a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: How Things Grow

  • Last Harvest

    LastHarvestA

    Picking tomatoes for tomorrow’s Bow Little Market was tinged with sadness because tomorrow’s market is the last regular market day of the season. Onions, tongue-burning peppers, sweet peppers, a lot of food has come out of our little garden and gone into meals enjoyed by people I don’t even know. Another summer has gone by, and on we go to who knows what. Every day the door opens and you never know what will greet you on the other side. Every day is a surprise.

    Some of the still ripening tomatoes will make it to the upcoming Sunday market in Alger. More will end up on our own table. There’s a benefit to not selling food your garden produces … you get to eat it yourself, though my husband wishes I didn’t cook with so many onions and garlic. He’s glad that I’ve sold nearly all the garlic, and will be happy if customers buy most of the onions too.

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  • If a Lettuce Falls …

    LettuceFallsS

    If a lettuce falls in a hoop house, does it make a sound? I’m surprised I wasn’t waken in the middle of the night when this lettuce came crashing down. The ground must have shook violently. It explains why so many tomatoes fell during the night. It goes to show how soundly I sleep.

    The tumble didn’t break its stem, and its flowers will still bloom. A lettuce like this would make a grand first course. You could put it on a long platter, set it in the middle of the table, and let your many guests rip off the leaves for their salads.

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    ChickenPeckedAppleA

    Besides grapes, chickens like apples too. I walked by one of the apple trees and had to laugh when I saw an apple cut in half. What? I had to investigate. The apples were on a low hanging branch, within easy reach of the chickens. They’d pecked the bottom halves clean.

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    One thing I find puzzling about chickens is that they have no trouble flying up to roosts five and six feet high to sleep. It would be easy for them to hop up into a fruit tree and climb along the branches to eat all the fruit they want, and yet they never do that. Maybe they rationalize that if they did that, it would be heads off for the lot. Maybe they are more rational than I think. Perhaps they comprehend the results of their actions and behave accordingly.

  • The Last of the Chioggia

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    I picked the last of the Chioggia beets on Thursday morning for Thursday’s market. Thankfully, no one bought them. These are my favorite beets. They taste as good as they look.

    I had some Savoy cabbage left from the market too. When you look at a Savoy cabbage leaf from above, it’s as if you are flying over a lush, green, hilly landscape with white rivers flowing to the sea. No, those aren’t rivers, they are deep, fog-filled canyons where pterosaurs soar from canyon wall to canyon wall, hoping hapless earthlings will fall from the sky and into their monstrous beaks. If you put your ear next to a cabbage leaf, you can hear their bloodcurdling shrieks. Don’t listen to your mother. Go ahead and play with your food. Life is too short not to.

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  • What’s for Lunch? Not an Issue

    WhatsForLunchA

    What’s for lunch? It’s not a dilemma to ponder. The answer is in what I found in the garden while weeding: fresh kohlrabi, potatoes still warm from the ground, red tomatoes, kale leaves, and more. In less time than it takes to go through a McDonald’s drive-through lunch is served, and on fine china no less.

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    GiantRomaine

    What else did I find in the garden today? How about giant romaine lettuce? I’m letting a few go to seed. They are as high as my chest. Soon their flowers will be out. This is what romaine strives to be. Just a few lucky ones ever get to experience the joys of blooming.

    PotatoInterest

    Nine potatoes which grew from an overwintering potato. Talk about interest. What are banks paying in interest these days, 0.01 to 0.02 percent? You might as well throw your money away. Plant a quarter of a potato, and in a year you could easily have nine, that’s 36 times the potato you started, or 3,600%. Don’t put your money in the bank, put it in potatoes in the ground.

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    And white flower beans 白花豆, yeah! This year’s harvest of these wonderful beans is on. I’ll have some for sale on Thursday at Bow Little Market.

  • Hatching Time

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    Mi-asa-hime’s 美朝姫 chicks hatched yesterday and today. Before I saw a chick, I knew they had hatched because when I got close to her, she let out a low growl to warn her chicks that danger was near. Hens never make that growl if they are sitting on eggs, just after their chicks hatch.

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    PotatoSeeds

    My first picking of potato seeds is over, and I have thousands of seeds to plant. Potato seeds are tightly embedded in potato fruits. To free them, you mix the potato fruits with water and break them apart in a blender. A few pulses does the trick. You don’t want to destroy the seeds. Then you let the mixture ferment for a day or two. Potato seeds won’t readily germinate without fermenting first. In a few days, the mashed potato fruits float and the seeds settle on the bottom of the water. You strain out the seeds and dry them.