The forget-me-nots are getting old, and the light was weird today. All told, my photo makes them look pale. But pale or deep baby blue, forget-me-nots are among my favorite flowers. This is about the twelfth season we’ve had forget-me-nots from when I first planted seeds.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day celebrates flowers the world over. Learn more about Bloom Day at Carol’s blog: May Dreams Gardens. My small kitchen garden is still getting started (though peas may be in bloom within ten days), and there was quite a bit of rain today. So, I toured my yard and found several plants in bloom that had nothing to do with my vegetable garden. If the photos have a common theme it’s wet. (I mean that “wet” is the theme.)

I’ve always enjoyed Bloom Day and felt there should be a similar opportunity to show off your homegrown produce. Last autumn I started Post Produce to fill the void. The 22nd of each month is Post Produce. Write about whatever you’re eating – or growing to eat – from your garden. Then visit my Post Produce post and use the Linky there to add a link to yours. Find more about Post Produce at this link; I hope you’ll join in. In the meantime, please enjoy:

There is but one bachelor button abloom in my yard. Oddly, last spring I planted bachelor button seeds along with four or five other types of seeds. There wasn’t a bachelor button plant in the garden all season. This spring, that planting bed erupted in lush green growth very early: nearly all bachelor buttons. This is the second blossom. In a week or two, there ought to be dozens of blossoms.

Sage is the only food plant in my small kitchen garden that made Bloom Day this month. Only a few branches have blooms on them, but there are buds all over the plants. Soon I’ll be singing that it’s great to be in Texas when the bloom is on the sage. Except it’ll be Pennsylvania.

I once looked up this plant so I’d know what it is. Of course, I can’t remember. It’s on the same schedule as our azaleas. The lighting made the image look quite a lot like an impressionist painting.

A photograph of flowers or foliage? The azaleas are a day or two away from dropping their blossoms… but they’ve put on a terrific show. These flowers are two steps from the fence of my main vegetable bed. Peas, cauliflower, broccoli, and lettuce all are doing well in that bed, and I’ll be planting tomatoes and peppers over the coming week. Along the way, I’ll be serving frequent lettuce salads as my earliest planting is mature enough now to harvest. I’ll show and tell about it on May 22nd when I celebrate Post Produce. I hope you’ll join me and create your own Post Produce post. Follow this link to learn about Post Produce.

Technorati Tags: bloom day, garden bloggers bloom day

An unremarkable country road became remarkable in the light of the post-thunderstorm sun. With such incredible lighting, I want to be in the mountains or a forest meadow or a seaside village. Capturing the photo of a lifetime may be more about planning than any other factor.

I got hooked on photography about when I realized that I love to write. The obsession makes it impossible for me to work in my small kitchen garden without a camera at the ready. In fact, leaving the house always involves a mental argument about whether to leave the camera home. It ends with the observation: If the camera stays home, it will miss its chance to capture the single most amazing scene ever.

That’s the best photography tip I have to offer.

My Most Amazing Scene Ever

Just last week, a thunderstorm floated through late in the day. I had to run errands that involved picking up and dropping off kids. As I was preparing to go, the storm’s edge became apparent to the west and reddened sunlight streamed low under the heavy cloud cover: Sun showers at first, but when the rain stopped, surreal, warm colors on the ground under dark skies. The word sensational barely does the lighting justice.

I had to drive. One kid here, another there… oops, not there, so that other place instead. Along the way, I glimpsed scene after astonishing scene, but I couldn’t stop; couldn’t capture the incredible light.

Remarkably, even after a half hour of delivering kids, I had time before the light would die… but not much time. Near panic, I drove through a neighborhood hoping to find scenes this light especially embraced. There weren’t many, and some were too dark for my camera to record well without a tripod.

So, I settled on a field that abuts the driving range at the local golf course. Got a few shots that celebrate the spectacular evening storm-chasing sunlight. The subject? Mediocre. Composition? Nothing amazing. But look at the light! The light is the subject; it is the composition. But it makes me sad that this is all I could do with the light I had.

My Camera Battery Died

For two weeks a spare camera battery had been in my pocket, but on this day I had removed it. I was two miles from home with light so rare that it made mundane scenes remarkable, and the only battery along for the ride was empty.

Of course, the road home revealed scene after scene taunting me for my shortsightedness. And, when finally I had a fresh battery in hand, the light was gone. I’ve mentally marked a few locations I’ll visit first if ever such light again touches our town.

