A beautiful morning after snowfall. Today, need to do prep work for tomorrow morning’s cooking.
Month: November 2018
winter cover
Spread seaweed on the front row of the garden and in the four asparagus beds. Harvested some potatoes and parsnips.
cilantro – coriander
Low-tech method of cleaning coriander seeds. I got a small jar of fairly clean seeds. These have been stored on the plants in a pillow case outdoors to dry, harvested some time earlier in the summer.
I’ve never been able to grow as much cilantro as I want to eat, but I keep trying. There’s some baby cilantro out in the garden right now, under protection, in a probably vain hope that it will make it through the winter and take off in spring. It’s not known as a northern crop.
Now coriander is another story. I don’t know what to do with it in the kitchen, so I just save it year after year to replant in next year’s garden. This batch was quite dirty and really impossible to pick through. Sam got the idea that the seeds would roll and we hit on this solution.
last harvest, HCG
Having waited almost too long, yesterday was the last harvest at the community garden.
The snow was not so much the issue, as the long cold spell looming in the forecast.
We brought in the remaining celeriac, kale, and leeks, as well as a handful of adorable baby carrots and one hapless baby beet.
yam of the north
Parsnips: the Yam of the North (YouTube, the Maritime Gardener)
Harvested the first parsnips today. They look good! Will be preparing more for Thanksgiving.
These are Andover variety from Fedco. I learned the seeds are short lived, and it’s recommended to save your own seed. So I will leave one or two parsnips to set seed next year.
farewell seedlings
We covered up the seedlings in the garden in anticipation of cold temps over the next few nights. This is an experimental bed. I don’t think they’ll all make it, maybe none of them will. Cilantro, lacinato kale, red lettuce, spinach. They are under a layer of plastic, a layer of agribon, and a few inches of hay mulch.
mineral broth recipe
The quantities are perfect for us in this version of this recipe. It makes about 10 pints. I’m freezing them in one-cup portions, so we can use whatever we need.
kale chips
Made this with the massive winterbor kale from the community garden. Four baking sheets worth. It is really hard to get the crispiness right. Many of the chips are brown and disintegrate to powder immediately upon placement in the mouth.
beets etc.
Harvested a lot of smaller beets, a celeriac root, and a Winterbor kale at the community garden.
Going to make some food for the election results get-together at Lesley’s house tonight.
mini colors
Most of the leaves have fallen after Saturday’s windstorm, but there are still brilliant patches. 
Planted garlic today – a seasonal milestone.