ThinkLady

Bronze arrow lettuce a winner

Bronze arrow lettuce, heirloom variety, cut-and-come-again, prolific, attractive large oak leaf shaped leaves, some tipped with reddish brown, slow to bolt, delicious flavor. Planted Oct. 1, 2012, and still producing like crazy.

I've lost count of how many salads we've had from just one packet of seeds. We’re eating two-three salads a week from one patch and still have enough to share with friends.

So far, this one’s a winner for at least three seasons – fall, winter, spring. Looking forward to seeing how this variety fares in summer’s hotter temperatures.

Technorati Tags: abundance,food,food secruity,gardening,green living,local food,lettuce,vegetables

Flowers in unexpected places

Going through photos of last year's garden. Who knew elephant garlic had such delicate beautiful flowers?

Happy baby lettuce

I love autumn. In the vernacular of my young friends, autumn is “chill” and “filthy” and “sweet.” In perhaps more familiar words – it’s simply my favorite season – for many reasons – not the least of which it’s really the perfect time for harvesting and gardening.

Take for instance pumpkins. The plethora of these fat sassy globes everywhere makes me happy. With their orange to gold to bluish hues, strange shapes, Buddha-like bodies and boatload of nutrition, they are one of Nature’s more intriguing plants. I’ve made a foodie vow this year to be more appreciative and get experimental with pumpkin.

Not ready to be dismissed, summer crops such as beans, peppers, eggplant, herbs and okra are making a mad dash for the harvest finish line. We’re savoring the last bit of whatever summer produce we get from our garden, and dehydrating abundant squash, eggplant and apples from friends, farms and farmers markets.

And then there are our recently planted cool weather crops -- lettuces, kale, chard, arugula, radishes and green onions – who seem as deliriously happy as I am about the first whisper of autumn chill. As I watch these luscious goodies sprout, I know what’s coming next – garden bowl salads made with freshly picked, tender greens, thinly sliced radishes and tiny green onions, lightly dusted with parmesan or feta, and then sprinkled with sesame shitake dressing ... there is simply nothing better.

Technorati Tags: abundance,food and drink,gardening,local food,locavores,seasons

 

Okra love

Source: web.stagram.com via Shauna on Pinterest

 

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The best laid plans

For several years, I’ve researched about a bazillion different ways for making our garden more resilient in the face of increasing extreme weather – drought, hail, heat, flooding. Criteria for solutions:

• Relatively inexpensive
• Easy to install and use in a small urban garden
• If at all possible, solutions need to serve multiple functions (a permaculture principle)
• Functions included shade, heat and hail protection, cold framing or hoop housing to protect cold-weather crops, as well as a trellis for vining crops – all in an intensively planted square-foot garden.

After sorting through scads of ideas and scouring the web, we finally settled on using 16’ x 4’ 3” steel cattle panels anchored with t-posts to make archways over our garden beds. The steel-gauge frames in combo with shade cloth will serve all of the functions mentioned above, and we plan to experiment with them as a mini-hoop house using heavy gauge plastic over the frames this winter.

After installing the cattle panels, we discovered a function we didn’t plan on … the graceful arches make a mighty fine kitty jungle gym.

Sometimes the best laid plans can hold pleasant surprises too.

Technorati Tags: gardening,hail,weather,resilience,climate change,permaculture