We have a new system in the garden: we now have pretty red flags on little sticks to put in our garden plots when we are away. The flags alert fellow gardeners that our plots may need watering. When we are tending our own gardens we can easily spend a few minutes spraying our neighbor’s
Read on »Posts Tagged: Community gardens
Garlic and Gooseberries: New Spring, New Plan
Spring, summer, fall, winter, and then back to spring. The rhythm of a year is both reassuring and haunting. When you are going through a new experience – a job, a new school or city, or any life change – the first year is unfamiliar and every season is unexplored territory. Then suddenly, you are
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries: Lessons from the Garden
The inevitable darkness of winter has arrived. In November I cleaned up our tired garden in preparation for its long rest, pulling up and composting the yellowed vines and spent plants, and removing the buggy broccoli stalks. The cilantro and arugula had shot up, flowered and gone to seed, so I scattered the little
Read on »Garlic & Gooseberries: My Runaway Pumpkin
As I was leaving the community garden the other day, I happen to glance back and I gasped. From where I was standing on the path I could see into my neighbors’ plot, and there, on their side of the fence between our gardens, was a sweet little pumpkin. MY sweet little pumpkin. A vine
Read on »Garlic & Gooseberries/Food Friday: Saving Sage
All summer I have been drying herbs to keep for cooking during the year. My kitchen table always seems to have oregano or sage, tarragon or thyme laid out on paper towels. The lemon balm, lemon verbena and chamomile never got too robust, but I did get a bit of them dried and put away
Read on »Garlic & Gooseberries: Flowers, Flowers, Everywhere
The calendula has arrived! I planted seeds early on, but never knew if they had taken hold, not quite sure how to distinguish their green sprouts from weeds. Suddenly though, there are beautiful orange and yellow flowers everywhere. It makes me happy to see them, bright and cheerful spots of color. Soon I will be
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries: Benign Neglect
A month or so ago, I was already feeling the melancholy of fall approaching but my garden ignored my dark cloud and just continued growing. I visited a bit less often as I was out of town and other tasks were calling for my attention. Somehow I felt the garden was winding down but it
Read on »Food Friday/Garlic & Gooseberries: Swiss Chard and Bacon Soufflé
Soufflés seem to have gone out of fashion. Why is that? I think maybe they seem intimidating, and yes, they do have a lot of steps that might seem complicated at first. Then there is that persistent possibility that they may not rise, or that they will rise and then fall before getting to the
Read on »Garlic & Gooseberries: Midsummer Report
Progress: The garden has been busy growing and the first eggplant has been harvested along with our first and only yellow summer squash so far. There are lots of zucchini and yellow squash blossoms but only one actual squash. I had never heard of anyone’s zucchini plant not producing until I met my neighbor, who
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries: Bolting
Browsing in a small bookstore recently, I came across this treasure: Vegetable Gardening in the Northeast by Marie Iannotti. Even in today’s world where it seems every question can be answered by a Google search, there is something very comforting about holding a book of instructions in my hands. It feels like everything I need,
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries: Gooseberry Demise
I imagine you all waiting with bated breath for news of the unripe gooseberries I brought home the first day, the very berries that inspired the name of this series, along with the now dead garlic. Well, I have a story for you. My fruit allergy did not stop me from wanting to make jelly,
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries: A Bit of Bartering
On a recent weekend day, my husband decided it was time to be proactive in the bunny wars. We had not yet experienced any attacks on our young sprouts, but chicken wire seemed to be a good idea. So he unrolled fencing and hammered posts into the ground to anchor it, and our little plot
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries: Little Sprouts, Little Critters
There is something going on in my garden and I am feeling a bit uneasy. There are tiny green sprouts everywhere on the rich dark soul. At first it seemed obvious that the seeds I had planted were starting to grow, but now after the first big rain they are coming up even where I
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries: Meeting the Neighbors
We have slowly been meeting the other gardeners, and they seem to eye us with caution. I don’t blame them. This community garden is sort of off the map, having been grandfathered into the city’s program, and the gardeners are all very happy to be left to do their own thing. The only two rules
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries: Sowing the Seeds
I hurried back to my garden the next day to plant the seeds, putting the finishing touches on our masterpiece. In the greens quadrant I added 2 rows of spinach, different varieties, and a few turnips, a new experiment for me. In the squash quadrant I added delicata squash and little pie pumpkins. Yes, I
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries: Digging In
After deep knee bends in yoga and a 5-mile run for my husband, spending the day prepping the garden was perhaps not the best idea. We could barely move the next day, but it was the satisfying kind of soreness that comes from having accomplished something exciting. For the actual planting that week I called
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries: Garden Gifts
“Do you know what you want to plant?” my husband asked me. Do I know what I want to plant?! In the 24 hours since hearing about my new community garden plot I had done what good gardeners usually take an entire winter to ponder. I had a list an arm’s length long. In the
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries
When we lived in Portland our house sat on an acre of land, land that became progressively more wild the further it got from the house. There was a reasonably sized lawn in front and back, somewhat scrappy and a haven to moles and gophers, due to our resistance to using chemicals. Just beyond that
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