Gardening Rules?

I was talking to a friend a few months ago and we were talking about bolting cilantro. Mine always bolts of course. I didn't realize you could plant it every few weeks and use it all summer. I just always lamented not having it when I was to make salsa. Here I was talking about how cilantro doesn't grow well in the heat supposedly because well... it bolts. And she said something that stuck out to me. She said "I don't know anything about gardening rules. And I'm certainly not going to follow them."

I'm such a reader about things. Read read read. I may or may not actually DO them but I've read loads about everything. Loads of information packed up there but not nearly as much doing as I'd like. And a lot of times it's because this thing I read said it was too late, or that I don't have what I need, etc.

So Fall and Winter gardening is coming. And here I keep looking and reading things that say I should have started x, y, and z weeks ago, some many week ago. And I'm bummed. I keep asking myself whether it's even worth it to start things that the internet and books say I missed the window to plant. The real question is... is it worth it to TRY? Sometimes frosts are late right? If I cover with plastic it gives me a zone and a half bump *maybe* right?

Ack I'm such a rigid dork. I hate it too. Part of the whole gardening process is getting dirty, digging in, trying new things, failing at many of them, enjoying the successes. Tell me I can start cabbage now and it'll grow through the cold. That if I start broccoli it won't all die. That carrots aren't a lost cause. Radishes? Lettuce? Should I start it inside? Outside now though it's hot? Both? How much importance should I give to gardening "rules"? Obviously throwing out ALL wisdom from those who have had their hands in the dirt for years and years isn't wise. But to let it paralyze me isn't either right?

I surely can't be the only one that just totally geeks out when they look at empty gardens. I know over the years I'll get over it but looking even at the row and a half I've prepped and composted I'm geeking out and I have a couple more rows to prep and plant.

Kim the geek. Off to sleep so tomorrow I can can tomatoes, make Phelan's cucumber ketchup, pull out all this year's seeds and get ready for planting this weekend!

Is there some reason

that none of you told me that a low hoop tunnel is called a cloche? Hours of searching.... Hours. Trying to get a good enough article to show hubby exactly how to build a low hoop tunnel. My "hammer down some rebar, slip pvc over, then plastic, just wasn't inspiring him. After days of searching, countless cursings of Google, I read something that calls it a cloche and suddenly I can find a bazillion gazillion articles about it? I blame you, I really do. Now the question is.... why didn't I look in Eliot Coleman's book? I have it and all. I chalk it up to being blond AND pregnant. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Stinging Caterpillars Batman!

So after Clay took Adric on a rockin 4wheel drive trek through the woods they went out to check the corn field/pumpkin patch. Suddenly they come in saying Adric got stung by a caterpillar. A caterpillar? Seriously? After I put a paste of meat tenderizer on it because I found it before the bentonite clay, they proceed to tell me tales of the weirdest looking caterpillar they've ever seen. Spots and horns and poison hairs. Treks through corn jungles to find the allusive horned poison hair spot caterpillar. Yeah yeah guys. Men and their fish tales and all that jazz.

Then Clay shows me this picture:

And suddenly I realize how glad I am to have missed the grand adventure because I don't have any desire to get stung by that thing. It's a Saddleback Caterpillar by the way.

*note* Adric normally is very sensitive to things like bites. But we dabbed tape on the sting to check for poison hairs and put the meat tenderizer and he doesn't have even have so much as a bump. When he came in he had a big spot where the main sting was and a red ring around it, but getting the hairs is key and sucking out the poison with clay, activated charcoal, plantain, or meat tenderizer.

Around here today....

Or yesterday or the day before. Around here in the last two or three days. Okay well the last few pictures we've taken....


11 little chickies under a VERY good mom born yesterday!! They're going to be our new layers for next year. Dad is half Rhode Island Red, Half Buff Orpington and most of their moms are RIRs as well though there might be one or two with a Buff Orpington mom. Don't know why my Barred Rock didn't lay in there. But we have two half RIR/Buff O half Barred Rock pullets running around so that's fine. SO much fun getting new batches of chicks. I'm SO over new batches of ducklings this year. If we don't get another duckling until next year it'll be too soon! We've only had maybe 50+ ducklings hatch this year, maybe way more.

