our maine home – zone 5b
Yesterday, from the hoophouse.
I’m happy with this year’s overwintered greens. Clockwise from lower left: Bloomsdale spinach, escarole, arugula, baby kale. And plenty of self-seeded claytonia.
We’ve been eating homegrown greens for a few weeks now. It’s amazing that they survive the cold winter nights (under row cover).
I planted these in mid-September. This year, the electric fence did its job and kept out voles.
Some photos from yesterday morning and then from yesterday’s snowshoe excursion on the Woods Trail starting behind the house.
After a few days of below freezing temperatures, we can still get greens from the hoophouse! Seems amazing.
Spinach, arugula, escarole, kale. And some baby claytonia.
Sam helped me harvest at the community garden today. He dug the leeks and I dug beets. Then I processed them back at home. A messy muddy task.
What was I thinking! This is a huge quantity of leeks. And there are more in the home garden. I will have to look for more leek recipes.
The beets seem more reasonable in volume. A good selection of medium ones and another of baby beets. A few greens were harvested, but most were not edible.
And this always seems to happen. No matter how painstakingly I try to harvest all the onions and shallots, some slip by. I found this glowing plateful today.
I am appreciating these fall greens in the hoophouse. They are looking about the right size going into winter. No vole damage for a while now.
I spread more hay mulch today. The ground was too frozen to rake the raised beds in the fruit yard. Tomorrow I think I’ll have to harvest leeks. I’ve put it off too long. I also have to remove the asparagus stalks which have dried up and fallen over. And mulch those beds too.
The carpenters are back after some time doing other things. They are installing the baseboard and door trim.
Sam likes to urethane first because it’s faster and easier painting. So we were there this weekend applying 3 coats to the trim. Still more to do but most of it’s painted.
And the wood for the bedroom floor has been purchased and is acclimatizing in the loft.
We put up a short fence of hardware cloth all around the hoophouse. It’s buried in the ground about six inches. I don’t know if it will work, but can’t hurt. We lost a lot of greens last winter to voles.
Escarole, arugula, kale, spinach are planted in the beds. Ready to overwinter. The squash are in there curing.
I noticed the carrot tops looked significantly less bushy in the hoophouse bed. Sure enough, something had munched them down. And sampled some spinach and arugula as well. Rabbit or porcupine? Bigger than a vole, smaller than a deer. Possibly nocturnal.
This loss caused a reaction. First I harvested the carrots. A modest amount of short roots that will keep in the fridge for awhile.
Then Sam worked to put the hoophouse covers back on. Front, back, and sides. And semi-secured the edges to avoid more marauding pests. More work is needed to deter the voles that wrecked (ate) most of last winter’s greens.
Ground cherry is producing prolifically in the community garden plot. Not so much in the home garden. I really like it for snacking. The little morsels are so sweet and tasty.
Some new plants have arrived. Other overly enthusiastic plants have to be removed. That’s the way it goes in my garden.
Here’s what we dug up:
I feel pretty sure I have not seen the last of these plants since they grow so enthusiastically in the garden from just fragments of root. But I’ve made a dent in the amount of space they take up. And I can keep after them more easily with the big bulk of them gone.