crops and don’t mind gardening into the cool of autumn, Season Extension opens another mini-season of gardening and harvesting!

For those just getting started on season extension, you may be wondering why we bother with this extra work?

For me the reason is clear: by keeping plants alive in the ground, it allows them to hold onto their nutrients, compared to if we harvested at the first sign of frost. Food loses around 30% of its nutrients within three days of harvest…

Practicing season extension can add weeks or even months of harvesting FRESH FOOD from your garden. And isn’t harvesting healthy food one of our main goals?

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The Amazing Aronia Berry

September 15, 2023 / / 1 Comment
A hand holding aronia berries growing on a plant and a yellow bowl full of aronia berries on the ground.

If you love growing beautiful medicine that also attracts the pollinators, then let me introduce you to Aronia Berry, aka Chokeberry. Actually, you may have already met Aronia Berry while walking in the woods or edges of prairies in the Midwest of America.

Officially named Aronia melanocarpa, this cold hardy North American native woody shrub is worth adding to your landscape for its adaptability, form, fall color, and, of course, its fruits!

Aronia Berry: Knowing + Growing

The aronia berry tends to stay around 8 feet tall (depending on variety) and is much less picky about soil as it has deeper roots than the elderberry. They are hardy to -40F or USDA Zone 3. They also don’t have any pest issues and are disease resistant.

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Zucchini Fritters Two Ways (but both Gluten Free)

July 31, 2023 / / 1 Comment

Zucchini fritters are a healthy ‘fast food favorite’ in our home every summer! We all know how fast those zucchini can grow… so if you want a healthy + savory take on the good old pancake (and use up cups of shredded zucchini all at once) zucchini fritters are for you!

Shredded Zucchini ready for making Zucchini Fritters

I love the two different versions of this recipe equally, it just depends on what flavors I’m craving more, and if I happen to have some potatoes around as to which I make.

You can use a variety of zucchini in this recipe, and even summer squash too, just be aware of the different moisture content in each variety. Patty Pan are one of the ‘meatiest’ and dense/driest types, while Fordhook + Golden varieties tend to be wetter. If you shred the zucchini and can see extra water in the bowl, squeeze some out so you don’t have too thin of fritters.

More information on Growing Zucchini + More Ways to enjoy them on another post, A Zillion Ways to Zucchini.

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Harvesting from Your Garden

July 1, 2023 / / 3 Comments

Harvesting from your garden is the moment we’ve all been waiting for!

You’ve probably heard it’s best to harvest from your garden in the morning. Maybe you’ve also heard not to harvest from your garden when wet… These can seem contradictory especially on damp, dewy mornings. But there’s more behind the ‘not wet and not wilted’ reasoning.

I’m sharing some best practices to harvest lots of delicious and nutritious food to make your garden healthier and more productive.

Vegetable harvesting spread out in front of a garden gate

Why Not When Wet?

We should generally hold off harvesting from our gardens until plants are dried off because when we open a wound on a plant from harvesting by cutting or breaking off we’re leaving an entrance on the plant for diseases.

Fungal and bacterial diseases (blight, powdery mildew, rust, etc.) multiply while the leaves are wet. So, the chance of them getting directly into a wound is greater with a wet plant as well. This timing also makes it harder for the plant to fend off the diseases in general.

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Growing Joi Choi + Recipe

June 23, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Let’s get you growing Joi Choi! This is the Pak Choi (aka Bak Choy) everyone can (and should) grow.

Close up of Joi Choi pak choi plant growing in garden

There are few veggies that bring me as much JOI in the garden and on my plate as this veggie, so I’m declaring myself a founding member of the Joi Choi Fan Club! She’s as delicious as she is beautiful!

This has consistently been one of the easiest veggies to grow. It is also one of the fastest maturing early spring veggies, ready to harvest within 30 days of transplanting in all but the coldest spring weather. This means I can usually get at least three successions of Joi Choi in each season in my Zone 4 gardens.

Read more about Succession Planting HERE

It is way more heat tolerant than other Pak Choi I’ve tried. Meaning it keeps growing a lot longer, and therefore bigger before it bolts. I mean, look at those thick stalks! All that stem equals weights of close to 2 lbs. per average plant if harvested all at once. Last fall I harvested a single Joi Choi that was over 4 lbs. heavy and still tender and crisp in October!

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Growing Strawberries

May 31, 2023 / / 1 Comment

Nothing ushers in summer like fresh-picked strawberries. These perennial fruits are an essential for small-scale homesteads!

