Four Season Gardening at Chiot’s Run

In late September I planted 2 raised beds with a mix of different kinds of winter crops. I covered them with greenhouse plastic to protect them from the weather when it started to turn cold, about 2 weeks ago. This seems to be working very nicely, we’ve had night time temperatures in the high 20’s and the day time temperatures range from the 40’s to the 60’s.

Since this past week was so warm (in the 60’s during the afternoons), I decided to pull the covers back and give all the greens a good watering with some Neptune’s Harvest. This should get them through the winter, I don’t know if I’ll have to worry about watering again after this.

It looks like these mini greenhouses are providing the right climate for my spinach, it’s growing quite prolifically. I can’t wait to have spinach salads all winter long from this bed. I’m also experimenting with a variety of cold hardy lettuces, celery, arugula, leeks, carrots, kohlrabi, bunching onions, and some other cold-tolerant greens.

At the moment I have 2 raised beds with greenhouse tunnels, one with floating row cover, and one with a cold frame. The one with the cold frame is going to be seeded this week with a variety of winter greens for experimentation to see which ones sprout and do best when started late in the season. From here on out it looks like our highs are only going to be in the 40’s, so it looks like winter is creeping up on us here at Chiot’s Run.

I’m hoping that after a few years I’ll have a good list of which varieties of greens overwinter well in my climate. Eventually, I’m hoping to be able to grow a lot more of my vegetables year round instead of relying on someone else’s produce during the winter. (If you want to learn more about four season gardening I’d highly recommend Eliot Coleman’s book The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses)

How’s your winter gardening going?

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Quote of the Day: John Muir

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature,
he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”

–John Muir

The more I read about insects, soil, plants, and microorganisms, I realize we know little about the complex web that they all form. We’re often so quick to categorize something as a pest or a disease without thinking about the reason that it’s happening and how this problem is related to not only, our small gardens, but also nature as a whole.

The longer I garden, the less I step in and try to “fix” things, I try to let nature run it’s course. I started by simply doing away with any chemicals in my garden, then I moved on to not using any organic options either for pests or diseases. I now focus on feeding the soil, along with encouraging insects and birds. I do this by growing a wide variety of plants, many native and trying to grow the soil slowly and naturally without adding a lot extra amendments. This has made a HUGE impact my little garden, I have found that the less I step in, the more vibrant my garden becomes, the wider variety of native plants, insects and birds I see and the fewer problems I encounter. Tugging at or nurturing one part of nature really does affect everything else.

In what ways have you noticed the complex system of the natural world in your garden?

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Cat Antics

The weather has been super nice recently so I’ve been spending my afternoons working in the garden. While I’m outside, I’ve been letting Dexter spend some time outside. He’s supposed to stay on the front porch, but occasionally he sneaks off. Yesterday evening, I was mulching the front hillside and looked up to check on Dexter. I didn’t see him on the porch and then I noticed he was in the maple tree in the front yard.

It was quite funny, luckily I had my camera so I could take some photos for Mr Chiots (who happened to be off walking the dog at the time). I was worried Dexter would get stuck in the tree since he’s not the smallest most nimble cat in the world, but I guess he used to climb trees before he showed up on our doorstep.

At one point I was afraid he was going to fall out of the tree, but he managed to get down, not very gracefully though. At least I didn’t have to call the fire department, do people really do that?


It was quite a sight, I got a good laugh out of it as did Mr Chiots when we saw the photos (hope you do as well). When he got out of the tree he collapsed on the porch as little Softie looked on. Little Softie seems to LOVE Dexter. Every time she sees him she runs right up to him.

I don’t know why animals can be so funny, perhaps it’s their lack of expression, or that they don’t get embarrassed. We love that the cats provide such comic relief around here, and Dexter seems to be the comic of the group.

Any great things that made you smile this week? Do your pets keep you entertained?

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Friday Favorite: Breakfast Edition

Mr Chiots and I are simple breakfast eaters. Most often our breakfasts consist of toast, scones, zucchini bread or something along those lines in the summer. In the winter we love a steamy bowl of soaked oat groats with nuts and cinnamon and perhaps a drizzle of maple syrup (here’s my post about that). Of course the main foundation to our breakfast is a big cup of coffee, which I talked about on my first Friday Favorite. About once a week though, we enjoy a big hearty breakfast.

There’s nothing better than bacon, eggs, potatoes and onions fried in the bacon grease, some buttered toast, and of course coffee. The eggs come from a local farm (can’t wait to have my own), this bacon is from Bisson Family Meats in Maine and it’s great, the potatoes are homegrown and the bread is homemade. This is my most favorite breakfast. Many people would choose pancakes or french toast as their favorite breakfast, but I’m not a sugar in the morning kind of person, I need protein and salt in the morning.

What’s your favorite breakfast?

WE HAVE WINNERS for the free seeds:
Annie
Dave
Grant
Ashley W
Veronica V.
Michelle M.
Canned Quilter
Seren Dipity
Lee
Amanda Daja

If you didn’t get my e-mail use the contact me button on the sidebar to send me your address so I can mail out your seeds!

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2011 Calendar in the Works

I’ve been getting some questions about my plans to design 2011 calendar, now that it’s that time of the year to start thinking about 2011 already – YIKES!
I will be making one this year as well, I’ve been going through my photos for the year choosing ones I think I might like. This is actually the hardest part, choosing one or two images for each month. There are a few that I knew the moment I saw the photo during the year, but other months are proving difficult to narrow them down. I like to use photos that I actually took during that month. Here are last year’s images for each month.





I feel like it’s going to be hard to top my 2010 year calendar since I love it so much, but I know I have some wonderful photos from this year that will make a beautiful calendar.

I thought I’d open it up to you – is there a photo you particularly remember from this past year that you’d like to see added to the calendar? (if you need a refresher, I upload a lot of them to Flickr and they’re easier to look through)

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