Tag: garden basics (Page 1 of 2)

Season Extension: Garden + Harvest into Winter

September 28, 2023 / / 1 Comment
One last harvest deep into winter from all my veggies grown under cover

Fall temps can quite literally cool our northern garden jets once September 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 that 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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Growing Strawberries

May 31, 2023 / / 1 Comment

Nothing ushers in summer like fresh picked strawberries and red stained fingers, shirts, faces… so let’s get you growing strawberries too!

A handful of ripe strawberries

To save that fleeting, sweet taste of summer we’ve got tips and tricks and the reasons why growing homegrown or grabbing all the local berries you can is worth it. I promise, your winter self will thank your summer self.

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.

Grow Great Berries

Growing strawberries is as close to instant gratification as you can get with a perennial fruit. I recommend planting bare root plants, as you have more option for variety, the cost a fraction of potted plants and the plants do 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.  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 / / 1 Comment
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 of 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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Homestead Year In Review 2022

January 1, 2023 / / 0 Comments

I’m finally slowing down enough to take the time to get in that frame of mind where I can rewind and somewhat clearly peer back at 2022, the year in review.

Thankful for 2022

I distinctly remember being so very grateful for the late spring as I was frantically writing/editing/revising so many pages (so many times) along with Stephanie Thurow for our upcoming book, Small-Scale Homesteading.

I felt lucky that the maple sap held off until we got back from our March vacations. We brought home and raised a new brood of chicks into a healthy, happy (and spoiled) backyard flock. I took my local Master Gardener coursework and completed 50+ hours of volunteer hours. I helped grow vegetables and flowers at my son’s elementary school.

New Additions to the Homestead last Spring

We took time up north in Minnesota to walk through and wonder at creation. I taught classes on companion planting, composting, growing garlic, garden planning and preserving the harvest, wrote for magazines new and old. I got to manage our 6th annual Winter Farmers Markets. My family all got Influenza A at the same time and we nursed each other back to health with homegrown remedies. And I grew as much food as ever- including so many new favorites.

We celebrated life as we lived it. What a year both in and out of the garden!

Click HERE to watch some fly-over drone footage of the garden from this summer.

Weather Woes

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Lessons from the Garden

December 29, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Symmetry within the circle of our season — that’s the overarching lesson from the garden. But just one of the ways gardening teaches me year after year.

It is perfectly absurd to search for a beginning or an end to this cycle; is it when the seeds start forming, when I harvest my saved seed out of the garden, as I store it over winter, or when I plant it next spring that is “the beginning”? Is it when the food emerges, when its ripe, when I harvest, when I eat it, or when I compost the excess that is “the ending”? 

Taking into consideration the piles of compost, continuously added to by our hens, and all the other intertwined inputs and harvests from our little backyard homestead garden- I’m proud to announce that I can I find neither beginning nor end… instead I find a naturally flowing cycle that swallows its own tail year after year. A process without any one formula, rather a myriad of methods and infinite accomplishments along its way.

That being said; we all like to “take stock” every so often. The end of the calendar year, as the garden lays sleeping and frozen under the snow here in Minnesota seems a fitting time as ever. So, I’m taking a look back on this year of growing with you to share what I gleaned from my gardens. Or rather, what lessons my garden unearthed for me. I’ve added links to previous posts at the end of most topics, as it seems the lessons I learned this year are also perennial. But as with gardening- the roots grow deeper and the harvests increase with each passing year. I hope you can take a few of these ideas and let them inspire you to grow and harvest more (veggies, sustainability, peace) from your gardens this upcoming season. Let’s Dig In!

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cover crop growing in raised garden bed

Cover Crop Basics

September 1, 2021 / / 3 Comments

Adding a cover crop to the home vegetable garden was a game changer for me, and the garden has been happier ever since. Planting cover crop seed is an easy and effective way to practice good soil health on any scale. There are a few tips and tricks for having the best luck for home gardeners. Timing and seed selection are key!

There are many different ways of cover cropping, from holding a field for a full year, or part of spring or over the winter. Because I succession plant so much of my garden space from early spring to past the frosts of fall, I don’t leave much of my soil bare at any one time. But one of the reasons I have incorporated cover crops is how easy it is to just sow the seeds once I’ve harvested a late summer crop.