What Makes a Master Photographer

This lighting incident has convinced me that what distinguishes a master photographer from the rest of us is that the master chases the photo opportunity. I carry my camera in case I happen upon an opportunity and sometimes I get lucky. The master relies very little on luck. It’s no accident when you scout locations, lug in your gear, fully understand how to use your gear, compose the photograph, and wait until the light—that incredible, elusive light—joins you and you capture it all.

If you want to capture the single most amazing scene ever, never leave home without your camera. Oh. And take along an extra battery.

I would never have snapped this subject in the normal light of day. But in the few minutes after completing taxi service for my teenagers and before the post-storm sunset, this was one of the most compelling scenes I could find. For a photographer, sometimes lighting is everything.

Food grade barrels probably held vinegar, syrup, ketchup, or some other components that went into canned foods at a nearby packaging plant. The plastic should be inert and durable and the barrels will find many uses in my small kitchen garden. At least two 60 gallon containers will become rain barrels, and many of the others will become planters. I may simply cut the tops out of three or four and use them to carry manure in the minivan.

My mom’s vegetable garden would have made my small kitchen garden look pretty lame. Her garden was so large that the neighbor stopped by each spring to plow and disc it before my mom started raking and planting. That same neighbor, a well-seasoned farmer who lived off his homegrown vegetables, made a weird claim about potatoes: He said you can throw seed potatoes on the ground, cover them with straw, and they’ll do just as well as when you bury them in soil.

Forty Years of Kitchen Gardening Lore

In the 40 years since my neighbor made his crazy claim, I’ve never tried planting potatoes that way. But I’ve heard a lot of lore from kitchen gardeners that lead me to think my neighbor might have been right.

I’ve heard of potato towers, garbage can potatoes, and straw bale gardening. I’ve heard people enthusiastically endorse hanging tomato plants by their roots and expecting them to produce as well as tomato plants standing upright. I’ve learned that picking tomatoes pink and letting them ripen indoors results in fruit that most people can’t distinguish from vine-ripened tomatoes. I’ve even seen video of a garden writer planting her potatoes by throwing them on the ground and tossing yard waste on them.

Sure, there’s more. But I love to experiment, and I finally have good reason to test my former neighbor’s claim.

When I was a kid, the neighbor farmer suggested throwing potatoes on the ground and covering them with straw. I’m giving the potatoes a better chance: I’ve set them on loose soil and provided a wind barrier to keep the straw in place. I’ll “mound up” the plants until the containers are full of straw. The wooden crossbars in my planters are artifacts from the play; they helped hold the barrels in place as part of the stage sets. There’s no need for them in the planters, but I’m too lazy to remove them.

Food Barrel Potato Planters

For this year’s high school musical, I tracked down a local food packaging company that had used food barrels they were willing to sell for 50 cents apiece. Many of the barrels went to set-build and became parts of the scenery for the stage production. The rest (and some of the ones that appeared on stage) came home with me to go into various gardening projects.

I’ll use some to make rain barrels and others to make root barriers for plants that propagate via rhizomes or stolons. After that, I’ll make planters—cut across the center, a barrel will make two 30 gallon planters apiece. Cut at the obvious ridges that divide a barrel in thirds, each will provide two 20 gallon planters and a pretty decent root barrier to contain such rapid spreaders as mint and oregano.

How I Planted Potatoes

For the scenery in the musical, set-builders cut off the bottom thirds of several barrels. These, I decided to use as potato planters. It was a simple project: I drilled about ten one-quarter-inch drainage holes in the bottom of each section. Then I spread two inches of soil in the bottoms, and laid three prepared seed potato chunks in each. (I had cut up seed potatoes several days earlier and let them dry out as explained in my post, Plant Potato Towers in Your Small Kitchen Garden.)

Finally, I distributed about two inches of straw on top of the potatoes and watered thoroughly. When potato sprouts grow about six inches tall, I’ll add more straw, leaving the ends of the plants protruding. I’ll continue to add straw until it fills the containers, and then wait for the plants to mature and die back. Then I’ll let you know how things came out.

My Post Produce post this month celebrates cilantro! I’ve used quite a bit of fresh cilantro from my small kitchen garden this spring, most of it in guacamole. Cilantro is a very hardy annual. The plant has a short lifecycle, dying out two-to-three months after it sprouts. However, if it sprouts late and fails to mature before winter, cilantro is one of the first food plants to get moving during the spring thaw.

