In the Early Spring Vegetable Garden

Egyptian Onions, aka Walking Onions

I love seasons: with each change comes the excitement of the new. Even though spring is the same year after year, it feels as though it's never happened before. As soon as the garden is dry enough to walk through without sinking into mud, my first chore is to go out with a bucket of small stakes and a tape measure and mark out the rows. I am thrilled to watch the new growth, and especially gratifying with food crops. One of the first plants I can harvest are Egyptian onions, which I snip and add to salads and other dishes. Today I added some to my lunchtime coleslaw, using a cabbage that I harvested last fall. 

Garlic

Garlic bulbs are planted in the fall, and I cover them with a hay mulch. In early spring, I gently move aside the mulch to see if the shoots have emerged. It's an announcement of the start of garden season when those green leaves rise up.

Sorrel

The tiny leaves of sorrel have begun to grow. There are several recipes that I love that use sorrel; I'm fond of its tart flavor. There's a sorrel/onion tart, cream of sorrel soup, potato-sorrel soup.

Chives

Chives are another handy herb to have in the garden.

Cold Frame

My hand-made cold frame is rather rickety and crude, but it does the job asked of it. When the soil dries enough to plant, my first sowing of seed is arugula and lettuce in the cold frame. They are very hardy, and the structure keeps it warmer inside to encourage growth during these cool days.

Arugula seedlings

And today I was so happy to see some tiny new arugula seedlings popping up, from a March 24th planting. 

Pea Stakes

I'm getting ready to plant peas: the stakes are placed, and next I'll put up the fencing, for which I use chicken wire. The three taller stakes––with added height from taped-on broom handles––are for snap peas, which are vigorous climbersl. I love the description for planting peas and spinach: "as soon as the ground can be worked". A handful of soil, squeezed between the fingers, should break apart when your hand is opened and not stick together in a muddy clump. A too-wet soil will rot the seeds. 

Rhubarb

Rhubarb plants grow to an enormous size so are situated outside the perimeter of the garden. Although we treat rhubarb as a fruit, it's actually a vegetable, so is appropriately included in this post.  What I most love to make with rhubarb is jam, deliciously tart and sweet. 

The first spring vegetable that will appear will be perennial asparagus, but I have to be patient until early to mid May before that tasty treat appears. I have to admit that I've let my flower gardens go to rack and ruin, letting the plants fight it out with the weeds, but my vegetable garden gives me such deep satisfaction that I hope I never have to give it up. 

Beginnings....

It was a beautiful day yesterday, with bright sun and temperatures in the 50s....the excitement of Spring! We've had an almost worryingly mild winter, so things are getting off to an early start this year. Snowdrops are the first floral harbinger of spring: last year March and April were very cold; as I look back on the photo I took of snowdrops in 2015, it is dated April 7th, more than 3 weeks later than today.

As I wandered across the mud of my vegetable garden I saw bits of green: here last year's parsley regrowing. It's a biennial, but I've never had much luck having the plants for a second year, but maybe this year I will.

Perennial herbs begin to pop up early.  The slender fingers of chives wave upward....

....and the rounded leaves of sorrel poke up. They have a lovely red tint early in the season; as they grow they become pure green. At this stage the leaves are very small, 1 or 2 inches long, but so resolutely growing.

There are some green leaves on the parsnips. I went into the garden this afternoon with my shovel, planning to dig them up and have delicious roast parsnips with dinner, but when I put the shovel in the ground it only went down a couple of inches: the ground is still frozen solid under a layer of mud. Soon......

Other flowers are beginning to pop up: the tulips I plant for cutting looking like elongated candy corn....

....and some daylilies, encouraged by the warmth radiating from the south-facing granite foundation of the house.

Lastly, the earliest of daffodils, the small yellow February Gold is off to a good start. They will be the second flower to bloom in my garden. All this happens every year and is quite ordinary, but every year this reawakening thrills me and fills me with anticipatory joy.

Allium Antics

Of the alliums in my vegetable garden––garlic, Egyptian onions, scallions, onions, chives––chives are the most conventionally ornamental. Their flowers are lovely puffs of pale violet, whose florets decorate salads beautifully.

Then there are the small explosions of scallion flowers, bristling with energy.

Form becomes much more complex when we get to the garlic. Stiff-necked garlic sends up scapes that curl into rounds....

....and interact rhythmically; they seem as though they are describing musical notes. The scapes will eventually flower at their ends, but I cut them off so all the plant's energy goes into making larger bulbs. They are good to eat; see, for instance, the recipe for Garlic Scape Pesto.

