from my window | the return of indian pipes

the return of indian pipes... Our woods had been surprisingly absent of Indian Pipes this summer. Maybe they aren't used to the dry weather we've been having. Last year, they were hiding plentifully around every oak, pine and hemlock. I was quite happy to spot this patch yesterday growing behind a big boulder of granite.

Indian Pipes are simply cool to check out. They are so ghostly amid the backdrop of vivid greens and rich browns. Check out their lifecycle. Each stage transforms this plant from a head hanging pipe, to a proud and proper flower, to a stark seed pod. Finally for its closing act, the Indian Pipe turns from milky white to charcoal black. Quite a show.

garden | weekly harvest

yum!... We'll be feasting in style this week after today's harvest. The Tipoff Romanesco broccoli is simply stunning. This is the first year I am growing this variety, so I'm excited to give it a taste. I'd probably grow it again next year for sheer looks alone.

I harvested my first crop of beans. The Black Valentine bush were a plenty. They provided enough for several dinners and some freezing to boot. The Masai Haricot Verts provided a handful, but they've got a little ways to go. The Indy Golds are just starting to change to a greenish yellow.

Pulled up my first Borrenttana Cipollini of the summer. I think I will always grow cipollinis. No other onion roasts up as sweet, and they provide early onion picking for us northern folks.

The Teide Red Summer Crisp isn't quite as red as it should be, but I blame the lurching bean poles that have provided a bit too much shade to the lettuce below. But neighbors of the same variety are shouting from the garden with its purply-red leaves.

I harvested the largest green bell pepper of my gardening career. It was blocky and beautiful. The Carmen peppers are already beckoning to be picked. It'll be hard to keep any left on the plant so they can ripen to a rich red.

The basil that I seeded early last month and took what seemed to be forever and a half to germinate, finally took off and I'm now tossing in Genovese, Sweet Dani, Thai, and Amethyst Improved basil into everything.

I even found some straggler radishes. They weren't at their finest, but they weren't horrible either. I sowed my fall radishes the other week, so I'm excited to see how the Black Round Spanish radishes will grow.

To celebrate the harvest, I tossed together the tomatoes, peppers, onions, herbs, and garlic into a tasty salsa. A definite treat for the tastebuds. The only thing missing were the cucumbers.

wishlist | hand printed burlap pillows

beckoning burlap... I was traipsing around Etsy the other day when I came across these gorgeous hand printed burlap pillows at a shop called My Adobe Cottage. I've been lusting over some vintage floursack pillows for a while, but I can never justify the expense. These cool pillows on the other hand are all around $35/ea. Not too shabby for quality handcrafted work.

I keep having dreams of making something like this myself, but realistically, the odds of getting around to do it are slim to none. Though I am trying to learn the craft of printing by hand. So far it has just been immersed in books about it. Next step is trying to carve my own stamps. I really want to dabble in screenprinting too. I think the last time I screen printed was in my fourth grade art class. If I can get there in skill, I'll finally have an outlet for the textile patterns of my dreams. Until then, I'll gain inspiration from talented handcrafters like My Adobe Cottage.

garden | late blight hits Maine garden

heartbreak once again... Take a good gander at the pretty red fruits above. They may be the only tomatoes I harvest this summer.

My heart sank this morning. Yesterday I heard word that a gardener up in Waldoboro spotted late blight in her garden. As soon as I heard that, my mind immediately went straight to my deck tomatoes. That morning I had spotted a second tomato with a brown, greasy looking patch on it. I thought, no... this couldn't possibly be. Not after last year's loss.

But when I came home this afternoon, my once vivacious, healthy, booming plants had taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Blight. Again. My heart sank. After all, I raised these plants from seed, back in the cold of winter. I cared for them, pruned them, feed them, and kept optimistic that this would be a banner summer for tomatoes... especially after the amazing stretch of weather we've been graced with.