The seasons are a mess this year… but in kind of a good way for a kitchen gardener. Last year, I still hadn’t planted cool weather crops by late April because my garden was mud. This year, the soil has been nearly dry to the full depth of the tines on my garden fork. Peas are more than two inches tall, cauliflower and broccoli seedlings have clearly taken, lettuce may be ready to harvest within the week, onion sets are popping, and my first ever planting of pok choi has sprouted. Best of all: I’ve harvested!

Cilantro I planted late last year wintered beautifully. It is growing vigorously and has flavored several batches of guacamole and a few skillets of southwestern-style home fried potatoes. Tarragon is also doing well: beckoning me to make béarnaise sauce which I’ll do within the week.

Cilantro is the Topic

Forget the tarragon. Avocados have been crazy inexpensive this winter: TEN CENTS apiece! With fresh cilantro coming on while avocados are cheap, I’ve made quite a bit of guacamole. Here are my most intimate personal thoughts about guacamole:

• Sure, it’s a great accompaniment to many Tex-Mex dishes.
• It freezes well. Make vats of it while avocados are inexpensive and freeze it for later. If you like tomato in your guacamole, add fresh homegrown tomatoes when you thaw the guacamole to eat.
• It makes a great sandwich spread in place of mayonnaise… and it’s better for you than mayonnaise.
• It goes great on home fried potatoes—particularly if the potatoes are peppery and/or laced with cayenne.
• It’s hit-or-miss with egg-based dishes. For example, I’ve had omelets with guacamole that weren’t particularly yummy, and other omelets with guacamole that were pretty awesome. I wish I could provide guidance here, but I haven’t kept track of what worked (sorry). The last bad one I remember was a Velveeta and Guac omelet; never go there. Last good one wasn’t an omelet. It was peppery home fries with eggs cooked on top, sunny-side-up, and a few dollops of guacamole.

A generous serving of guacamole contains way less fat and more vitamins than a comparable serving of mayonnaise (which I hope no one would eat in a single meal).

Visit the article I wrote that shows how I make guacamole.

Post Your Produce

I’m thrilled to be harvesting any food from my garden, meager though it may be. By May’s Post Produce, it seems likely we’ll be eating fresh garden lettuce and pok choi. In any case, please share your produce: What are you eating that grew in your garden? Are you still working on last year’s preserves? Post about them. Are you harvesting something awesome now? Share!

Once your blog post is up, return here and use the Linky below to link to your post. Leave a comment as well, if you like.

That’s all there is to it. Thanks for stopping in on this seventh Post Produce event!

My rhubarb plants are dead. All of them. Rhubarb plants in my small kitchen garden are a sixteen-year story if you count only the years since I planted my first ones. Those failed to thrive and eventually drowned during a wet season.

I learned from my drowned rhubarb and abandoned the low ground that tends to collect water during heavy rains. I committed one end of my rather small raised bed vegetable garden to perennials: rhubarb, asparagus, herbs, and (please don’t hate me) hollyhocks and lupines.

Never Enough Rhubarb

The slightly higher ground of the raised garden bed was the trick: for many years my rhubarb plants thrived. Still, there was never enough. From four plants, I’d get a modest harvest and make, perhaps, two pies and one pot of rhubarb sauce. My family doesn’t care for rhubarb, so I lacked motivation to create a larger bed. Then I met an aging farmer.

In 2009, I made friends with a man in my neighborhood who was giving up on vegetable gardening. He had quite a nice rhubarb patch and told me he planned to remove it. I offered to do the work in exchange for the rhubarb plants and we agreed I’d return to excavate in the spring of 2010. I summarized the rhubarb project in a post titled Small Kitchen Garden Rhubarb Project. Happily, the project resulted in a robust rhubarb patch and a bonus herb planting bed that I finished in the fall of 2010.

And Then the Rains Came

Rain started in March of 2011 and continued until June. We had six rainless weeks during which my vegetable and fruit plants acted as though all was well. Then it rained. It rained some more, and it rained even more.

The “high ground” in my raised garden bed proved lower than I’d thought, and it was clear the rhubarb there had little chance of surviving. I had higher hopes for the new rhubarb plants as the area of the yard where I’d set them had never held moisture in heavy rains.

Things looked good; I harvested lightly, made a few pies, and cooked a pot of sauce. 2012 would be the first year since starting my own kitchen garden that I’d have more rhubarb than I could possibly use.

