16 Days Until Spring
A gallery of buds and blooms – the garden is waking up and it looks like it has been watered with a triple shot of caffeine! Spring is only 16 days away! Yippee!
Ecological Gardening and Other Creative Pursuits
A gallery of buds and blooms – the garden is waking up and it looks like it has been watered with a triple shot of caffeine! Spring is only 16 days away! Yippee!
February is a weird month – we get a little bit of everything in the weather department. We do a lot of fantasizing through seed catalogs and are anxious to get our hands back in the dirt. When the winter blues & blahs get you down, our latest kale recipe, “Death by Garlic, Revived by Kale,” is sure to bring you around.
What’s to salvage out of a garden hammered by winter storms? Italian Lacinato (or Tuscan) Kale stands strong! Here’s a great recipe for Chicken-Kale-Cauliflower casserole (with a fair amount of garlic, of course!)
NOW is the time to use those spring greens, because later on they get strong and bitter. Personally, I had easy access to lovage, sorrel, parsley, pea shoots, kale, and collards, so those are things I wanted to use. Lovage & sorrel, especially, need to be used in small quantities, but can really add that little “zing” that makes everyone wonder, “Jeez! What IS that!” Here is a recipe that is a take-off from something I found in Vegetarian Times. I’m calling it Quinoa Crustless Quiche with Spring Greens. You won’t believe how quick & easy it is to make. Low calorie. Nutritious fast food, Inca style!
Early March: what’s in the garden? Chard, kale, collards, beets, leeks, early garlic & onions, lots of herbs, rhubarb — and then there are some of the bold & unusual: lovage, French sorrel, and cardoon — but don’t forget wild greens! Dandelions, nettles, mustards,chickweed, purslane, and others are nutritional powerhouses and are great to add to soups & salads before the rest of the garden gets going.