We finally had our first real frost. At 8,000 feet here in Colorado, our average date of the first frost is about 12 days ago. Every extra day has been precious, but this morning the outdoor thermometer said 28 and the leaves of many plants were drooping. I had done a good bit of harvesting this week and I did more today.
But where to put it all? Our winter squashes went on the bookcase in the hall, on a high shelf just out of reach of the dogs. It isn’t as cool as I’d like there, but we’ll just have to eat them sooner this year. Maybe by next year we will have some sort of root cellar, maybe even combined with the possible chicken house we talk about. Read the rest >>>
I recently read a fascinating account of the growth of the seed savers movement in the United States. Diane Ott Whealy, who wrote Gathering: Memoir of a Seed Saver, is one of the founders of the Seed Savers Exchange, which you can go to at seedsavers.org.
In one of the most beautifully created books I’ve seen short of expensive art books, she writes about how she and her family became the core of what became the SSE. Her passion for saving valuable old heirloom seeds and keeping them from dying out runs through just about every page of the book. I was moved and inspired.
I’ve gardened mainly with heritage seeds and so unknowingly I am one of the many who owe these dedicated people a big thank you!
The book is personal autobiography woven with the story of meetings, a house where seed collections threatened to take over every inch that Ott Whealy, her husband Kent, and their children lived in! Since she and I are of the same generation, I specially enjoyed her stories of different eras. Read the rest >>>
Baker Creek Seeds...Image by Brande Jackson via Flickr
Last night I sorted through my packets of seeds, most of them heirlooms from Baker Creek Seeds, and pulled out a few to plant this afternoon. Here in Colorado at 8,000 feet it will be a while till we plant outside, but our small greenhouse has space for some lettuce, bok choy, radishes, and a few other things. Think I will plant a few tomatoes to transplant outside later, and some sweet peppers.
Gardening is becoming more important to us, and we are not alone. More and more people are taking up gardening, or resuming it.
The growing season is brief where we live, at 8,000 feet in Colorado. That’s one reason we were so pleased that the house we bought here last year came with an attached south-facing greenhouse.
We were busy getting settled in during the fall, and didn’t get around to planting the greenhouse till mid November.
Out of doors, it has gotten as cold as 29 degrees below at night here. At first we were using a small heater in the greenhouse, but it does have insulating shades we put in at night AND a small hot tub which radiates some warmth. So we got brave…
… and stopped using the heater. The coldest it has gotten to since then inside the greenhouse is about 25 degrees.
The plants seem to do just fine with these slightly-below-freezing temperatures. Read the rest >>>
The Real Dirt on Farmer John is an award-winning program about an Illinois farmer whose family has been farming on his land since the 1800s. Farmer John is a larger-than-life character, and both my husband and I were fascinated, enchanted, saddened, and delighted as his real life story unfolded. Watch the trailer for the film and you will know why:
One of many amazing things about this program is that it was filmed over 25 years of friendship between John Peterson, the farmer, and Taggert Siegel and Terri Lang, the filmmakers.
John Peterson grew up on the family farm, taking it over as a teenager when his father died. He went to nearby Beloit College and discovered a more bohemian lifestyle. Many of his friends hung out at the farm, and that didn’t sit too well with the traditional folks in his area. Financial problems forced him to sell most of the family land, and he went off to Mexico to regroup. Read the rest >>>
There’s a brand new how-to DVD just out from from the Back Yard Hive folks. It’s about an hour and a half, but they have kept the price to a low $19.95 to reach as many people as possible. I heard a couple of these people speak in my town a while back and I am impressed with their devotion to bees!
We finally had our first real frost. At 8,000 feet here in Colorado, our average date of the first frost is about 12 days ago. Every extra day has been precious, but this morning the outdoor thermometer said 28 and the leaves of many plants were drooping. I had done a good bit of harvesting this week and I did more today.