Did our first batch of canning Clay and I. 4 quarts of tomatoes, 5 of green beans, 3 quarts of bread and butter pickles and a pint of bread and butter pickles that won't be waiting the 4 weeks to age and get yummier. First time using our ROCKIN' All American canner. Can't wait to can 100 more jars with it~! It's amazing!

Clay's garden has loads of acorn squash growing on it. We'll get more from his garden than we ever thought possible!

Our first garden carrots. Why I wasn't planting these all Summer I don't know, but next year I will be! They're amazing. Amazing.

One of the two kinds of pumpkins that we have growing in Clay's big garden. This is the first one finishing up. We're not really sure when it's going to be done as we've never done pumpkins, but we're read online and hey, live and learn. But it sure LOOKS good right? We have some super cute Cinderella looking sugar pumpkins out there as well.

Just a quick post until later....

Laziness

This is a few weeks old, but Clay went on the roof for this shot. Since then, many things are considerably bigger. Tomatoes are huge, cucumbers spilling over the trellis, winter squash is vigorously spreading out and filling every available space. As are sweet potatoes, as are.... weeds. Weeds weeds and more weeds....

A garden is a wonderful thing. It's taught me SO much this year. So many lessons learned in a garden. Some good, some bad. Of late it's taught me that I am a lazy person. Oh yes, the era of not just blogging happy go lucky stuff for the fam has begun.

I'm not being hard on myself, I'm not. Gardens that go untended, lack of clean laundry, no plan for dinner, worse yet, Bible not read, yet all message boards checked and scrapbook pages made. Honestly I feel that the list of things going undone applies to every area of my life right now. Oh how many women get to this point where they feel overwhelmed by everything, where everything feels and IS out of control. But the Lord doesn't want this for my life, for anyone's life really. He doesn't want us to drown under being a mom, a homemaker, teacher, and wife. He wants us to thrive for HIS glory. And hey, it's not what I want for myself, my husband, not what I want to model to my children, not a good witness of the Lord's power and strength, and just drains me. Oh how I cry out to the Lord this verse today!

-For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.
-If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good.
-Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
-For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
-For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.Now if -I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
-I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:
-But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
-O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
-I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.
Romans 7:15-25

Now my nature is to now come up with a huge list of schedules and whatnot and try and get crackin. But that hasn't worked in the past and won't work now. I need to start where I should have always started. With the Lord. Period. What that means, I'm searching out. Sure there's all the "DO" things that I want to assign myself.... read the Bible X amount, start reading the Bible from the beginning, setting up devotional time, doing memory verses, listening to sermons, turning off the tv, etc. etc. All those godly things that surely will fix me right up. Right up. Before you know it, I'll be the perfect godly wife.......

Stop Kim, stop. There's nothing wrong with those things. I'm sure they will find their place as thing change here. But there is one thing to do. Fall on my face and pray. Pray for wisdom, guidance, for strength. Tell the Lord my troubles. Go the HIM in all this. Because "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me".

Garden Journal - Tuesday June 30th

Smaller Garden:

• Loads of green tomatoes. Haven't seen any aphids or tomato hornworms yet.
• A handful of cherry tomatoes everyday
• We've gotten maybe 8 big tomatoes. A couple Mortgage lifters, a few Bush Goliath, and a few of something I didn't pay attention to what they were.
• Cucumbers are just now reaching 5 feet tall on the trellis. Are getting a handful (5 or 6) of cucumbers everyday.
• Lots of hot chili peppers on the plants. Have picked a handful of the thin green ones.
• Bell peppers are starting on a few plants as well.
• Getting a handful of green beans off the teepees everyday.
• A few small yellow squash on the ys plant
• Zucchini plants are big and vining over and I get a zuke off each plant every couple days.
• Basil is flowering.
• Thyme's looking dead
• Dill looks horrible. Bottom half looks yellow and dead. I think it's on it's last leg
• Potatoes plants are all dead. Time to dig!
• Onions from garden center are falling over and looking done
• Amish bottle onions are flowering, some are falling over. Wonder if it's because I just did the heavy weeding the other day? Hope I didn't kill them
• Eggplants officially all dead
• Brussel Sprouts eaten to death and I might pull them
• Huckleberry plants are ginormous and are starting to get purple berries
• Sweet potato plants starting to perk up and vine a little bit
• Corn has it's first small corn on it! And the flower thingamajigs on top.
• First butternut squash plant vining and about 3 feet long
• Planted new yellow squash and zucchini a couple weeks ago. Chickens destroyed about half of the starts. Ugh. Need to get new seeds as I left them in the yard in the rain. That's why I planted them when I did lol.

