her able hands

I know I said I wasn’t going to order any seeds for this year because I have such a glut from my over-purchasing last winter when I thought I would continue doing the market. But then I remembered that I want to start an asparagus bed. Of course, I wanted to get a jump start on the 3 years it takes to get the first harvest, so I looked into ordering asparagus crowns. Gurneys was having a big sale and I got a little overzealous with my mouse hand. They had a buy one get one free on red raspberries, 6 in each, and I have the perfect spot for them tucked into the edge of the woods, south facing. Then the word tuber popped into my mind and I thought of my grandfather and his dahlias, so I added a few of those to my shopping cart. Fortunately these are all items that once they arrive, I can keep in a cool place until I get the soil prepared.

Raspberry Red 1 YR/12 plants
Dahlia Dinnerplate/Red/1 tuber
Dahlia Dinnerplate/Lavender/1 tuber
Dahlia Unwin’s Dwarf/3 tubers
Asparagus Purple Passion 1YR/10 crowns
Asparagus Jersey Knight 1YR/10 crowns
Asparagus Mary Washington Improved 1YR/10 crowns

I also made a small order at Fedco. My lettuce and salad greens are mostly gone, or too old and I’m deseprate to get some good salads this summer, and hopeful that the one bed that we made with the chicken tractor last year will be relatively weed-free and a good place for growing greens well into summer. It’s tucked into the woods, but will get plenty of sunshine in the early months, the partial shade as summer rolls along-hopefully extending the season for salad just a bit.

Les Orielles du Diable OG
Lollo Rossa Lettuce
Tom Thumb Lettuce
Rouge dHiver Lettuce
Mesclun
Broad-Leaved Batavian Endive
Full-Heart Batavian Endive

I also wanted some carrots and parsnips for the same reasons, but added a few other root vegetables to the mix because I’ve been reading myself to sleep at night with the book Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables and I’m going to attempt a small fruit cellar in the basement corner away from the heating ducts this year. I have a bunch of empty bins and will get some sand and sawdust to store in, and with any luck have carrots, parsnips, turnips, rutebega, beets, celeraic and potatoes through winter. Maybe even some winter squash, onions and celery. All of this of course depends on how successful I am with getting my soil imbalances corrected.

Red Cored Chantenay Carrot
Shin Kuroda Carrot
Golden Detroit Beet OG
Harris Model Parsnip
Laurentian Rutabaga
Diamante Celeriac

So I went to check out and pay for my order and saw that I was being charged $4 for having less than $25—I was at $19. Well, I always wanted to try to grow Fava and Lima beans, and I’ve only got a few seeds of my favorite zucchini left, and my in-laws love yellow crookneck squash.

Windsor Fava Bean
Jackson Wonder Lima Bean
Costata Romanesca Zucchini
Early Summer Yellow Crookneck Summer Squash OG

Still had a couple bucks to go, so I figured what the heck, let’s try a couple of different paste tomato varieties. I have more than enough already to last a couple more years, but what would a garden be without something new? I went with paste because I always plant extra for making sauce, and I have a dozen slicing tomato varieties already. That didn’t stop me from wasting an hour reading through the descriptions of every tomato I haven’t tried before. Oh, how I love reading about the tomato seed histories.

Speckled Roman Paste Tomato OG

Near the top in our 2005 sauce test for its rich tomatoey sweetness and good texture. Red cylindrical fruits covered with orange-yellow striations, something like an Amish Paste with stripes from an Orange Banana. The actual parents are said to be Antique Roman and Banana Legs, and the fruits have the distinctive nipple of the latter. Plants bear an early abundance of meaty 4-5 oz. fruits. Roberta’s highest yielder in 2005. An underground favorite of many seed savers, Roman is just beginning to find its way into commerce.

Hog Heart Paste Tomato OG

Hog Heart has won many fans since Susan Eastman and Ed Lacy of Gray, ME, brought it to the Exhibition Hall at the 1988 Common Ground Fair. They got it from a woman in northern Massachusetts who got it from a man who had emigrated from Italy, probably between 1910 and 1920. So-named because of its tendency to produce heart-shaped double fruits, Hog Heart is a meaty 6-8 oz. (some larger) paste tomato shaped like a banana pepper, noted for its sparse seed cavity, good solids and excellent flavor fresh, canned or frozen. Martha Gottlieb was instrumental in distributing seed samples and provoking interest all around the state. It is late for extreme northern areas and some fruits catface. A Fedco introduction. “For my money, the best paste tomato going,” says Amy LeBlanc.

I tell you, the Fedco seed catalog is worth ordering, just for the reading material.

So now I wait for my orders to arrive, watch the rain pour down, the tulips and daffodils push up through the dark mulch around the yard and revel in the chorus of birdsong that greets me as I step out the door each morning. The sound calls to my heavy winter arms to take a day or two off and get out the digging fork, but the ground is soaked yet, I must not rush the process. Besides, there’s indoor work to continue, and we haven’t made time to set up the light stand still. Too late to start the onions, I suspect, but I’ll give the leeks a try. Oh, so much to do! I think next week if we have warm and dry weather, I’m going to pick up dinner on my way home, or order pizza every night so I can spend that extra hour and a half of daylight outside working. This working full time’s starting to cramp my style.

Bookmark It