A handful of ripe strawberries

To make the most of this fleeting, yet oh so sweet taste of summer – we’ve got tips and tricks on growing, picking and preserving all the local strawberries you possibly can. Quick and delicious freezer jam anyone?

I promise, you will thank yourself as you make a strawberry smoothie or strawberry muffins come winter.

Strawberries are one of our little homestead’s most anticipated foods by every member of our family. So, we spend some time prepping and loving on the gardens so they produce to their fullest. Here’s how we work at growing great strawberries.

Grow Great Berries

Strawberries are as close to instant gratification as you can get with a perennial fruit. I recommend planting bare root plants, as you have more control on suitable varieties. They’re also less expensive than potted plants, and the plants seem to do better in the long run. The catch is you want to plant them in late May, before the heat of summer comes on too strong. You’ll soak the roots for an hour or two before planting. During the first growing season, plan to pinch off the first few buds that form, but let the next rounds of flowers mature to pick fruit later in the season.

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Cucumber Comparison

April 25, 2023 / / 6 Comments
Cucumber slices of different varieties of cucumber! Marketmore, Armernian, Dragon's Egg, Mini Muncher cucumbers
Taste testing tray- Left to Right: Telegraph, Dragon Egg, Mini Munch, Armenian

We love growing cucumbers! But there are many differences, so let’s do a cucumber comparison.

They’re a favorite of the vegetable garden and one of the homegrown treats my kids most impatiently look forward to munching fresh off the vine—as well as sliced (with ranch)—then fermented and pickled all winter long.

Needless to say, we grow a lot of cucumbers!

*This post includes affiliate links*

There are different cucumber varieties including slicing, English (burpless), pickling, and then you can get into the specialty varieties that have been saved for their unique characters for centuries. These specialty varieties have a special place in my heart.

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Corn Chowder Recipe

March 1, 2023 / / 1 Comment
Eleven glass jars of preserved corn and two ears of corn on the cob.

This corn chowder recipe is such a perfect blend of sweet corn nostalgia and winter comfort that I can get a craving for this soup just about any season… but it feels especially fitting during that ‘hungry gap’ when many of the frozen veggies are gone and we’re down to sprouting potatoes and mason jars from the pantry.

This recipe can skew simple or a little more involved depending on how you’re feeling, but on way or another, make this while it is still soup season!

The author holding a glass jar of preserved corn.

My latest version included the last of a batch of ‘corn and vegetable stock’ from the summer. This simple seeming stock is rather magical in my opinion. You make it from the leftover cobs after canning the sweet corn this past summer. This just pulls all the deliciousness out of every cob of corn.

After you cut off the corn kernels off the cob, just toss cobs, and onion peelings, celery leaves, carrots (or just their peelings), garlic and a bay leaf into a pot and simmer for at least 4 hours, strain off the stock and either freeze (leaving a good inch of headroom in the jar) or pressure can with the cans of corn.

Like all my recipes, especially soups, there is a lot of leeway to use up veggies and ingredients that you have on hand. If you have zucchini but not celery, go for it- or parsnips instead of carrots- OK! Make this corn chowder recipe yours, you are in control in hte kitchen!

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Small-Scale Homesteading Book

February 14, 2023 / / 0 Comments

There’s so much information in the pages of our book, Small-Scale Homesteading we know it will both inspire and educate you!

Michelle Bruhn and Stephanie Thurow, coauthors of Small-Scale Homesteading at the St. Paul Farmers Market.

Stephanie and my collective knowledge has been distilled down to what we wished we’d known when we started down this homesteading road.

…And I know that’s said about a lot of books by a lot of authors, and I understand why- we write what we know. We end up knowing a lot about what we love.

And we love homesteading, in all it’s beautiful forms.

The twist with this book is that these pages hold BOTH of our combined experiences and the different ways we’ve settled into doing different homesteading skills.  We’re obviously big believers in there being  more than one way to do just about everything.

GET YOUR COPY HERE

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Winter Squash Lasagna

January 30, 2023 / / 0 Comments

This vegetarian squash lasagna is comfort food and pantry cooking combined! Using large, thin slices of squash as noodles creates a hearty, satisfying lasagna without the carbs. Did you know that pasta has about SEVEN TIMES the carbs as squash! There’s also something that happens with the baked squash and cheese that makes it’s own sauce, so no need for extra cream here.

Fancy enough to impress guests but cozy for a small family meal – and it makes great leftovers. Hello “Meatless Monday”!

We use the old stand-by winter vegetables of butternut squash, potatoes, kale, and red onion with a few tweaks. This recipe can also both work as vegan if you sub in some vegan cheese.

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