Clay's bigger garden

• Corn is getting pretty big.
  
• Pole beans growing up the corn on two 100 ft rows
• Pumpkins are vining and getting yellow flowers
• Pumpkins wilting in heat of the day
• Bush beans were getting a few handfuls a day but they're getting eaten by rabbits
• Clay put up a fake owl yesterday to try and scare the rabbits
• Clay found a few surviving watermelon plants. They're about a foot long LOL but have flowers.
  
• His butternut squash are going slowly but going
• Sweet potatoes not so great but limping along
• Two pumpkin plants have died. I see no sign of cutworms or squash bugs. I think he's not watering enough

I know this is just for me, thanks if you even read it lol.

Bounty

Oh neglected blog how I miss you so.

We've gotten so much out of our garden over the course of the Spring. I've taken pictures and then never get around to posting them. Like this yumminess from the Spring:
But those great lettuce and bok choy days are gone. Unfortunately for us the inexperience gardener I am didn't plan well enough, didn't plant some things early enough and all those type mistakes so we had a dry spell between Spring and Summer harvesting. But here's a taste of what we've been getting the last few days.

We still have lots of potatoes still to dig up (it's going on Clay's weekend project list) and of course the zucchinis are just getting started.

Oh my do I love fresh onions. They just make me happy.
Zukes and the first yellow squash. Bad picture but still yummy.

And you know it goes when you miss a day picking cucumbers. Ours have just started and one missed day and we walk with 10 at least. In a few weeks, we'll be overrun!

We have been getting tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, herbs, zucchinis, yellow squash, hmm... what else? Don't know why I don't have a picture of our lovely tomatoes. They're sitting right there on the counter right now lol.

Okay fly by quick post. All I have to say is that I am amazed by the miracle that is putting a tiny seed in the ground and having a huge plant that gives our family food grow from it. Amazes me every year.

Garden Journal - Sunday June 14th

Before I forget, going to do a quick garden journal. This one will have pictures though!

Currently:

• All broccoli and cabbage are done and gone. Had bad infestation of caterpillars that did my cabbage in. Planning on row covering them next year to see how that goes.
• Loads of green tomatoes
• Pole beans huge and overflowing. No open flowers yet but close
• Potato plants starting to die back
• Cilantro totally flowered and fallin over. Needs to be pulled
• Amish bottle onions flowering
• Most eggplants dying from flea beetle infestation. Gotta find out what to do about those. I've read loads and can't find a good answer.
• Lettuce tall and bolted.
  
• Lost 2 out of three of the first yellow squash plants lost to what look like vine borers.
• Inch long zucchini on the plants.
  
• Planted loads of sweet potato slips yesterday
• Have lots of hot peppers growing on the hot pepper plants
• Caught a gazillion squash bugs by spraying water on the plants and catching them as they crawled up to dry off. Kids loved that!
  
• Cucumbers just starting to flower
• Brussel sprouts have little buds, lots of caterpillar damage but I couldn't find a single bug one them yesterday. Maybe getting too hot. Hopefully.
• Clay's winter squash seeds he planted are starting to peek their first true leaves. Just peeking. He planted those about a week and a half ago
• Lots of green huckleberries. The huckleberries have really made it through and grown big despite the flea beetles.
• Amish bottle onions flowering, open flowers. Took all flowers off all the other onions.
  

Clay's garden:

• He put some fertilizer (gasp) on the corn. His corn is finally starting to get bigger with all this rain. Some are still 2 inches tall but some are 2 feet tall or taller.
  
• Pumpkins starting grow. A couple are about 5 feet long with vines.
  
• Two official nice yellow pumpkin flowers
• Bush green beans just starting to flower
• Planted 50 foot row of 2-3 wide of sweet potato slips yesterday

Garden Journal - Thurday May 14th, 2009

Okay so I haven't blogged in a month. And even now I'm not going to really :) I realized that whether I blog or not I am going to keep track of what is going on in the garden. I wanted to do a written one but I'll never get it done or lose the notebook or something.