There are also a few different reasons people plant cover crops to benefit the garden. One is to build up organic matter in the soil. Another is using legumes to add nitrogen to the soil (or directly to the plants if grown simultaneously). A final reason is to help break up compacted heavy soil with plants that have think roots. If left to rot they create wonderful space in the soil for nutrient and water transfer. Basically, cover cropping is another way of Companion Planting for your garden.

Soil Health Starts with Cover

Image from Kiss the Ground

It always helps me to know the WHY behind whatever I’m doing- so… before I started planting cover crops a few years ago I took a deep dive into soil health. Asking, “Why are we planting seeds in the fall when they won’t have time to mature?” The basic answer is soil health.

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No Dig Gardening + Hügelkultur: Layer a Lasagna Garden

August 19, 2021 / / 2 Comments

No Dig Gardening includes recycling, composting and improving soil all by layering it on! This process is known by a few different names; Hugelkultur, Lasagna Gardening and Sheet Composting, but the ideas are based on “No Dig Gardening”.

Laying out the new beds

Making garden beds this way works with nature’s existing cycles, creating healthy soil, less weeding and happier plants!

This process does NOT need to be created inside a box, just easier to keep layers tidy, I’ve success both in and out of boxes!

Build It and They Will Come!

The idea of setting up a garden bed like this is to let nature do the work for you. You’ll be helping nature create good soil by composting in place- and that requires things for the soil organisms to eat. By giving a diverse group of soil life things to feast on you can create a very active and healthy soil to plant into.

Building Better Soil

Soil biodiversity creates a more resilient garden. I like to equate good soil organisms with good gut health. We’ve likely all heard of pre- and pro- biotics; the helpers of digestion (and so much more). Soil organisms help break things down and make them available to plants in a similar fashion.

Everything from worms and beetles we can see, to bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes and actinomycetes (though I sure couldn’t tell you what those looked like!) have a specific job to do- and many work in relationship with vegetable plant roots to feed them. There is a whole world of info about the soil food web out there, and I suggest watching THIS by Dr. Elaine Ingham if you want to dig a little deeper.

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My Top 5 NEW Garden Veggies

February 7, 2019 / / 2 Comments

Many of us have our tried and true favorite Garden Veggies to grow. Salad greens, tomatoes, green beans, snap peas… so much deliciousness I could never pick out so few as five to highlight from my whole garden.

So instead, I’m sharing my favorite NEW veggies from last Summer’s garden. I love growing ‘new to me’ varieties every year, and usually try out quite a few unique plants each year. Once you start growing from seed a whole new world of flavors opens up to you, and my taste buds will never be satisfied with the same old same old again. For more information on starting seeds, check out my Seed Saving Starts Now blog.

This is a review of my five favorite new to me vegetable varieties.

Romanesco

EAT: fresh, roasted or in stir fry

If ever there was a Diva Vegetable, here she is! The unexpected fractal patterns on this vegetable, paired with the lime green color sets her up to steal the show. The taste is milder than cauliflower, almost nutty. And my kids LOVED IT. It grew well for me in the Spring and Fall. I got seeds from Jung’s Seed Co. and these germinated and grew just as well as their white amazing variety. The purple graffiti was a complete wash for me though.

I loved how the Romanesco’s leaved covered each little pyramid point. The plant itself was even bigger than an average cauliflower, and that’s saying something. Even with taking up considerable space in the garden, I’ll be growing even more this season. I’ll be interplanting  beets and spinach for an early harvest before these girls take over the beds.

Tall Utah Celery

EAT: fresh, in soups, as celery salt

This Celery makes the cut because after being scared to grow it I jumped in last year. Guess what, No worries! There are many varieties that don’t need blanching, are so flavorful, yet not bitter! I started them from seed last February, so they do take time, but they are 100% worth it! They don’t take up too much space and play well with others in the garden. I chopped and froze some for soup when I had an abundance.

I also dehydrated and blitzed the leaves for celery salt, which I use in soups and stews.

So, for $3.25 for a packet of Tall Utah from seedsaversexchange I ate fresh cut celery all summer, still have some frozen, and I’ve just started new babies under my grow lights for the coming season!

