Making paper pots

 Last night I spent some time sitting at the dining room table, watching a DVD and making paper pots.

 I don't use a wooden pot maker, just a glass from my cabinet. I've marked the glass on the side at the center with a sharpie.  Using this line as a rolling guide I make 4 inch tall pots.

I start with half sheets of newspaper roughly torn at the middle seam,  then folded double.  Next I roll each sheet around the glass with the extra paper sticking out above the open top of the glass.

Then I tuck the overflow into the glass and slide the paper off the glass. Reaching inside, I fold down the extra paper , then push it flat with the bottom of the glass. It doesn't have to be neat, just tight enough to stay in place.

Finally, I put a small piece of tape in the overlap seam (this time I used free address labels) and fold the rim back a half inch.

After 3 years I'm getting pretty good at these pots!

Then I made labels by cutting up christmas cards. They are usually tough enough to survive until my seedlings go outside, yet because they are paper they breakdown in the garden by the end of the season.   

Sol also likes to steal and chew labels, so I prefer the paper because it is more digestible as well as compostable!

Winter dreams-- catalog orders

It's catalog time again, and I got a bumper crop in the mail this year. I don't feel terribly guilty about the  paper used for all my catalogs, because I keep them for reference for a full year at least.

Here's a pic:

before I order  I inventory my left over seeds, sorting them by season:

Next I read over the catalogs I'm most likely to order from, and make a list of the seeds I want this year.
Then I head to the local discount stores that carry seed. Ocean State Job Lot has Burpee Seeds at 40% off, and by shopping early I make sure that nothing is sold out.

Here's what I got at Job Lot this year --annual flowers:

And vegetables:

I will go to Anne and Hope next, to see what seeds they have.  In past years they have had a good selection of specialty seeds, including European selections.

  Finally, I will order anything on my list  I can't find locally.  Seeds I buy locally are taxed, but with the discounts they all cost less than $1.50.

 My budget for this year is tight-- $50 total.  So far I've spent about $10 at Job Lot. Updates to follow!

Xmas dinner from the garden

We ate many things from our garden on Christmas day. The menu featured lentil soup and oven roasted root vegetables.
I headed out to the frosty garden for kale and parsley to put in the soup:

The leaves at the center of this patch of kale and parsley were still fresh and green even without a row cover:

The soup also contained home grown onions and garlic -- here's the pot simmering:

The roasted vegetables were all mine except for the addition of two store bought sweet potatoes. I added our own delicata squash, fingerling potatoes, sunchokes, garlic and rosemary. Here they are prepped for  the oven:

I parboiled the pots so that the vegetables would all be done about the same time. Here's the final result just before I devoured it:

I also used a warm hour midday to check for any overlooked sunchokes in the bed I cleared the week before-- and I dug out another pail full! There were lots of broken pieces, so I've been eating fried sunchokes and scrambled eggs for breakfast almost every day, and I'm not tired of them yet.

Sunchoke Harvest part 1

It was a beautiful day - sunny, no wind, temps in the high forties. I headed out into the garden after lunch, pitchfork in hand, to harvest sunchokes. The other common name, Jerusalem Artichoke, is a mispronunciation of the native American name for these perennial sunflowers.
I knew the harvest would be substantial, because the flower stalks were lushly leaved and shot up to eight feet before blooming in late September.
But I was amazed by the masses of giant tubers I uncovered in a two foot square bed. Rabbits love sunchoke foliage, and for the past three years I'd fought a losing battle to keep them from gnawing the plants to the ground. I finally realized they were planted too close to the fence line. My basenji Sol keeps the bunnies on the run near his doghouse at the center of the yard, but out on the perimeter of the garden they can sneak in and out under the fence.
After eight months behind a fence, the tubers were, as the British say,  'chock a block'
Here's a pic of the first clump I pulled up:

And here's the final pile of tubers next to the bed they came out of:

Here they are washed-- at least 30 pounds-- I had trouble lifting this tub:

I took a big broken tuber in and fried it up in butter and olive oil with a bit of onion, and it was delicious, with a gentle sweet flavor, and a nice textural contrast between the soft center and crunchy exterior.
Then I waited for the gas. Sunchokes have a nickname - 'fartichokes'. The inulin in them can cause a lot of gas in people without the right probiotic gut bacteria.
Do I have the right stuff, intestinally speaking? It appears so. This modest portion caused no more that some mild 'wind'. Apparently sunchokes dug later in the winter cause less distress because they gradually change chemically in the cold soil. After all the dire warnings on the internet -'do not grow these', 'I put them all on the compost pile'- I am optimistic that I can eat my way through my harvest of sunchokes this winter.  Did I mention there is another big patch of them elsewhere in the garden? Hmm.. any one want some sunchokes? Updates to follow.....

Back to the garden

I've hardly touched the garden in a month. It is a quite ragged and forlorn, though not actually damaged by my absence-- it is, after all, December.
In past Decembers I have done some clean up and some construction, as well as tended fall plantings. I made a conscious choice not to plant for this fall. Instead of working in the garden I worked in my garage, rebuilding the home rock climbing gym that was dismantled two years ago when the garage roof was reinforced to accomodate solar panels.
That project ended two weeks ago, but I have not begun to clean up the garden. Tendonosis in my wrist and shoulder intervened, and I have spent restless days of recovery watching movies with ice packs draped over my body.
But the garden calls. It has been mild and snow free, and weeds are still spreading their green tentacles across the beds. The grasses need to be cut back, and their straw spread over paths. The cold frames need to be dug and assembled, ready for the february planting of spinach. I'm a doer, not a watcher, and I'm tired of movies. I want to be in the garden, listening to an audiobook as I clean and prepare for spring.
Here's a picture I look at to remind me that the garden will be coming alive again soon:

Storing and eating delicata squash

I grew a nice crop of delicata and butternut squash this year, despite the fruit lost to nibbling rabbits.
Storing squash is a bit tricky-- it needs different conditions from potatoes, my other major winter storage crop. Potatoes want cool temps just above freezing, and some humidity.
The squash store best at higher temps, between 50 and 60, and in drier conditions. This year I'm storing them in my upstairs back bedroom, in a handy wine box.

Here's a pic of the squash crop:

And here they are tucked into the box:

Delicata squash does not last as long as butternut in storage, so I've been using it in a dish or two every week.  I really love that the skin is so tender that it does not need peeling, which makes prep easy- split the squash, scoop out the seeds, and chop.  

I have oven roasted the squash tossed in olive oil with sweet potatoes, turnips and garlic -- about 45 minutes in the oven at 450 degrees results in roasted vegetables that are crunchy and brown outside and soft and sweet inside. 

 I also pan braised the squash and added chickpeas and my own pesto. Delicious with pasta!

November garden surprises -- cilantro and raspberries

Although I did not plant any fall crops, the garden had other ideas... including this nice crop of self sown cilantro by the deck, which I found while cleaning up the garden:

A handful of fresh cilantro was  delicious on my beans and rice tonight.
I also found a handful of late raspberries for my husband:

Just more proof it pays to keep the garden tidy.