Tuesday May 12th:
Planted 4 zucchini plants (8 seeds) about 2 feet apart
Planted 4 butternut squash seeds in a hill - hoping for 2 strong seedling on hill
Planted about 12 feet of cucumbers (1/2 straight Pepino or something and 1/2 pickling cucumbers. Will look at seeds tomorrow) Planted about 8 feet of pole beans
Planted row of Romaine lettuce (ugh I should have pulled out the seeds so I could know what variety but I'm too tired now) between the 2 pole bean teepees in other bean bed
Transplanted second batch of peppers - 20 plants - sweet Italian stuffing peppers and the Hot Pepper Mix from bountiful gardens. I started those under lights this year. About 50 plants in total. I'm thrilled about it.

Garden status:
2 broccoli plants out of 12 going to flower
Other 10 plants have smaller heads slightly smaller than a baseball
1 Bok Choy out of 6 flowering. Ate it. Was amazing
Big Romaine heads ready to eat. Salad tomorrow! Maybe whole wheat pizza and salad. Sourdough pizza crust. Yeah.
Onions have unopened flowers
Straight neck yellow squash planted two weeks ago looking good. About 2 inches tall with 1 set of true leaves.
Mesclun too tall. Must eat.

Clay's garden status. All his silver queen corn is up. Compost transplanted Amish pumpkins looking way stronger than thought all with one set true leaves.

Today Thursday May 14th:
Cut 3 heads of cauliflower. Slightly smaller than store bought ones, nice slight purple color :) They were starting to open a bit so I cut them today. Sauteed with some Spring onions from the Amish, butter and fresh Thyme from the garden. Honestly the best cauliflower I've ever had. Honestly.

Boy it's been raining a lot. Raining a few times a week for 3 weeks at least. Everything in the garden going off, weeds too. Though suddenly my Spring veggies are wanting to flower. Sigh. I guess I need to eat them. Yum.

In the Garden - April 22 2009

I've started three posts now and haven't finished any of them. So I figure I'll just do a little pictoral of the goings on in our garden right now.

Radishes! See them popping their little heads out? Might pull the biggest one and eat it today for fun. They're always a little spicy for the kids but I'll make them taste it anyways. The first fruit of the season for us.

And woohoo the potatoes are up and looking great! This is the first time we have grown potatoes and I'm glad we did because we're going to be growing A LOT of them next year. I need to do some research to figure out how many we need to grow to try and grow enough for the family for the whole year. Clay should have the open basement/root cellar ready by then to store them. But honestly I didn't have any idea what they were even going to look like when they came up. Every weed that popped up got a good going over before it was pulled :) Once they came up though, I knew them instantly. They're so big and healthy and strong and I am in love with my potato sprouts. I am. Really. They amaze me. I'll be both happy and sad to cover most of them up with dirt in a couple weeks.

Romaine lettuce, Cabbage, Broccoli, Cauliflower and Bok Choy progress. They're just so big and shiny and growing SO fast. The broccoli side shoots are getting little knobs on them making them just look so broccoli-y. :)

Onions. Happy happy onions. We got these sets from a friend that owns a garden center. They're just so happy they make me happy.

We also have some Amish bottle onion sets coming in the mail from someone on homesteadingtoday.com I'm excited. It's just thrilling to go rare heirlooms. They should look something like this when they're done.

They're supposed to be spicy and great keepers. I just better not screw them up and better figure out how to store some for next year!

Spinach. Sigh. I don't know what happened with the spinach but it's just been Sooo slow. Germinated slow. Grew slow and even now are just little seedlings. Though they have taken off like mad in the last week. From almost nothing to two true sets of leaves in a week! But they've been in the ground for forever and forever so who knows what's up with them.

Lettuce. Honestly they're one of my favorite garden items. Not only do fresh greens out of the garden taste unbelievable but little baby lettuces are just so gorgeous to me. They're the epitome of Spring. Bright green, bright, cute, and a promise of a lovely salad.

Um.. think I overseeded my mesclun patch?