Glass Gem Corn

EAT: Popped with a drizzle of butter

I’ve been crushing over this for so long, so glad I dove back into these rainbow colored corn rows! This is a flint corn, not a sweet corn, so no fresh eating off the cob. They’re so beautiful you want to have time to enjoy their beauty for a stretch first anyway

We fed some fresh mini-cobs to our hens. I’ve planted some for “corn shoots” micro-greens with varying success, and by far our favorite- popping! I’ve saved some cobs to plant with the kids’ garden clubs I run in the summer (HEARTS) I hadn’t grown any corn for a few seasons after a ‘bad bug’ year, those can take a while to get over… I still had all kinds of insects around the corn this year- just none burrowing into the corn. (whew!) $3.25 for a packet, from Seed Savers Exchange, I planted 3X16 foot bed.

Cucamelons

EAT: fresh from the vine, sliced in salads

These little cuties are as adorable as they are delicious! They also go by the names ‘Mexican sour gherkin’ and ‘mouse melons’. They have a slightly citrus/sour cucumber taste that becomes more pronounced the bigger/more mature they get. These guys were slow to get started, (they like it hotter to germinate) and I totally underestimated how they much they would grow- AND how many little cucamelons they’d produce! Still, giving these away was much easier than say, a zucchini. My kids loved picking these garden veggies as much as eating them- until those really hot late August days after eating these daily… we still have some ‘pickled’ versions in the fridge- both a garlic and a straight ferment- they are a bit more sour than a regular fermented pickle, but add a great kick to salads and cheese trays! We’ll be growing these on a full size trellis this summer instead of in with our beans, lesson learned! Seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, which shows up online as Rare Seeds

Berner Rose Tomato

EAT: like an apple, plus any other way you eat tomatoes.

This tomato was the workhorse of my dreams last summer. I was gifted seeds from family in Switzerland, the true “Berner Rose”, a Swiss heirloom variety of German Pink.  These were the best germinating and hardiest of all my tomato plants from the start. These are a potato leaf determinate plant that gave me the tastiest tomatoes that didn’t split, wilt or get any diseases. I’ll know to use thicker stakes on these this year because they produce SO MANY tomatoes on each cluster, my gardens looked a little like a mouse trap by September. Still have gallon bags of frozen, a few jars of sauce and salsa- these are the tomatoes that just keep giving! Thank you to my cousin, Seraina, for the thoughtful gift 😊 I wish shipping the tomatoes back to her was a viable option !

DIG IN!

So, have I inspired you to try any new garden veggies in your garden? Or maybe to buy a new variety from farmers markets yet? Let me know if you plan to grow any of these varieties or have questions I didn’t answer above. I can’t wait to DIG IN!

-Michelle

Growing Goals

December 27, 2018 / / 0 Comments

I hope you’ve all been enjoying the Holidays! The addition of our wood burning stove has added greatly to our sense of Hygge during this Minnesota Winter.
For many of us this time of year brings deeper self-reflection. I’ve been taking stock of the past year and dreaming of the next since before the Winter Solstice. So much happened in the last 365 days
that I hadn’t planned for that it feels a little silly to make more than a rough outline for the coming 365. And yet without a plan I follow too many tangents…

Frozen Gardenscape

And yet, life grows on. Even with a frozen surface (and finally some snow), our Earth is still breathing deep and slow- readying herself for another round of explosive growth come spring. But Mother Earth has slowed down too for the time being; so I’m doing my best to follow suit. In this busy time of year (holidays), life (with two littles), and building a business (Forks) it is becoming apparent I NEED to make time and space for me. Time for self-care and listening to my own thoughts. Time for taking charge of my own health beyond gardening and healthy eating.

Being able to look back and see the goals I set for myself and how they played out and how they affected how I spent my time- is almost more revealing than if they were accomplished or not. I am a stubborn one so if I set a goal, I’m likely to make sure it happens. Beware the woman who takes on too much, she gets grumpy with overwhelm. Anyone else over the overwhelm!?!

