Early Garden Doings and Growings
With nighttime temperatures still dipping into the low 30s, seeds for cold-hardy plants are sown and work parties happen every other week or so. The big push, when everything happens at once and gardeners scramble to prep beds, plant seeds and seedlings, and keep all...
What else is growing at the garden?
Garlic Scapes: A Delicious Garden Task
The garlic plants are sending out scapes. Our job is to harvest and eat them! If we left the scapes on the garlic plants, they'd grow into beautiful flowers, using up energy. Instead, gardeners snap or snip the entire scape from every plant, freeing up those resources...
Sun + Rain = Food
A tree farmer described how trees grow as "Sleep, creep, leap." The garden does the same, with much faster cycles than trees. After a sleepy start, days of sun and rain have kicked things into high gear. All our seedlings are planted. Only a few direct-seed crops...
Memorial Day Weekend Garden Scramble
Memorial Day weekend is a huge gardening time for Vermonters. We're no exception. The weekend began on Friday at Cate Farm, where these great folks grew the garden's seedlings for basil (Italian, cinnamon, lemon, and Thai), Sungold cherry tomatoes, chili peppers...
Planting Potatoes in Trenches and Elsewhere
The timing was perfect. The night before potato planting, a gardener found the last of 2023's blanched-and-frozen potatoes at the bottom of the chest freezer and made a delicious treat: Slice the potatoes thinly, brush with avocado oil, sprinkle with seasonings—in...
First Garden Food of the Season
French sorrel is among the first garden crops to appear and the last being harvested before the garden goes to sleep for the winter. This perennial herb has a lemony tang to brighten up any salad or sandwich. It is a cooking herb, and gardeners share French sorrel...
What’s new in the garden includes history
Gardeners have been busy planting early crops. Seeds now growing include arugula, chard, kale, pac choi, snow & snap peas, mustard greens, and spinach. Garlic planted in November 2023 emerges this spring. Crops planted in previous seasons are coming up too....
A Flurry of Spring Planting
Gardeners planted arugula, carrots, chard, kale, mustard greens, pac choi, snap and snow peas, and spinach in beds that had been covered in leaf mulch for the winter. They created narrow furrows, they mixed in compost, and dropped in the seeds. Finally, they watered...
A Sure Sign of Spring
This haul of beautiful Vermont Compost is now covered and awaiting the first plantings of spring.
Goodnight, Sweet Garden
Sleep well. We look forward to seeing you in the spring.
Planting Garlic in 2023 to Harvest in 2024
Once Vermont is well into fall frosts, it's garlic planting time. Waiting until extended warm spells have ended ensures the garlic won't germinate and begin growing until spring. Flashback to midsummer: We harvested the garlic planted in 2022 and reserved hundreds of...