The good news is that I have only spotted signs of blight on my deck tomatoes. Which by the way, have been immediately bagged in plastic and are headed to the dump. My true tomato bounty lies on the opposite side of our house. It's there that I have over 60 tomato plants growing. You name it, I'm growing it. Super Sweet Cherry 100s, Sun Gold, Juliet, Roma, Heinz Paste, Green Zebra, Jet Star, Speckled Roman, and several heirloom mixes.

I'm going to keep cautiously optimistic that we nabbed and bagged the infected plants as soon as we could. I'm hoping that the garden tomatoes will be spared, but I will keep a hawk-eye out for the first signs of blight. I remember how last year's plants went from full and gorgeous to infected and withered in a matter of 3-4 days.

As you can see, right now, these tomatoes are looking quite lovely. If these plants do get hit, I may seriously question whether or not to try tomatoes again next year. Though they have always been a garden staple of mine for over a decade, I tend to have little will control over editing my amount of plants, so my tomato crop usually takes up one-third of my gardens. To continue to occupy this much space with something that I cannot harvest from isn't practical. But I know that my gardens would not be complete without tomatoes. Maybe I'll just do a little patch. Small. Tiny, really.

Please help prevent the spread of this horrid disease. If you spot the signs of blight in your gardens, please take the appropriate precautions to dispose of your infected plants. For more information on spotting blight and what to do if you have infected plants, please check out this information from the University of Maine.

garden | connecting gardens via seed shares

sharing seeds... I would love for my gardens to tell more stories. Does that sound odd? Maybe I should rephrase. It just that when I look at my white phlox, I remember that day five summers ago when I came home from a friend's toting my new addition to my perennial beds. That day was a blast. A quintessential early summer's day. It's like when you hear that certain song come on the radio and you are instantly transported back to a memory. Well, I want that, but with my garden. A garden of meaning, so to speak.

Sometimes the meaning is simply a connection to a person. I think of my friend Sue each time I take a snip of tarragon. It is the seventh generation of cuttings from Sue's original plant that we harvest from today. I love connecting via our gardens.

I truly feel akin to so many of you kind folks who continue to drop on by and share your garden and food stories with me. I just think it would be pretty darn cool to be able to connect our gardens. A kind of a communal seed share. Connect with fellow gardeners and foodies via our plants.

So, with that, I just snipped off all the dried seed pods of my one of my favorite flowers, the Oriental Poppy. Without fail, each late Spring, these poppies have provided mind-bending color enjoyment. A prolific self-seeder, these tiny little seeds happily plant themselves throughout your flower beds. They are also quite cold-tolerant, proving to be a hardy plant for this Zone 5 gardener.

I harvested plenty of these tiny, little seeds and I would love to share them with you. If you'd like to connect my garden with yours, please leave a comment and then drop me an email at allison@atastefulgarden.com with a mailing address. A seed packet of Oriental Poppies will happily be on its way to you. Happy gardening!

raising chickens | week ten

week ten... The chickens are happy as clams, so to speak. They've been thriving outside, munching on moss and pecking insects out of bark. Bobby Clark is growing into an incredibly handsome rooster. His cockle-doodle-doo has still a ways to go, but he's always on the alert, yet completely friendly with the family.

We started feeding them some compostable scraps like herbs and fruit. The go nuts over the wild raspberries and the boxwood basil. We only give them small amounts, but they are coming to expect a little treat whenever they see us approaching.

Dottie, top left, is the dominant hen. She takes on Bobby Clark all the time. She quite the aggressive one. Turtle, bottom left, Beatrice, top right, and Bobby Clark are the friendliest. They don't hesitate to come right up to you. I swear, Bobby Clark practically posed for the top photo of this post. Buzz Bee and Gertie are also doing well. They are the quiet, shy hens of the group. Gertie enjoys digging holes for dirt baths. Buzz Bee pretty much stays low key.

Tom is putting the finishing touches on the nesting boxes. Hopefully we'll get something installed tomorrow. I can't believe egg laying is not too far off in the foreseeable future. That will take the whole raising chicken experience to another level. Right now they are like our outdoor pets. Soon they be hardy providers for our family. Kinda cool.

daily photo | wild yellow lily

july 13, 2010 | the flower fairy strikes for a third time... a wild yellow lily

weekly wine walk | july in the Maine woods

weekly wine walk... Last night I went for a much overdue stroll through our woods. I still can't get enough of the scarlet red of the wild lilies. The setting sun light of the stroll created the perfect backdrop.

