Wild foraging
The scent of rain is on the cold wind and the only thing I am doing in my garden is harvesting kale, onions and chard. It’s a great time to pull out the journal and review the year.
What worked:
- Planting garlic in early October provided a good harvest of plump spicy cloves by mid-summer.
- Starting kale and collards under grow lights ensured a good start for these staples.
- Putting out onion sets in late February worked great. This year I planted Cipollinis and they are still keeping well into the end of December.
- Peas by President’s Day in a round wire cage they could climb up made picking and planting easy.
- Buying tomato starts at a local garden sale rather than doing my own. They take a lot of space and require a lot of care.
- Using Camera+ and the app BeFunky on my iPhone to take website pictures.
- Using a treadle feeder in the chicken coop has cut way down on our rat problem.
- Parasitic fly wasps and cleaning up and composting the chicken poop kept the flies down.
- Getting a gas grill and going crazy with it grilling everything from fish to kale.
- Golden raspberries were delicious.
- Doing much more wild foraging; the nettles and acorns were especially easy to harvest and tasty.
- Cutting back the red dogwood to get long straight basket ready sticks. I can hardly wait to get going!
- Finally getting the garden fenced off from the veggie loving dog.
What didn’t work:
- Using straight Cedar Grove compost. I think a blend or GroCo is what I will try this year.
- Carrots – despite careful watering very few came up.
- The planting strip was well enjoyed by passerbys – this is great for building community but I think this year I will plant grain and save time on watering.
- Slipping fertile eggs under a broody hen. They were a mix of eggs and we got a lot of roosters and two hens that died from prolapsed egg sacks. Getting chicks from the grange worked much better.
- The apples were pretty sad despite footies over the fruit and parasitic wasps. I think this year I will just let them be and plan on making apple butter instead of eating them off of the tree.
What was your year like? I’d love to hear how it went!
I'd love to hear from you!