Perennials Have Popped, but Not the Rhubarb Plants

Apparently, despite the favorable growth in 2011, my rhubarb plants suffered. I suspect that as they faded in late summer, they weren’t progressing through the natural seasonal decline of their foliage and stalks. Rather, in all the moisture, they were rotting away. This spring, even the asparagus in my raised planting bed (where rhubarb died early last year) has sprouted and looks healthy. The rhubarb, however, is absent. I’m not entirely surprised: I was suspicious last fall that the plants were hurting, but I didn’t expect them to fail… at least not ALL of them.

To start yet another rhubarb patch with plants from a nursery would cost $30 to $50. However, I found rhubarb at a local department store; 2 roots per bag at $3 per bag. I wasn’t shopping for rhubarb, and I’m suspicious of these pathetic-looking roots, but I took the chance and bought three packs… which turned out to hold 7 budding tubers.

Rhubarb Project Number Four

So, I face my fourth attempt to establish a rhubarb patch in my small kitchen garden. This time, I’m planting on high ground close to the house. Everything drains away from the house, so this location seems unlikely to suffer if we have another biblical rain event like that of 2011. But I’m hedging my bets: I’m building a mound on the high ground, raising the soil six or more inches above the surrounding earth.

Which leads to the “takeaway” from this little story: when you start a rhubarb bed, find a high place in your yard and make sure the roots of your rhubarb plants will never sit in saturated soil. Rhubarb has the distinction of being the least wet-tolerant plant I’ve grown in my small kitchen garden.

Technorati Tags: plant fruit, plant rhubarb, rhubarb plants

On May 17 of 2011 I planted cauliflower and broccoli seedlings in the main bed of my small kitchen garden! On that day, I posted about how miserable the soil was—it had been rainless for a week, but still: big gobs of wet earth stuck to my hand trowel. I planted no other spring crops in the garden in 2011 because rain returned and there was standing water until almost June.

The tide has turned! It’s no secret that winter forgot to wint this year (That’s a verb, right? A “winter” is someone who “wints,” yes?). Then, to confuse perennials, summer started in early February. If I’d been on my game, I could have planted spring crops in the garden then… but that’s not me. Confession: I usually plant peas so late that I consider altogether skipping them.

Preparing to Plant Peas

All that summer-weather-in-spring got me into the garden early. I’ve been excavating a rain garden and moving the soil onto my planting bed. The added soil depth should keep roots out of the mud even in very rainy years. By St Patrick’s Day, the planting bed was ready for peas.

Life got in the way, and it wasn’t until March 30 that I finally got the peas in the ground. That’s at least two weeks earlier than usual. I want to remove the pea plants at the beginning of July, and they’re usually done making peas after ten weeks, so they don’t need to be in the ground until mid April.

I’ve set the broccoli and cauliflower seedlings in the garden and they’re recovering from transplant shock. I’ve also planted onion sets which led me to want more onion sets to plant. Oh! And I’ve mended and erected the garden fence before rabbits nested in the planting bed.

Having planted peas in March should make me feel as though I have a huge head start on my kitchen garden—especially with all the other projects completed. But the crazy weather makes me feel as though I’m trying to catch up… and if it stays warm as it is, I really do need to catch up.

Here’s more from past seasons about planting peas:

• Small Kitchen Garden Pea Notebook – 1 – Do you want to grow peas in your small kitchen garden? It’s a tough question. Peas require a lot of space for a modest harvest. On the other hand, garden fresh peas taste astonishingly better than any other peas you’ll ever eat…

• Small Kitchen Garden Pea Notebook – 2 – You’ve decided how many peas you’re going to plant in your small kitchen garden, you’ve reserved appropriate space, you’ve prepared the soil, and you have some kind of trellis installed or ready to install. I hope you haven’t worked too far ahead. We’re about to plant peas…

• Small Kitchen Garden Pea Notebook Video – I’ve planted peas as late as three weeks after the last frost date and still had terrific yields…..

Technorati Tags: peas, plant peas, plant vegetables, rain garden, spring, spring planting

An abundance of applesauce and red pepper relish in my larder led me to create applesauce and red pepper relish cornbread for dinner tonight. It’s very satisfying to find ingredients from my garden to use in my cooking.

I’ve turned and raked nearly half the main bed, and it’s ready for three rows of pea seeds, a row of cauliflower and broccoli seedlings, and a row of lettuce and spinach seeds. I also need to find a spot for a bunch of romaine lettuce seedlings. Usually, I leave all these cold weather crops till April, but with daytime temperatures consistently in the sixties and seventies this March, I’m afraid I’ll miss spring veggies if I don’t plant immediately.

