Monday, June 1, 2009

Spring Gardening


Bill and I planted a vegetable garden next to the pool at Inn this past weekend (best time to plant in New Hampshire is around June 1 after threat of frost). Clyde (Black Lab Mix) and Britt (Golden Retriever Mix) are our "garden patrol." I wanted to grow vegetables and herbs like I've done for the past few years in our previous home in New Jersey. This year, we hope to harvest tomatoes, beans, jalapeno peppers, radishes, and lettuce. We still have to erect fencing and cover the garden with netting to keep out the animals and birds. Some of these vegetables will show up on our guests' breakfast plates in savory dishes.

I also harvested rhubarb this past weekend from one large plant and two smaller ones. It was washed, sliced, apportioned in plastic freezer bags, and frozen yielding enough to bake 28 Honey Rhubarb Walnut Breads as a starter for breakfast.

The perennial flower gardens are lush this Spring with new plants coming up (that I didn't notice last year) and new plants that were put in last year quadrupling in size. The lupines (native flower) are blooming this week in colors of purple, coral, lavender, and white. The soil in NH is excellent for plant growth--rich, nearly black and fine-grained with a few stones large enough to be tossed aside easily. I've transplanted the abundance of some plants to other beds that needed to be filled in establishing more perennial gardens on our six acres. We are also allowing the indigenous flora blanket the ground under the pines and in the forest of sugar maples and oak trees. If you're curious about native NH plants, check out the UNH website: http://extension.unh.edu/resources/category/Home_and_Garden

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