Список из самых популярных хештегов по теме #MINNESOTAGARDEN

It was one of those mornings where I decided to pull whole plantings out. Actually, I’ve been dragging my heels with the beets for a week or so, and so today was the day, before the heat and humidity descended (dew points in the 70s, which is really tropical for us). It was so fun to grow that pink celery, adding a little extra color and interest in the veggie patch. It is all pulled now, and it did lose its magazine glory as it grew older fading paler and paler from the outside in, so definitely harvest that variety on the young side. I think I’ll dehydrate and ground a few bunches for smoothies, and freeze some for winter soups. The berry bowl is larger and fuller today and includes blueberries, and we will share those tonight for dessert with friends. Cabbage will be made into an Asian slaw with some carrots (yet to be harvested) and red cabbage, and some of those beets will be roasted for supper as well. So grateful for our own food garden. It feels so rewarding to be eating off the land, and even better when we have both fruits and veggies in season, together, rounding out our diets with diversity. That’s pretty much a dream come true right there.

Transitions, like in life, are a constant in the garden. There is not a moment of constancy, except in these little squares where the passage of time may be monumentalized. Hellos and goodbyes, falling in love and then having your heart broken when the inevitable parting comes too soon. Always too soon. Growing food encompasses so much more than putting food on our plates. I watch these plants break dormancy in early spring, marvel at the first flowers, enjoy the bees pollinating them, and await the first ripe fruit. Being witness and caretaker of this cycle is a complete honor and privilege. It deepens my awareness to the rhythm of the seasons. It helps me appreciate these moments between seasons. The seasons within seasons, where there is always something coming into season while something else fades away. A constant chatter of hellos and goodbyes, bringing us here. Truly here in the now. We are saying goodbye to the last rogue strawberries while we usher in the next berries, the wild blackcap raspberries and our cultivated raspberry varieties, ever balancing between those fleeting seasons within seasons, loving every single berry we are able to enjoy and share.

Hellos and goodbyes in the form of vegetables. I did it. I yanked out all of our spring pea plants, this meager harvest of the Opal Creek peas the last feasts of the spring planting. A few moments later, we harvested our first slicing cucumber! Here we are, in the now, while the garden comes and goes all around us, marking the passage of time in the form of veggie seasons. Our spring carrots are slowly being harvested just a few every few days, and these are the first to get photographed before being consumed. Even in the heat of summer, a fresh garden carrot smashes your tastebuds with insane flavor and puts those store bought ones to shame. Speaking of delicious carrots, I’ve been determined to fill our root cellar with enough fall carrots to get us as deep as possible into 2020. To that end, I have sown probably 50 row feet of carrots in the ground for the fall garden. Now is the time to sow your fall carrots, northern friends! We remain squarely in the honeymoon phase of cucamelon season, and I hope my love for them stays strong, because they will only become more productive with each passing week. Lactofermented dill pickles will get going this weekend, too, now that we’ve got critical mass with the picklers. We will keep pickling them all summer now, some sweet, some dill, and some spicy dill. Trying to get better at this putting food by business. Happy weekend, everyone!

One of the plants I’ve been stalking for a while is this black beauty from @wildboarfarms. And I think you can clearly see why. So appropriately named, this is a stunningly beautiful black tomato, whose shoulders continue to darken as they begin to ripen. Having never grown this variety, I’ll be looking to the wisdom of this community and my own trial and error to determine when it’s fully ripe. In other tomato-related news, the tomato I had labeled as Pink Berkeley Tie Dye turned out to be Gold Berries. I’m a little crushed because I was super excited to try the former, but there’s always next year when I can try again and hopefully get it right next time. It’s a little odd because it was an additional tomato seed I ordered late and sowed it separate from my main cohort, so I am perplexed as to how I goofed the seeds up. Sigh. Tomatoes are such a long term commitment in the north, first for indoor space, and then for a permanent, full season home with good irrigation and nutrients, but so worth it. Homegrown tomatoes are what we wait half a year for around here. I am beginning to understand why some of you grow 50+ plants, though I feel strongly that 25 tomato plants is plenty for our needs! Remind me of this in Winter, please, when I start sowing my seeds?

First cukes of the season in hand! These pickling cucumbers were picked with one goal in mind: dill pickle sauerkraut. It’s just cabbage, cucumbers, dill, salt, and time. Lactofermenting is so easy and is our go-to for preserving our tens of pounds of cabbage (24 lbs so far) in summer to enjoy all year long. Unlike canning, you get to sit back and let the bacteria do the work for you. The key is making sure you have the right amount of salt to ensure the healthy bacteria like lactobacillus thrive. Based on feedback, I will be adding a recipes section to my website in the coming weeks and months, and you can be sure our lactofermenting methods and recipes will find a permanent home there. In addition to these cukes, I also harvested four heads of cabbage, our first two summer squash, more tomatoes, cucamelons, and some dill. When the rains roll in, I’ll have an indoor kitchen project to keep the garden momentum going. I do love a rainy afternoon to get to the indoor things that are so hard to prioritize when it’s sunny and all I want to do is be in the garden, working or just being. The garden is getting to that, ‘come and just hang out with me phase’. She is seductive like that. And frankly, it’s impossible to say no. So thank goodness for rainy days or I’d be drowning in unprocessed cabbage.

