Quote of the Day: Jerry Traunfeld
“Fresh herbs offer an astounding palette of vibrant and glorious tastes, but their delights go beyond the flavors they lend to food. For a cook, there is joy in simply handling fresh herbs in the kitchen. Who can resist stroking the proud sticky needles of rosemary, rubbing a plush sage leaf, or crushing a crinkled leaf of verdant mint between their fingers? When yous trip the fragrant leaves off sweet marjoram or tuck a few sprigs of shrubby thyme in a simmering stew, you feel connected to the soil and the season, no matter where you kitchen is.”
Jerry Traunfeld from The Herbfarm Cookbook
This time of year I’m always sad that cilantro and basil are gone, but thyme and rosemary will take their place. I have potted herbs in the house for winter eating, always thyme, and almost always rosemary.
I find thyme to be very easy to grow indoors, there are always a few different varieties. Lemon thyme is my favorite one, I use it almost daily. Rosemary can be hard to maintain as a houseplant, I have trouble with it dying on me. Recently, I read that if you plant it in the soil during the summer and dig it up for winter it will survive the winter much more easily. I’ll definitely be trying that method next year.
Do you have any potted herbs in the house?
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Spoiled
The animals around here are spoiled. The chickens, ducks, guineas and pigs get fermented grains as their daily ration. They also get homemade kefir and various supplements to keep them healthy. There are all manner of vegetables grown in the garden just for feeding the animals, in fact I have a good deal of kale for the chickens this winter.
In mid July, I planted a ton of zucchini plants, mainly for feeding to the pigs. When I harvested the lot before frost, I ended up with around 60-70 lbs of them. Yesterday I set to work grating and fermenting much of what was left for the chickens and for us this winter.
Fermenting will add probiotics and make the nutrients easier to absorb. No doubt the chickens are going to be happy as clams this winter when they get their first ration.
Do you ever make homemade food for your animals?
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Friday Favorite: Beets
I love beets, especially when they’re pickled. It’s a good thing, because I have a ton of them in the back garden. This row of beets is 3 beets wide and about 60 feet long. That’s a lot of beets. I’ve been thinning them out for the past month or two, we’ve been roasting them. A few of them have also gone to the pigs, who greedily chomp them down making themselves look like they committed a heinous crime. In fact, one day, I went up to water them after feeding them beets and I thought one was injured and bloody, it was just beet juice.
Not all of them will be pickled, some will be stored in the root cellar for eating, others will be stored for growing leaves for our table during the dark days of February. The weather is turning colder, while beets will last a while in the garden after the frost comes, they won’t live forever. These coming weeks will involve lots of pink fingers!
Do you like pickled beets?
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Cleanup
This past week I’ve been doing my fall cleanup in earnest. No doubt many of you are doing the same. Pots are being collected from throughout the garden and are being stowed in the garage. Tender potted plants are being brought indoors for the long winter. Compost piles grow taller and taller as the weeks go by. Of course there’s always an animal by my side helping out.
I really want to seed a few containers of herbs for the winter, but I’m finding it difficult to find the energy after a long day of work and chores. It’s really not a huge deal, I will find the time to do it after the snow starts to fly.
Are you doing fall cleanup around the garden?
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Little by Little
Back in Ohio I expanded by gardens a little each year. That helps keep things manageable. This year I expanded the main garden in the back by about 2x. Next year half of it will lie fallow under a thick layer of mulch. I’m working on expanding the boundaries of the back potager to integrate stones walls, a greenhouse, a perennial border, and a small greenhouse. That plan will take years to come to fruition, but it will be very manageable because a small piece will be finished each year.
This year I’m focusing on expanding the edges out and eradicating the quack grass that has been creeping into the garden from the lawn. My favorite way to expand a garden is with the lasagna gardening method. It takes longer than digging up the space, but it’s much less work overall.
Yesterday I layered cardboard down on the areas I want to kill the grass, then I added a healthy dose of compost on top of that. I plan on adding chopped leaves and grass clippings on top of the compost to help keep any erosion at bay over the winter. By next spring, the grass underneath the cardboard will be long gone and the compost will be moving into the soil via earthworms.
I’m hoping to expand the border on each side of this garden by at least 4 feet this fall. The only problem is my fence that perfectly surrounds my 25×25 garden will be too small!
Do you ever use cardboard to smother weeds and grass in the garden?
