I am worried for Susie’s garden. And it is not that Susie is doing anything wrong. She has poured a tremendous amount of labor and love into that garden, as I think we all do with our gardens. This area has been unusually cold and rainy, so much so that the local paper recently ran a front page story on what a disaster it is turning into for the local farmers. Susie’s garden, mine too, are not immune to the disastrous effects, and we are lucky that our livelihoods do not depend on what we are growing.

Susie did not lean toward cold loving crops when planting, and those seem to be the only crops doing well around here. I took a meander around her garden the other day and found the watermelon longing for heat:

That is my pen next to the melon plants for scale and it is hard to see, but it is actually pointing at one of the mushrooms(!) that has sprung up in the garden.

Susie’s garden fascinates me because she has planted many varieties I’ve never tried.  I am endlessly interested in what other people plant. Some of what she has:

Potatoes: Kerr’s Pink, All Blue, and many others.

Charentais melon.  Heirloom variety, reputed to be delicious. Can’t wait to see how this one turns out.

Moon and Stars watermelon. This is one I have grown, with its beautiful speckling of the fruit and even the leaves. Makes me happy just to look at it in the garden. I don’t have much watermelon space and this year I have Mountain Sweet Yellow in my garden, exquisite flavor and it ripens in our tough Northeastern area. (Well, maybe not this year.)

Crystal Apple cucumber. An heirloom white cuke. Looks a bit like lemon cucumber to me.

Black Beauty zucchini. I am open-minded, and I will try this if Susie has any to spare. Meantime I will try to convert her to my all time favorite zucchini, Costata Romanesco. A low yielding zuke—and I believe that is a virtue in a zuke—lots of blossoms for frying and a reasonable amount of fruit. Costata has a delicious nutty flavor. When I bring them to work people actually fight over them.

Boston Marrow Squash. Susie has come up with yet another nifty heirloom, a pumpkin this time.

Peppers: King of the North, Healthy, and others.

Tomatoes: Trophy, Brandywine, Suddoth’s Brandywine, Green Zebra, and others—I’m hoping that between the two of us, Susie and I can have a little tomato tasting this fall.

Susie has many other plants—all look happy but a bit behind due to the rain and cold. Well, not all look happy: the potted tomatoes up by the house were attacked by the chickens and had to be moved within the safety of the garden fence:

A couple of innocent looking chickens:

Remember when I gave away copies of  Food, Not Lawns back in January?  Well, at least one person was reading back then, cause my Mama went out immediately and bought the book. Then she started making plans to turn the front yard of her brand-new house into a victory garden.

You should know that my Mama is not a talker- she’s a doer. So I knew that when she said her front yard would be a garden, it was all over but the shouting. Before long she had contractors ripping out the sod and putting up a wrought iron fence.

This is a squash in my Mama’s garden. My squash? In a seed packet in my desk drawer.

This is a tomato plant in my Mama’s garden. My tomato plants haven’t come in the mail yet.

These are my Mama’s limes. My limes are in a refrigerated bin at the A&P.

These are my Mama’s strawberries. You get the idea…

The tiny back yard has been transformed into a beautiful little flower garden.

I’ve only been back in Texas for an hour, y’all, and I’m already envying the length of their growing season. The only thing keeping me from buying a farm and staying here is the thought of my own patch of earth awaiting sowing back home in New York.

I recently strong-armed shareholder Linda Campbell, who just happens to be a Master Gardener, into writing a regular blog here on fiberfarm.com all about gardening. In the next couple of weeks we’ll try to get the gardening posts separated on to their own page but starting tomorrow you will find her posts here.

I am so very excited about my kitchen garden this year. So. Very. Excited. All of our seeds have arrived from Johnny’s Seeds and Seed Saver’s Exchange. I probably would have gotten everything from Seed Savers but they didn’t have such a great selection of pumpkins, and we love pumpkins.

Planning the garden is really easy with the tools on Growveg.com. Here’s a map of my garden.

Oops! It’s not lining up properly- I had to take two screen shots to get the whole thing, but imagine those rows of pumpkins and water melons line up, okay?  The cool think about the site is you can figure out what you want to plant and then change the size of your garden accordingly if it’s too big or two small. (FYI- I don’t know the people who run Growveg.com from Adam- I just think it’s a great site!)

BTW- that row of corn across the back is actually popcorn- a variety called Tom Thumb that Logan picked out of the catalog. Logan also choose the two kinds of beans and requested we plant cantaloup. Erin choose the two varieties of eggplant and the winter squashes (buttercup, Boston Marrow, Musquee de Provence and Waltham Butternut.) Harry picked out the three cucumbers and Patrick choose the zucchini and summer squash varieties. Everything else was up to me and I went a bit wild.

Not pictured in the garden plan are the six kinds of sunflowers we’ll be planting in the upper pastures in what is now the weight watchers pen. We planted them in the kidding pen a couple of years ago and all the composted manure gave us bionic sunflowers! They were over 12 feet high and had blooms the size of dinner plates.