I guess it’s officially cucamelon season over here with an actual handful just harvested. This remains the biggest mystery to me: why they matured so fast this year. I’m intrigued and curious and abundantly grateful. Not far behind these curious, crunchy orbs that are quite delicious and cucumber-y on the smaller side are carrots (I just pulled a few of those), summer squash, cucumbers, and all the tomatoes. I sometimes forget how magical it is to walk out of my house and into my garden, to seek and find all the ingredients I desire and need for a meal, but was reminded just now how awesome, in the truest sense of that overused word, a full kitchen garden is with a diversity of fruits, herbs, and vegetables. It’s breathtaking, it’s useful, it’s resourceful, and sometimes downright revolutionary. The sense of self-reliance is one magnificent thing to experience, and then to grow enough to feed our family and beyond is when it the garden transcends into something bigger. And my hope is that it will always transcend. I have a feeling we are well on our way.

⚠️Caution⚠️ This woman’s love of gardening is contagious ❤️ So ‘berry’ excited to announce that one of my heroes, Meg @seedtofork is taking over my feed today. Can you believe she’s already harvested 75 lbs of strawberries and has ripe cucamelons (swipe to see) in her Minnesota garden? Stay tuned to hear more of Meg’s story today and be sure to watch our LIVE that we did together this morning. (So good!) Here’s Meg’s first post: Hello everyone. My name is Meg Cowden and I love, love, love to grow food. I curate the gardens (and content) over @seedtofork My passion is organic vegetable gardening with an emphasis on pushing our cold and short growing zone in Minnesota. Equally important to me are monarch gardening and prairie restoration. I’ve been growing food for over 20 years and the spark today is as bright and tasty as my first homegrown tomato was way back when. Our goal with our current (daresay, forever) little farmette is to live off the land for as long as possible. Maybe one day it will be close to year round, but we just enjoy the journey each year brings with its challenges, abundance, and deep lessons on life and growing. I’m convinced I was born in the wrong century as my most fulfilling work has always been something involving physical labor; it soothes my mind and feeds my soul — and in the case of food gardening, it also literally nourishes my body, too. I’m a pragmatist and I think this might be what I love most about growing food: it’s beautiful and edible. For as much as I tend to my garden, the garden is constantly tending me, an orchestrated giving and receiving of nourishment and reflections throughout the seasons. I’d even say our garden is one of my best friends, that one that’s always there for me, day and night, always welcoming me back with open arms and the most generous spirit. I warned you about the contagious part-right? Got questions for Meg? Ask away and stay tuned today for more inspiring posts! • • • #howtogarden #ediblelandscaping #healthylifestyle #healthyfood #strawberryharvest #growyourown #garden #kitchengarden #vegetablegarden #gardenlove #gramyourgarden #rootedgardentakeovers #seedtofork #minnesotagarden

The garden is now in its most seductive phase of the year, luring me in with its jaw-dropping beauty. Paradise, that’s pretty much what this is for me. My paradise happens to include a lot of sweat, long hours, intense planning, pest challenges - lots of challenges, failures, triumphs, and loads of food and flowers. I definitely appreciate all types of gardens but edible landscapes, ones that delight the eye and eventually nourish the body, have always been a dream of mine. It might be the one place where pragmatism actually rules me. A food garden’s beauty is best appreciated through the distinct textures, colors, aromas, and structures blending together to create a visual masterpiece. The living garden paths add to the magic in this space. Left on purpose when we established this garden, they green the space further and are an added nectar source for pollinators as it’s predominantly Dutch white clover. Before the garden goes full-on jungle yet while it’s fully established and thriving, alive with insects and pollinators, flowers and food, this is the golden hour I dream about and wait for all year long. A fleeting moment before the paths secede to the roaming veggies and flowers, every angle is a cornucopia of beauty, inviting the eye to take it all in, individually and as a whole. Even though so many summer veggies are still coming into season, for me the garden has arrived in full. And it is more lovely than ever.

The color is here and I’m so proud of my flowers, you guys. Growing all my cut flowers from seed has been the best addition to our veggie patch in a long time. It started last year, innocently, and has expanded even further this year. We all love the colors scattered around the garden, humans and pollinators alike. To be able to walk out my door and meander with my kiddos, plucking a few flowers from here and there and suddenly have this quick bouquet is truly a marvelous summer feat. Annual flowers really are the closest thing to instant gratification in the summer garden, bringing color into our home well before the ripe tomato glut. I cannot arrange flowers to save my life, so it’s a good thing I can grow my own food. So many beautiful colors in this arrangement and I am really liking the colorway I selected for my flowers this year - whites to pinks to purples - the next level to my budding cut flower passion. My favorites at the moment are probably the strawflower varieties (silvery rose, purple red, and apricot peach) from @johnnys_seeds. My least favorite is the seeker white statice. Being my first time growing this flower, I now know I am not so into statice in the garden; it feels so messy and that giant mass of basal foliage is just not for me. This is why I needed to grow it, though, to spend time with it and get to know it. It’s here to stay this year, but if I decide to grow it next year it’s gonna have to fight for a spot outside the deer fence. And speaking of deer, everything in this photo except the cosmos and statice are all thriving outside my coveted veggie fortress, exposed to heavy deer browse though none have been damaged. I am always amazed by how many flowers I am able to grow outside the deer fence completely ignored. My top picks for deer resistant annual flowers are zinnia, larkspur, snapdragon, strawflower, calendula, gomphrena, Mexican torch sunflower (Tithonia), and cosmos. I grow some of these both inside and outside the fence basically as insurance that I’ll have some flowers to cut all summer long. I’m always looking to add new varieties to my grow list. What are your favorite cut flowers to grow?