GardenDesk

Eliot Coleman's new book!

Wow, a lot has been going on with my family and in the garden lately. I have many many posts to share with you to catch up, but first let me show you my birthday present from my wife and daughters.

 

Its Eliot Coleman's new book - The Winter Harvest Handbook. Officially the title is:

The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses

The subtitle is important to me because that is exactly what I am hoping to do this year. Our new greenhouse is ready to grow veggies all winter long!

This was a great birthday surprise because I didn't even know Eliot Coleman had a new book out. It was just released. As you may know, Eliot Coleman is my very favorite gardener and garden author. His other two books, The New Organic Grower and Four-Season Harvest are on my list of 25 favorite gardening books.

I can't wait to read more of The Winter Harvest Handbook. So far, I can tell that it is packed with even more of Coleman's wisdom. He outlines the way he accomplishes growing so much organic produce, all year long.

  

This book was only part of a fantastic birthday week. I have been able to spend some extra time with my family, we are eating tomatoes, peppers and onions from the garden, and we finished building the chicken coop! My hours at work are changing which should allow for more time in the garden and for blogging. Hopefully, I will get pictures on soon of the chickens and the garden and get back to regular blogging.

Happy gardening everyone!

Great Big Tomatoes To The Rescue!

Things have been so busy this spring that the garden has fallen a little behind. There are still lots of veggies growing out there, but I haven't been able to finish building the new raised beds that will allow me to grow almost twice the produce that I have in years past.

I'm still hopeful for the crops that start from seed, but I was getting pretty worried about all the tomato seedlings I had waiting in the greenhouse. Instead of waiting for the finished beds, I tilled a new area in the yard to accommodate a single row of tomatoes.

The plants are still pretty small, so maybe you can't see them in the above picture. Here is a closer look:

I was able to quickly mound up the soil so it is sort of like a raised bed. What this new row doesn't have that my beds do have is great soil. I add loads of compost to the raised beds. This tomato row is just the ordinary dirt from the yard. Since I don't use any chemical fertilizers, how am I going to keep these tomatoes healthy without compost? I'm using Great Big Tomatoes

Great Big Tomatoes is a wonderful product from the Great Big Plants company. I have used Great Big Plants for the past few years and wrote about it here.

Great Big Tomatoes is basically an organic concentrated liquid compost, rich in the nutrients that tomato plants need to grow big, healthy, and delicious. I just learned about Great Big Tomatoes and am excited about using it. All I have to do is mix a little in a gallon of water and use that to water my tomato plants. Easy.

I'll give you an update later in the summer when these plants are big and beautiful. I'm glad I was able to move some of these tomatoes out to this row method. When I do get my new beds finished, I will now have room for many other veggies. But I don't think I could have put my tomatoes in the new row without Great Big Tomatoes. I'm glad I found out about it.