Soon it will be time to start seedlings indoors. I confess, this is my least favorite garden task. I just don’t have a great track record when it comes to germination and transplanting. I’m hoping that using these soil blocks this year instead of plastic pots will improve my luck.

I know this garden looks enormous but there is a very good reason for that. It is enormous. In addition to feeding our family here in New York and on the Vineyard, (five total including Erin), we will be sharing the bounty one or two live-in apprentices this summer and Patrick’s parents across the street . And anyone looking for a community garden to help out in in the Hudson Valley area. Logan has informed us that he will be selling our excess vegetable to our neighbors door-to-door. Seriously, he even has a cart picked out.

So, when you think about it, this garden might be too small. Maybe I need to order more seeds…

You know how for weeks now I’ve been going on and on about how I’m planting a BIG garden this summer? Well, a little something has been tickling the back of my brain, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I finally figured out what it was- how exactly am I going to tend a big garden when I’m going back and forth between the Vineyard and the Hudson Valley?

“Too bad,” I thought, “that I don’t live somewhere where there is a community garden. Then I could share the responsibilities and the harvest.” Then I had my brilliant idea. (I’m lucky if I have one a month, and it was starting to look dicey for January…) Why can’t I start a sort of community garden?

If you live near us in the Hudson Valley and are interested in helping build an awesome vegetable garden this summer shoot me an email. I’ll provide the land, the deer fencing and the seeds, you provide the weeding and whatever, and we’ll share in the harvest.

Are you in?

You know, New York, coming home to 12 inches of fresh snow and barely above zero temperatures is not so nice. In fact, it makes me want to kick your Empire State behind.

Good thing I have a stack of seed catalogs to look through and a garden to plan.

You know who else has a garden to plan?

Congratulations April, Allisone and Janelle!  I want to see pictures of your fabulous gardens this summer. Email me with your mailing address so we can get you your books.

Now, for those you that don’t have a lawn to turn into a garden. First let me tell you, I so sympathize! When I lived in New York I craved a little spot to plant something, anything, in. And. it turns out, that a little spot is all you need.

I am really grateful to my publisher, Chelsea Green, for giving me three copies of Fresh Food from Small Spaces to give away. This is the book I needed when I lived in the City. This is the book you need if you live in the City.

Here’s the description I swiped from the CG website:

“Readers will learn how to transform their balconies and windowsills into productive vegetable gardens, their countertops and storage lockers into commercial-quality sprout and mushroom farms, and their outside nooks and crannies into whatever they can imagine, including sustainable nurseries for honeybees and chickens. Free space for the city gardener might be no more than a cramped patio, balcony, rooftop, windowsill, hanging rafter, dark cabinet, garage, or storage area, but no space is too small or too dark to raise food.

With this book as a guide, people living in apartments, condominiums, townhouses, and single-family homes will be able to grow up to 20 percent of their own fresh food using a combination of traditional gardening methods and space-saving techniques such as reflected lighting and container “terracing.” Those with access to yards can produce even more.”

Did you catch that part about growing 20% of your own food? Swoon!

I bet you’d like to have this book as much as I would. I have three whole copies to giveaway. All you have to do is leave a comment on this post telling me what food you most miss in the winter. Now, I know you can get strawberries and tomatoes in the winter, BUT they aren’t good for the planet and they don’t taste as good. So what little bit of summertime are you craving right now?

All comments must be posted by Noon tomorrow, January 29, 2009. Three winners will be chosen at random. I’ll post the winners here tomorrow. Winners must email me with their shipping address to claim their prizes.

Good Luck!

Thanks so much for your color suggestions for our late Winter colorways. Here’s what I learned from reading your responses:

1. More people like purple than I realized.
2. I’m not the only one who loves robin’s egg blue.
3. We are all ready for spring.

I am also excited that so many of you are interested in making cheese! I was a little afraid that I was foisting my own peculiar interests on you. I should have known better. As I said yesterday, I’ll be making some of the recipes from this book in the going weeks and posting step-by-step pictures of the processes. Stay tuned.

And the winner’s of The Home Creamery are:

Congratulations Roz, Emma and Megan! Send me an email with your mailing addresses so I can get your books off to you.

For today’s giveaway, I hit up my publisher, Margo Baldwin of Chelsea Green for some really great books. Chelsea Green publishes some of my very favorite books on gardening, farming and sustainable living. Some of my favorites are Mad Sheep, The New Organic Grower and Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman and everything by Joel Salatin. The cool thing is that I loved these books long before I’d ever heard of Chelsea Green. I am over the moon that they are publishing our book!

Chelsea Green has graciously given me three copies of Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community to giveaway. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this thread telling me what you’d like to plant in your garden this year. (I myself am a bit of a tomato addict. Two summers ago I planted 18 varieties!)

All entries must be in by 8 a.m. tomorrow, January 28th, 2009. Three winners will be chosen at random. One entry per person, please.

And for those of you who have no lawn to turn into food- fear not! Tomorrow’s giveaway is just for you.

I’ve spent the weekend pouring over seed catalogs. How I love seed catalogs! Just when it starts to seem impossible that it will ever be warm and green and sunny again, a little ray of hope arrives in my mailbox.