Thankfully spring and summer are slow times for fleece hat
sales.
I have been using these "slow" months to finish building the house and to
fulfill my gardening addiction. I have been trying to incorporate edible
landscaping around the studio-house to eventually provide the majority of our
fruits and vegetables.
Here are a few photos of the gardens.
 The rain garden that is fed by the roof gutters. The cranberries are underwater at the moment. |
 The same rain garden in the winter. You can see one of the sleeping platforms in the distance on the left. |
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 Rain garden in foreground with the garden behind. The winter cold frames are open on a sunny day. |
 This giant 8 foot tall mullen formed a perfect question mark the day before. I missed it but here it is the next day. |
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 Two different cold frame experiments. The one on the left is a large 4x6 insulated window...very heavy. The one on the right is made with two grocery store windows. It worked great for putting out tomatoes in early April |
 These were by far the best cold frames for ease of use last winter but not as warm as the glass ones. The plastic has been replaced with insect cloth to protect greens from summer bugs. |
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 Low cost auto solar food drying. I have found that If I cut up the tomatoes in the evening and keep a fan on them overnight the next day they will dry completely the next day in the car. The fan seems to be very important.
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 Drying more tomatoes in the back of a friend's car. |
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 Garlic Planting fall 2008 |
 Drilling holes in oak logs for shiitake mushroom spawn. April 2008 |
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 Two days of drilling logs can make one trigger happy |
 The final product. 40 oyster mushroom logs and 100 shiitake logs |
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 First fall Broccoli |
 I left onions and potatoes in the ground at the end of their growing season. They both re-sprouted in the fall and developed a second larger crop. The onions are covered with leaves and the potatoes with leaf bags to keep them from freezing. It has been wonderful to have them fresh though the winter. |
 Shallots and garlic mulched with leaves. The shallots almost look like grass in the winter.
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 Garlic mulched with leaves for the winter. |
 Lettuce at Christmas under the big glass cold frame. Small seedlings are sprouting up around the lettuce to replace these heads in the spring. we are also still eating broccoli side shoots from the plant in the upper left. |
 A sea of experimental cloches and cold frames. The glass cold frames are far warmer than the arched plastic covered cloche but are not nearly as easy or covenant to move around or open for harvesting. |
 Fresh baby spinach under a cloche. I just made these cloches and covered them with waste plastic that my last shipment of fleece bolts was packed in. I have been having great luck transplanting small spinach and lettuce plants in the winter. I start them under the glass cold frames and then transplant them up under the plastic cloches. |
 Spinach mulched with leaves and rainbow chard under a cloche |
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April 1st 2009 Garden.
Please click on any of these photos to see a much larger image |
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 Happy plants |
 The Peas are starting to climb. They are under planted with arugula, mustard, radishes and turnips |
 Spinach, chard and garlic that over wintered. |
 The lower garden. Artichokes, strawberries, lettuce, garlic, bunching onions, fennel, potatoes, broccoli, kale, and still waiting for the asparagus. |
 For and experiment I put out extra tomatoes under these two cold frames on March 27. |
 Tomatoes after a 29 degree night! I did cover them with reemay too. |
 More tomatoes that survived under a plastic covered cloche. I did give it an extra blanket |
 Recently planted potatoes and strawberries |
 It seems to get more difficult getting out the door in the spring. In the foreground I am rooting some figs. |
 After the tomatoes lived thought he cold I got excited. So I am warming up the ground to put out some extra peppers and eggplants this week under this cold frame |
 I grafted some pears and apples which recently were transplanted into this nursery. |
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