The prize for grand gestures, however, has to go to the Egyptian, or Walking, onions, which writhe and twist and curl into the strangest of shapes.

In early spring, they are the first greens, like fat chives. Then there are thicker leaves (or are they scapes?), some bound into a tight package....

....and they break free and squiggle about: up, down, across.

Each green undulating line ends in a white dome, that opens to small bulbs, called bulbils, some of which will sprout in turn; if they flop over onto the ground, new plants will grow, hence their other name of "Walking Onion". There's nothing regular in these meandering forms; they are delightfully wacky. I can't think of any other vegetable that takes quite so much liberty, and is so wildly varied, in its form; I love having them in the garden just for the visual pleasure that they give me.

The Gardening Season Begins

What a difference a week makes! Last week, in my "Spring Hope" post, although there were small signs of coming spring, the ground was still mainly covered in snow. Now, after a few days of mild weather and bright sun and brisk winds, the snow remains only along shaded areas. The snowdrops, those delightfully hardy little blossoms, have opened to inaugurate the flowering season.

Parsnips are the first vegetable of spring, which I dig after the ground thaws and dries out a little. The freezes of winter sweeten this delicious root. I had a bountiful crop this year: I made some roast parsnips earlier in the week, and a pot of curried parsnip soup (recipe here) this morning.

 Most of the perennials are still asleep, but some fresh green leaves of Oriental poppy have appeared.

                            

Of course, daffodils are early risers, and they are coming along well, even showing buds.

Tulips have also come to life, with early leaves bright red. I've tried to research why this happens, and it may be protective. There is a double file of tulip leaves in my vegetable garden, where I plant them for cutting, and for protection since deer love them. Now that they're up, I have to put up the garden's electric fence.

Alongside the tulips, the garlic has also emerged.

Another allium in the vegetable garden, Egyptian onions, will soon be adding flavor to dishes. These very early greens have a sprightly onion flavor.

Last year I planted some scallions, and they too are emerging, though I imagine it'll take longer for them to mature than the greens of Egyptian onions.

Sorrel is another plant with young leaves that have a red coloration. They look beautiful at this young stage of life, but will soon be green, and large enough to pick for meals. I love its lemony taste.

Lastly, the sexy red knobs of rhubarb are coming up. The plant is marvelous at all its stages: knobby, young frilly leafy, enormously grand. It will be the first fruit of spring in June (though not actually a fruit since it doesn't have seeds), a treat in pies and made into jam. It's been so thrilling to feel spring actually begin––to hear all the birds that have now arrived, to sit outdoors with the sun on my face, to do yard work of various kinds––that I've had a hard time staying indoors to do artwork. Oh well, it's okay to enjoy this fleeting feeling and take some time off from the studio...until it rains, which it's supposed to do tomorrow.

At Hancock Shaker Village: Women's Work

Angelica, a medicinal herb

In Shaker communities, men and women lived and worked separately: their retiring rooms were on opposite sides of the Dwelling house, they worshipped on east and west sides of the Meetinghouse. There was separation, but no hierarchy: a woman, Mother Ann Lee, was the founder of the sect; women and men shared equally in the governance of the communities. As pointed out in one of the explanatory texts at the Hancock Shaker Village:

The Shakers believed in dividing labor into "women's work" and "men's work", particularly because they wanted to keep men and women separate. Women and men had their own workshops. However, the duties of Shaker men and women were more similar than men and women in "the world" because Shaker women ran businesses for communal family income and Shaker men shared equally in child care by raising the boys.

An important Shaker business was the selling of medicinal herbs and remedies. I assume that men did the gardening, since they did the farming, but women may have helped in the gathering and packaging. In an interesting article on Shaker herbs at Mother Earth Living, which quotes Elisha Myrick, a Shaker brother at Harvard, MA, who wrote in his journal of 1850: "Seven sisters and 4 brethren go out beyond the depot to pick wintergreen, get a small quantity."

In addition to small herb gardens at the Hancock Shaker Village, there was a garden with dye plants such as Madder and Woad and Coreopsis tinctoria.

These natural dyes were used to color spun wool that the Sisters then wove into cloth, an important aspect of the Sister's work. On the left is wool dyed with Madder, on the right with Queen Anne's Lace.

Flax was grown for linen. The spiky implements you see above are hatchels which are used to comb the flax fibers before they are spun. Here is a link to a video with shows the process of breaking down the flax stems and preparing the fiber for weaving.