No Fresh Produce to Report

On this Post Produce day, I can almost claim to have fresh herbs. Last season’s cilantro plants have perked up, and spring onions I left in planters last fall are green and appealing. As well, young shoots are emerging from the roots of my tarragon plants… but I’m not harvesting any of these for another week or two.

Normally, our homemade red pepper relish ends up with cream cheese on crackers. I once posted about how to make red pepper relish. I plan my small kitchen garden to produce enough ripe peppers to make several batches of red pepper relish each year, though I’m branching out to other colors. Last season I made orange pepper relish, and this season I’m hoping for white pepper relish, purple pepper relish, and yellow pepper relish as well.

To celebrate Post Produce, I turned once again to my larder. With a pot roast in the slow cooker, I realized I hadn’t mixed yeast dough in time for dinner, so I decided to make cornbread.

Applesauce and Red Pepper Relish Cornbread

There’s a lot of applesauce in my larder, and we aren’t going through it as quickly as we used to. I like to use surplus applesauce in baked goods, so I promoted a jar from larder to kitchen. Then, it occurred to me that cornbread might be tasty if it had red pepper relish mixed through the batter. So, I pulled a 4 oz jar of last fall’s relish off the shelf.

Here’s the recipe I created using these two ingredients that began last year as produce from my small kitchen garden:

Ingredients

1 cup corn meal

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

¼ cup packed brown sugar

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup smooth applesauce

½ cup milk

1 egg

4 oz red pepper relish

4 oz grated cheddar cheese

Procedure

Set your oven to 375F degrees. Combine the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, brown sugar, and salt in a mixing bowl. Thoroughly mix the applesauce, milk, egg, and relish in a separate bowl. Beat the wet ingredients into the dry, agitating them just enough to make batter.

You can see flakes of red peppers in the cornbread, and darkened cheddar cheese melted into the top. I baked mine a tad hot and suggested a lower temperature in the recipe. Even though my cornbread looked sketchy coming out of the pan, my family admitted it was good. (Got lucky this time.)

Pour the batter into a greased 9” by 9” baking dish, or a 10” diameter round baking dish. Then distribute the grated cheese evenly over the batter. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes—a tooth pick should come out clean if you stab through the top crust.

There’s a lot of sugar and pectin in this cornbread, so it may darken quickly. The surface, sides, and bottom may form an elastic crust that traps in moisture and results in a slightly doughy bread. If you find yours a bit tough to cut, yet soft and bordering on gooey inside (but you like the flavor enough to try again), decrease the cooking temperature and increase the cooking time.

Post Produce is ON!

By this date in April, I’m confident my Post Produce post won’t be about food from my larder. There should at least be herbs, and quite likely lettuce to harvest. I look forward to the possibilities and hope to see many more participants in the monthly Post Produce celebration.

Please share what you’re eating from your garden. Once you’ve posted on your blog, return here and enter the link in the grid below. Other readers will find their way to your blog, and maybe you’ll meet more food-growing enthusiasts. I’ll certainly have a look… even at posts from warmer climes; they’ve been making me feel a bit envious through these inappropriately warm months of winter.

Technorati Tags: applesauce, cornbread, post produce, recipe, red pepper relish

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In 2011, I planted three 6-inch flower pots with two colors of basil. These remained on my deck rail for the season, providing flavoring for the too-few tomato salads I prepared until blight wiped out my tomato patch.

Basil is an essential herb in my small kitchen garden. Historically, I’ve started basil seeds when I set tomato seedlings in my planting bed. My motivation: the basil plants mature at just the right speed to be ready when the first tomatoes ripen.

If you followed Your Small Kitchen Garden blog in 2011, you might recall that in nearly every post I whined about water. The rain last year was devastating, and even until mid winter local basements were flooding because the water table had not receded. Despite my whining, the season had some high points one of which was my experience with basil in flower pots.

Decorative Basil on the Deck

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Basil sprouts are among the most attractive sprouts in my small kitchen garden each year. I especially loved watching the purple basil get started.

I made the mistake last year of not buying basil seeds until I was planting tomatoes. By then, I couldn’t find Genovese or its ilk in local stores. I did find lemon basil seeds as well as a variety of purple basil.

With all the rain, I figured to control moisture most effectively by planting in flower pots. Then, inspired by ornamental plantings of my friends, I decided to mix the lemon basil and purple basil seeds and create planters that would be decorative as well as productive.

