Tag Archives: rosemary

This will give you the earliest garden

It’s called winter sowing. Save a plastic container like the one in the picture. I poke 9 holes in the top and 9 in the bottom. I do that by heating up the tip of a Phillips head screwdriver over the gas flame on the stove. Then push it through the plastic. Easy. Mark the top of the container with whatever you plan to grow. This one is half rosemary and thyme.

Moisten soil with warm water and fill container to the top. Now add your seeds. Lots of them. Thinly cover with more soil and close the top. Then leave the container outside in your sunniest location. Do no work. Check container on occasion to make sure it doesn’t dry out.

In 2 months you will have a container stock full of whatever you planted. You can now start dividing up the starts and putting them in your garden.

Seeds know when to come up. The beauty with this method is there’s no work until it’s time to start breaking them up to plant and also no need to harden off. The seedlings have already come through harsh weather and are used to the elements. For those who start seeds inside (and I do), you know the extra work of hardening off, which takes a week or more depending on weather.

Tonights dinner

Leave a reply

It’s a great mesclun mix of red sails and allstar lettuce, radicchio, butter chard, and spinach. I’m a little surprised at the spinach this late in the season after two harvests already. It’s grown back very nicely and we’ve got at least enough for another week. Top it off with some minicor carrots, mozzarella cheese, freshly grated pepper, and then a nice vinaigrette. My entire summer garden is almost completely planted. I’ve left a few squares open for a second planting of zucchini and for summer lettuce. But I’ll soon be emptying out squares of red ace beets, spinach, radicchio, and carrots. This should leave me plenty of open squares for my summer lettuce-which are the greatest to go along with those vine-ripened tomatoes. All my herbs are in-rosemary, cilantro, chives, parsley, garlic, and basil. And I’ve just planted 2 additional squares of red pontiac potatoes. Now’s the time to put your entire summer garden in for zone 6. Tomatoes, peppers, squash, zucchini, corn, all your herbs, chard, lettuce varieties, beets, beans, scallions. And then get ready for a great harvest in a few weeks.[ois skin=”below post”]

In 148 square feet?

4 Replies

We’ve had 3 or 4 significant frosts already. I’m getting ready to cover this structure with greenhouse plastic. I’ll only then be using a weighted floating row cover to put over the crops. As we head into winter, this is what’s growing in just 148 square feet of garden space: 20 pounds of potatoes, 108 heads of lettuce, 8 arugula plants, 320 carrots, 117 spinach plants, 36 mizuna plants, 45 claytonia plants, 4 minutina, 24 komatsuna, 27 mache, 80 radishes, 36 beets, 48 turnips, 44 Swissl chard, 9 onions, 36 chives, 16 radicchio, 63 leeks, 2 kale plants, 20 poc choi, 2 parsley plants, 1 rosemary plant, 45 tatsoi, 36 kohlrabi, and 4 plants of cilantro. We’re ready.

[ois skin=”below post”]

Making herbs last in the snow

Leave a reply

During the holiday season I end up using a lot of herbs for gravies, rubs, etc. One of my favorite herbs for that is rosemary. You can see that we’ve had a bit of bad weather. I don’t feel like going out to the garden and covering all the boxes with plastic for protection. So I’ve done what you can see in the picture-I’ve just inverted a regular container directly over the rosemary plant. Sure it’s still pretty cold out, but the plastic keeps the hard wind off the plants which can really be the difference between the plant living and dying. This particular rosemary plant is 2 years old. When the sun comes out I make sure to take the cover off to give it some much needed light. It is true that if your weather is harsh-too much snow, extended periods of cold temperatures, and not much sun-these will not survive. But this gives the plant a fighting chance. This little technique won’t work for things such as basil because those herbs die off at the first frost. But your more hardy herbs can make it through with just a little extra help from you and Mother Nature. I love growing herbs in my gardens and try to make them last as long as I can. My good friend-RDG-grows and preserves sage. I haven’t grown that before but I think I’ll try it next year. It’s a great herb for the holidays. He’s got some great information about how to do it as you can read here. There’s really nothing like being able to go out to your gardens and pull some fresh herbs. Sure you can buy them at the market, but even the best stores can’t compete with them pulled fresh from your gardens. Not to mention the astronomical price they ask you to pay.[ois skin=”below post”]

Square foot garden breakfast potatoes

2 Replies

I woke up this morning and wanted to go out for breakfast but didn’t have the energy to fight off the crowds. I had a few things around the kitchen like eggs, leftover turkey and cheese. But what about some hash browns? Well, I just went out to my garden and snipped off a sprig of rosemary. I’ve got onions and 40 pounds of red Pontiac potatoes stored in the garage. Within 30 minutes I had an omelet with turkey and cheese and these tasty little breakfast potatoes. Yum…roasted potatoes from the garden with onions, rosemary and freshly ground pepper. It doesn’t get any better than this. And I probably saved $10. I’m good with that, how about you? Square foot gardening-the only way to go.