Empty teepees. I learned something about peas this year. They don't like being too wet. They really need to be started EARLY. I screwed up both of those things and ended up with 3 tiny horrible pea seedlings. Well they're gone now and the ground is reworked and covered with compost for pole beans.
Clay if you're reading this... I NEED those extra teepees you promised to make me. It took the kids and I hours and hours to gather the right sticks and make these LOL!

Tomatoes. The first batch IN. I planted them all yesterday. I have maybe 5 more plants to buy but it wasn't in my budget. This was a horrible year for my attempt at growing tomato seedlings. I researched and bought loads of amazing heirloom tomato seeds. The problem? I planted them in Miracle Grow Organic soil from Walmart. Never again. Turns out I found a thread this year at homesteadingtoday that others had the exact same problem as I did - stunted seedlings turning dark purple and dying. I lost ALL my starts. Everything else I had was grown in other medium (peppers, eggplant, huckleberries) and they're all huge and green and healthy. Sigh. So I bought plants. And turns out there's not loads of heirloom starts available around here - that I've found anyways. So we've got Brandywines, Mortgage Lifters, three kinds of cherry tomatoes - Super Sweet 100, yellow cherry and Sweet Grape, Burpee Red I think, Goliath bush and... well whatever I buy next will be something early. Clay asked me if I got early tomatoes last night and I realized I didn't, so that's next.
Those are just a few of the tomatoes. I planted 18 plants in total.

It randomly got really cold last night though and I had to go outside first thing and check on them. Phew.

Now the question is... should I plant my peppers tomorrow? It's only a few days past the frost date and I know you're supposed to wait two weeks BUT we're going to have 7 straight days of 79-80 degree weather!! So that makes 1 solid 10 days past the last frost. Yeah I'm planting those bad boys. If it gets cold I'll just have to freak out and protect them. Hmm... egglants too? I think I'm talking myself into it. I'll show those next week when they're settled.

That to do today? Hmmm.. how cold is it going to get tonight? Off to check.

Weekends are for rest?

Not around here! Weekends are for work. The evenings of weekends are for resting. Last weekend the weather was amazing. In the low 70s, slight breeze and SO much to do. Like SO many others it seems, we're a tad behind on getting our garden finished up. Not anymore! Hooray! So my super sweet husband woke up Frankie at 5 am, and they drove the truck and trailer to a farm a ways away and picked up two big loads of that great composted manure I wrote about earlier. When they got back, the work day really began.

First, we shoveled out all that compost and spread it across the whole garden. What a beautiful site to see all that black out there instead of brown. Ah for the day my soil is naturally just black and has great structure and yum.... So Clay rented a tiller and him and Frankie went to work. Frank was so proud his Daddy let him run the tiller. Look at that face. Love that dude.

While we hope to get to where we have great soil structure and never have to till it, there is nothing quite like amazing fluffy dirt. Love it.

Everyone pitched in. The ducks did their part picking out bugs and seeds. The chickens did too but you know those chickens, they're camera shy.

Adric was the resident rock picker alongside his Mama, following behind the tiller picking out any big rocks. Mom just threw the rocks in the woods but Adric was proud of showing off his spoils whenever his bucket got too heavy.

Then we made our wide rows. We are doing intensive planting via this amazing book:
I'll talk more about this as the gardening season goes forward and I can take good pictures and really show it. I did link the book picture to the great seed site partnered with this book. I love their philosophy not just their seeds. And I love that their seed catalog instead of having great color pictures to promote their seeds, they have fabulous descriptions (I use their catalog as a planting and growing guide!) they use their color pictures to show the places around the world they are teaching people how to grow food in a way that is bountiful and self-sustaining. Love it.

You know while it would seem that you could just rake that fluffy soil into rows, soil is heavy. HEAVY. It took us forever shoveling to make these rows. By the time this day was done it seemed like I shoveled dirt for 6 hours. You can see everyone working together, even the baby, putting straw over everything to help avoid erosion. We made some grand mistakes this year not knowing better. We left our soil without mulch or groundcover and suffered some horrible erosion. Our dirt was almost ruined and void of any organic matter or living organisms. It was sad. Never again. Cover crops and mulch are my friends.