Lessons Learned from Decorative Basil Pots

I placed each seed in the pots deliberately to create patterns. In one pot, I laid a circle of purple around a green center. In two others, it was a green circle around a purple center (there were frustratingly few purple basil seeds).

By far my favorite arrangement was the green center with a purple border, but I have reservations:

Lemon basil is a very tall plant. Well-nourished, it can grow to about 36 inches. The purple basil plants were modest growers. A tall one might have reached 12 to 18 inches. The colors looked great together, but the lemon basil plants overwhelmed the flower pots and cutting them back severely only resulted in further aggressive growth.

I’ll be shopping for basil seeds soon for 2012, and I’ll look for purple and green varieties whose growth habits are very similar to each other. I’ll probably plant a few more pots than I did last year; they look terrific on the deck, and it’s nearly impossible to grow too much basil.

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The purple border around a green center is a striking display in many ornamental beds. It also looks great with edibles. I’ll give a little more thought in coming years to the colors and textures of my food plants when I plan what’s going to grow on my deck.

Technorati Tags: basil, basil pots, container garden, container gardening, herb garden, herbs

Exhibitors went all out to create Hawaiian themed gardens and landscapes. It’s a bit of a stretch when you consider that attendees can’t take home what they see as inspiration for their own gardens; Hawaiian plants simply won’t survive winters in Pennsylvania. On the other hand, the Philly Flower Show is way more than a preview of the coming growing season. Besides, there are plenty of gardens to visit in-season in Pennsylvania if you want ideas for your own yard.

Go to the 2012 Philadelphia Flower Show

If you’ve never been to a flower show, go to this one. It might spoil you for all other flower shows, but considering the experience you’ll have at this one, so what? If you have been to flower shows, then visit the 2012 Philadelphia Flower Show and compare. I think you’ll find this one is special. The slide show below shows images I captured on the eve of the show as exhibitors were putting the final touches on their displays. Please leave a comment with your experiences or opinions from this year’s show:

The top shelf of my larder gets crowded with empty canning jars as winter drags on. I’ll be dragging those boxes down when my fresh garden produce is ready for packing.

My Post Produce article this month is a bit different; it’s about transition in Your Small Kitchen Garden blog. Just a few days ago, I sorted through the canned produce in my larder and organized it onto two shelves so one shelf would be clear. Then I hung a daylight spectrum shop light and planted cauliflower and broccoli seeds in a tray that I cut from a gallon milk jug.

Just two days ago, the cauliflower and broccoli seeds sprouted, and today the sprouts hold promise for a future harvest.

Small Kitchen Garden as the Circle of Life

A few years ago, my larder was nothing more than shelves to hold canned goods, canning gear, and other random stuff. Then, when I was contemplating another winter of starting vegetable seeds on my ping pong table, it dawned on me: by late winter, I’ve used up a lot of my canned goods; there would be room on my shelves to start seeds.

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Above the soil for only two days, the tiny sprout in this photo could produce enough cauliflower to feed my family for three meals.

I love that the larder doubles for seed-starting. Just like my small kitchen garden, it knows all the seasons: It accumulates empty canning jars year-round, with most rapid growth in the dead of winter. Then, as winter becomes tedious, my larder comes alive when seeds sprout and grow until the garden is ready. With the earliest spring fruits—rhubarb and strawberries—I put up food while we continue to consume produce that won’t be available fresh for months. When all goes right, we use the last jar of tomatoes within days of canning the new season’s early fruits. Later, we use the last jar of sweet corn as the first ears come fresh out of the garden. Transitions within this cycle are so smooth, so seamless, that it almost doesn’t seem to have a beginning.

Celebrate Produce

This is what inspires me to write about kitchen gardening. This is why I encourage others to participate. With February’s post, I’m celebrating the kitchen garden’s circle of life and looking forward to seeing what produce my fellow gardeners are enjoying—or planning to enjoy—in coming months.

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My repurposed milk jug planter holds 10 cauliflower seeds and 10 broccoli seeds on a shelf above canned tomato sauce and other goodies. I planted head lettuce seeds yesterday and in the next month I’ll start several hundred seeds including peppers, tomatoes, and squashes.

Post Your Produce!

The 22nd is the day to Post Produce. Join the celebration of homegrown food and share whatever you’re consuming from your garden. Whether it’s still growing, you’re harvesting it for a meal, you’re preserving it, or you’re taking it out of your larder for dinner, share it in a post and then link to it below. For more information, follow this link to the Post Produce page.

Technorati Tags: post produce, seed starts, seeds, sprouting, sprouts, vegetables