I forget about the coreopsis each year, and each July it surprises me by its masses of rich, yellow flowers. It really is a delightful addition to the gardens.

A symphony of mushrooms. Mushrooms are nothing new around our woods, but their continued variance captures my eye time and time again. There is something magical about these fungi. They pop up in the most secret of places adding a punch of personality to everything around them. Though, to be honest, I am extremely thankful to not see them as plentiful in my garden beds. Last year, I thought all I was growing were mushrooms.

I eradicated 99% of my black-eyed Susans from my main flower beds. Over three years time, they took over the beds and dominated their way over the rest of the flowers. I tried a relocation program for them, but I've run out of space. So, finally I bit the bullet and treated them like the weed they frankly had become. A few remained in the main beds and this golden beauty is one of them. I love the layers of petals. It adds an element of delicateness to an otherwise rather hardy self seeder.

Last night the woods basked in the salmon-hued glow of the setting sun. My lens could not begin to capture the serenity of the sun's hues. One glance and you are drawn in by the beckoning light gleaming off the white birch bark. It totally has a come hither draw that pulls you to follow its fading rays into the woods.

So to close, I thought it would be nice to include a quote from one of my favorite writers, Ralph Waldo Emerson... "Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience."

garden | harvesting garlic

bye-bye supermarket garlic... 60 heads! Yesterday afternoon, I harvested 60 heads of garlic. My biggest bounty ever. Just seeing it all makes me want to start a garlic festival in my town. The thought of all the meals that will be graced by this most delicious addition makes me feel downright giddy.

I'm thinking that 60 heads should be more than plenty for a family of four for a while, with some leftover to share with friends. Still, I'm tempted to double this fall's planting. Since I harvested a 2-1 ratio of softneck to hardneck, I'll definitely double at least my hardneck planting. I would love to have more scapes.

You can tell how many layers of "paper" a head is covered in by counting the leaves. Each leaf represents one layer of papery covering. When a good 1/3 to 1/2 of the leaves begin to yellow, it is time to harvest. Hold back on watering the garlic for one week prior to harvest. This will help cut down on the bulb rotting. Gently dig out each head. Place in a dry, cool, dark place. The garlic will keep up to nine months, maybe 11 for the softneck.

Curing the garlic helps increase its storage potential. Ours are curing on a handmade screen rack that is in our basement. In around two weeks, the heads should feel much more papery. This is signaling that it's now time to braid the softnecks. For my hardnecks, I simply bunch them together and hang by the root cellar.

Now to dine in delight for the next several months in everything garlic, fresh from my own garden. It really doesn't get any better than that.

garden | a burst of berry bliss

berry bliss... This has been a great summer for our berries. We grow cultivated blueberries and some strawberries, but the majority of our berry picking comes from all of our wild strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries. It is just so cool to think that our family delights on dining on something that we find basically via foraging in our yard.

The raspberries have been heartier than we've ever seen before. You can pick all the bushes clean, and yet like magic, new ripened berries appear the next day. We've had such an abundance that we've even shared some with our chickens. They go crazy for raspberries.

There is a quiet beauty in the stem that is left behind from a plucked berry. It isn't until you've removed the berry that you notice the delicate brown filagree.

I almost completely forgot about the blackberries until I went to pick some lemon balm and noticed the immense clusters of big, bright green berries nearby. I quickly checked around for the other bushes and each are simply ladened with these fruits.

I love nature's timing on how these wild berries grow. Just as the strawberries die back, the raspberries come into full harvest. As the raspberries begin to wane, the wild blackberries turn a deep, dark purple signaling that it is ripe and ready for picking.

All this talk of berries is now making me hungry, so I shall go now for a quick stroll off to the berry bushes. Happy gardening!

daily photo | echinacea in bloom

july 9, 2010 | the bloom of echinacea takes reign over the flower beds