This is a photo of one part of the weave loft, with a small loom for weaving tape for chair seats and a large loom made in 1934 by Brother Henry DeWitt of the Mount Lebanon community. From the museum's description:

The Shakers were adamant about manufacturing their own cloth from the moment their communities were gathered into order. Additionally, they sold textiles and associated goods to the outside World. Members of the New Lebanon, NY, community were in business as clothiers serving both their community and non-Shakers. Over time the Shakers came to rely on outsiders for their cloth. Brother Isaac Newton Youngs, writing in 1856, stated that "in early times of the Chh....there was very little cloth purchased from the world. The making of our own cloth has greatly diminished, owing greatly to the increase of factories, in the world, which enables us to purchase cloth cheaper than we can make it among ourselves, tho' the cloth generally is not so durable as home made."

Although they were self sufficient, as shown in the above quote, the Shakers did not shy from modern conveniences, installing electricity when it became available, buying an automobile and building a garage for it. 

The making and sale of woolen cloaks was a business of the Sisters at Hancock from the 1880s until the 1940s. They were very popular out in the World: President Grover Cleveland's wife wore a Shaker cloak to his inauguration in 1892.

Then there was the mundane task of the laundry, which was the job of women. The laundry was housed in the same building as the men's machine shop, and both were powered with water turbines, the water coming from a reservoir. The Sisters rotated through the various chores each month, so no one was permanently assigned to one job.

This is the ironing room, with stoves for heating the irons, and long tables for the work.

The dairy was another important aspect of Sister's work. They made butter and cheese and their products were known for quality throughout the Berkshire region.

Then there was the cooking: women prepared food for the community of one hundred people. The stone floors and oven designs were up to date and efficient.

Enormous kettles could prepare large amounts of food. When I was visiting the museum, a volunteer was baking a cake from a Shaker recipe. I noticed that none of the ovens were heated for baking, so I asked her where the cake would be cooked: "oh, we have a modern oven" she replied. When the community became smaller and moved into the 20th century, the Sisters had more modern appliances. We don't see them at the museum because it is set up as life in the community would have been in the mid 19th century. I suppose that this is one of the questions in historic preservation: which era of an ongoing, living community do you choose to represent?

The food cooked in the cellar of the Dwelling house was carried up to the dining room by the use of dumb waiters, or "sliding cupboards", as an Elder described them in 1832.

Lastly, I feel right at home looking at the canning jars and the shelves laden with preserved food. This is a technique that hasn't changed: place hot food in jars, seal, boil in a water bath, then cool. The only change is that paraffin wax was used to seal the jars and now we have self-sealing lids as a modern convenience. As with dyeing wool, where I now work with simple acid dyes instead of the more complex natural ones, the process is similar, creating a link to time gone by; the lives lived by Shaker women were so different from ours, but there are places where our understanding can bridge the years and the differences.



Other posts on the Shaker Village:
The Shakers: A Community of Faith and Work
At Hancock Shaker Village: Men's Work

The Newly Burgeoning Garden

I love the changes in the seasons, and each has its beauty, but there's nothing like the thrill of early spring, when plants finally begin to emerge, in bud or leaf or shoot. One of the most wonderful is the rhubarb, whose shiny red knobs open to display a crowded leaf, which then spreads slowly, unfolding its complex wrinkles. It is both comic and slightly obscene.

The first herbs of spring are the perennial Egyptian, or Walking, Onions. Their fresh tangy greens are welcome in soups and salads before anything else in the vegetable garden is ready for eating.

They are even earlier than the chives, which as you can see, are still very small, just beginning their growth. 

The sorrel too has only small young leaves, some still tinted their youthful red.

Garlic shoots have emerged under their winter blanket of straw, now pushed aside as a mulch for spring and summer growth.

 Each fall I plant a row of tulips in the vegetable garden, so I have have cut tulips in the house. Their leaves are above ground but they haven't begun to bud yet. I love the little red points at the ends of the leaves.

Once the tulips have emerged, I put up the electric fence so the neighborhood deer don't make a meal of them. The little packet of aluminum foil is spread with peanut butter inside it, a strongly scented treat for any animal; if they come for a nibble, they'll get a shock and won't return. 

On Monday I planted some lettuce and arugula in a coldframe, and today I planted the cold-loving crops of peas, above, and spinach. A little of the arugula has already germinated....soon fresh salads! Next up for planting will be early carrots and beets. After many years, I still find vegetable gardening remarkably rewarding.

To end with a flower: the first daffodil to bloom, an early variety, "February Gold". None of the bulbs in my border are blooming yet, so the pond water may have a warming effect on this group. But in a few days their will be lots of yellow as more daffodils, and the forsythia, begin to bloom, sunshine brought to earth.