We also cleared most of the rest of the orchard area. Remember when Clay started cutting trees here? It's hard work to clear all the limbs and move them out. Rewarding work though. We're closer. Hopefully soon a friend will be bringing his tractor and getting those stumps out for us. And hopefully help us clear the last few big trees that are too close for comfort to the power lines.

Okay I said all we did was work but that's not true. Can't have work without play. Saturday Clay went out and put up a swing on a tree for the littles. They LOVE it.

We started our new family activity. Knife throwing. We all suck. :)

And finally Sunday when we were all done, we had a nice relaxing evening. The sky looked like this,
accompanied with a nice wind, so the new kite came out. For his birthday Frankie got $10 from his awesome aunt. It was the most he's gotten at once yet and was SO excited. He's agonized over how to spend that $10 for months. Then he saw the kite. It was $18 and begged me to loan him the money to buy it. How could I resist after all the times he wanted to spend it and didn't? So Clay set out on building it. The new family rule? No more complicated kites allowed LOL!

And then flying it. We had so much fun. The wind was erratic and kept switching so it wasn't great kite weather but it was fun nonetheless and allowed everyone time to just unwind and enjoy themselves.

And when people are happy they let me take their picture. Cassie laughs and is silly so much yet whenever I take her picture she gets all serious.

And look at THIS guy. SO OLD. So grown up. Where's my baby?

Sigh. I feel like I just lived a whole weekend just typing this. And the idea that anyone would read this far? You deserve a prize. Here take some brownies.

Who needs flowers?

When you have compost? See this:?

Aged. Over a year aged manure. My amazing husband agreed to go get me TWO loads of this aged manure for the garden. I'm so excited! To think women want jewelry when they can have aged manure. What's wrong with people these days? :o) I can't wait to finish this garden up!! The weather's going from snow Sunday to in the 70s by this Saturday. So this weekend is garden finishing time. Woohoo!

Gardening - Feast then Famine?

Everything I've ever read about gardening, every garden I drive by here in TN, operates on a feast or famine philosophy. When things are great and warm, there's loads of fresh food, when things get cold, the garden dies back and then you're scrounging on canned produce or *gasp* going to the grocery store to buy tired produce. The gardening season is the feast and the rest of the year is famine. With one of our goals being this tiny tiny homestead of ours providing us with as much as it can as steadily as it can, I refuse to accept this feast or famine gardening idea this year. But being a somewhat new gardener I had no idea how to really achieve this goal.

BUT I just finished reading a fantastic book. It was given to me for Valentine's Day by my always thoughtful Gramma. Love you Gramma. It's definitely on my top 5 must-read gardening books. Click the picture to go straight to Amazon and buy it!


I got it and read it obsessively in a day. Now, first let me say his ramblings about going all over Paris grew a bit old, BUT this book really changed my outlook on gardening. It's FABULOUS! Greenhouses always seemed so complicated. Winter gardening so complicated. I kept reading about heating the greenhouse, running heated water pipes underneath, and on and on. It sounded SO expensive. Then I read this book.

He and his wife live in Maine and don't heat their greenhouse. Yeah no heat in Maine. He doesn't try and operate outside of nature, heating greenhouses and trying to grow tomatoes when they don't want to grow. He operates in harmony with nature, growing plants that WANT to grow in the Winter. From his point of view, greenhouses, cold frames, row covers are for regulating the wild change in temperature that can happen in the winter and for keeping the temperature just high enough to not kill our winter hardy plants. The phrase that stuck with goes something like this "the goal is not to extend the growing season but the harvest season". You're not trying to grow things that don't want to grow, you extend the harvest on things that can handle it.

And he focuses a lot on what I was talking about before. Feast or famine. This year I'm going to focus more on successive plantings. Why does everything I read say I need to plant zucchinis on x date when I can plant new ones every few weeks for a month so when the first ones start slowing down my next ones are in full force. Then just yank those tired zucs and plant something for the winter there. The goal is to have there always being top quality produce coming out at any moment.

He talks about root cellaring, he has exact plans for green houses and cold frames, it even has a whole section in the back with a lot of information on every plant you could want! And loads of info, even whole chapters on soil and organic gardening.

Wait, you back from buying the book already to read the rest of my post? Man I need one of those Amazon affiliates things over there. I just lost money while you bought this book.

I can't wait for Spring!!!