Taking a Look Back

I love being able to look back at goals I set from the previous year. Last year I did this in a BLOG POST. The goals are listed below-

My 2018 goals for Forks in the Dirt:
*Meeting and writing about more local farmers – Yup and it was FUN
*Inspiring awareness in the food choices we make,- I think So (not sure ow to measure this one) What do you think??
*Expanding the White Bear Lake Winter Farmers Market.  Check- Three markets attended by 800 people, with more vendors, food trucks and new community info partners

My personal goals for 2018:
*Planning for and planting our doubled vegetable garden space – We planted and grew in all the spaces of the garden
*Preserving more of my own food (dehydrating, freezing, fermenting and canning) -I gave away more food, so there’s less in my freezer but canned a little more
*Finding a local sustainable source for organic oats and chicken meat  –Yes on the chicken meat, and I have a source for Oats just haven’t gotten there yet
*Becoming a better Chicken + Kid Mom  –Well, My kids are still alive- my chickens are not. More on this in a future blog post.
*Finding more of that elusive “Balance” – EPIC FAIL

What I could see from looking back was that EPIC FAIL– the “Balance” ties into what I was already feeling the need to focus on for 2019. A part of that balance for me is giving myself grace when I don’t measure up (OK, more like a huge part).

What do you want to Grow?

What you water will grow

Finding those sweet spots when you lose yourself in the work because you are so fully engaged is what I long for- you too? For me those moments come in many aspects of gardening- the planning, the planting, the tending, the harvesting, the cooking of the food I get to grow. It also comes in writing; at least in the beginning when I’m so excited tot share an idea- not so much the editing 😉. Meeting like minded garden geeks is another way I fuel my passions as well. Setting up interviews to learn more from farmers and others working towards local food ways is a priority. Volunteering at the food shelves also helps me get out of my ‘self’. So, more of all that is on the books for 2019.

Meeting Amazing Garden Minded People like Diane with Seed Savers Exchange

enJOY the JOY

Now to show you all just how nerdy I can get… there is a phenomenon recently proven by neuroscience that I want to share. The Velcro vs Teflon paradox. The basic concept is that you need to appreciate (or contemplate) positive thoughts longer to have the same effect as a negative thought. The positive thoughts or feelings slide away unless you savor them consciously for at least 15-30 seconds. Within that time, the thought positively imprints and can stay with you. You can listen more HERE during 13:20-14:30 minutes in this Liturgists podcast with Richard Rohr (two of my favorites together). Or read more about the idea of savoring positivity HERE.

Time to unwind in front of the WoodStove

Both my Wood Stove and Winter break time with my boys has helped me set this practice into motion. I hope I can keep with it because I can already feel the effects!

Goal Setting

I will set more measurable goals as well. Starting more veggie seeds under grow lights and building a cold frame (FINALLY!). I’ve also recently fallen in love again with Indigenous Foods and plan to explore those foods and farmers more this year. Along with goals like keeping up my volunteering at the food shelves and working with more children in my town, both at the WBL YMCA and at the elementary schools.
*But these goals will all take a seat behind my main focus of growing my self.*

I love a good book, and I found a few new favorites this last year. Did you find a book that did your garden or soul good? Please share it with me!

A few of my favorite books from 2018:

Year Round Gardener & Veggie Garden Re-Mix: by Nikki Jabbour

Sioux Chef: By Sean Sherman + Beth Dooley

Lab Girl: by Hope Jahren

OK- EnJOY these last days of 2018 and here’s to a big old CHEERS to 2019- looking forward to digging in and growing with you all!
-Michelle

Vegetable Garden Evolution

October 4, 2018 / / 3 Comments

We’re all somewhere on the  garden path. Some of us have a few pots, maybe indoor herbs, maybe a farm.  Our family is working to make the most of our big suburban backyard. One year ago, almost to the day, I was completing the prep for our new vegetable garden! We’ve been through a  bit of an explosion in our backyard over the last few years. And this expanded space is the latest in what we’ve dubbed ‘musical gardens’. Well, these beauties are staying put!

In order to add the amount of growing space we wanted fast, we went with a well known no till option called “Lasagna Gardening”. Just one growing season in and I’m amazed at what a great addition these beds have been!

In The Beginning…

When we moved in 10 years ago our backyard had spruce trees, overgrown bridal wreath and an almost dead hydrangea. And a lawn of mostly creeping charlie. No garden in site. Needless to say, we’ve added A LOT of perennials, bushes, trees, chickens, pathways, and yes- Gardens. Of course the creeping charlie will forever be part of our landscape as well… But let’s focus on the Vegetable Garden here.  Continue reading

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