Tag: gardening

Happy Independence Day

Happy Independence Day

I grew up celebrating Independence Day with sparklers and barbecue. We lived in Kansas and didn’t really need the guise of a holiday as an excuse to eat barbecue. Fourth of July parades and celebrations seemed to be as ubiquitous as sunshine on a summer Read More

Repurposed Gardening – Seed Starting Containers and Feed Bag Weed Barrier

Repurposed Gardening – Seed Starting Containers and Feed Bag Weed Barrier

I love to find a new purpose for materials that would otherwise be discarded.  I enjoy the challenge of re-imagining the use of items found in our recycling bin or stored in the old hay loft of our barn.  I also much prefer using materials Read More

Sunset Runner Heirloom Bean

Sunset Runner Heirloom Bean

The Sunset Runner Bean is beloved for its ability to bring beauty and a nutritious crop to your garden plot.  The beautiful salmon pink colored blooms are unique to the sunset variety of runner bean.  The vines can grow to be six feet tall and Read More

Stowell’s Evergreen Heirloom Sweet Corn

Stowell’s Evergreen Heirloom Sweet Corn

Biting into a perfectly ripe ear of sweet corn is a summer rite of passage.  There’s just something about the sweet, juicy flavor of sweet corn that instantly transports me back to my childhood.  When I watch my children enjoying an ear of corn grown Read More

Long Island Cheese Heirloom Squash

Long Island Cheese Heirloom Squash

There are few images more synonymous with autumn than that of a ribbed, round pumpkin.  Each fall, the Long Island Cheese Heirloom Squash grown in our garden move inside the house.  They decorate the farmhouse during the season and through our Thanksgiving holiday.  Once fall Read More

Isis Candy Cherry Heirloom Tomato

Isis Candy Cherry Heirloom Tomato

2006 was the first summer we lived at 1840 Farm.  That year, we planted a small garden with a handful of heirloom tomato varieties.  We were new to heirloom gardening and selected the varieties for that year’s garden in a very non-scientific manner.  We simply Read More

Heirloom Tomato Profile: Blondkopfchen Cherry

The Blondkopfchen Heirloom Cherry Tomato originated in Germany.  In German, the word “blondkopfchen” translates to “little blonde girl”.  My daughter was a little blond girl when we first began growing this tomato here at 1840 Farm.  In fact, she was the reason that I first Read More

Heirloom Tomato Profile: German Johnson

The German Johnson Heirloom Tomato is a potato leaf variety of tomato plant with an indeterminate growing habit.  It produces large, round, Beefsteak shaped fruit with bright red skin.  The ripe fruit commonly show bright yellow striping along its shoulders. The German Johnson’s flesh is Read More

1840 Farm Seed Exchange

This week, the day finally arrived and the 1840 Farm Seed Exchange began.  In the next days and weeks, over 80 participants will be exchanging seeds with each other.  Seed packets will literally be traveling from Okinawa, Japan and Caribou, Maine.  I never imagined that Read More

Roasted Heirloom Tomato Tart

There are certain foods that scream summer to me.  At the very top of the list is my beloved heirloom tomato.  I long ago confessed my deep-rooted love of tomatoes, especially the heirloom variety.  During the summer, heirloom tomatoes take center stage in the 1840 Read More

Nearly Wordless Wednesday – August 10, 2011

Heirloom tomato, how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways starting with the first ripe Purple Calabash of 2011.

A Dirty Job for Everyone

Life here at 1840 Farm can get pretty dirty.  Spring has only been here for a few weeks, yet the never-ending trail of garden soil has already started to appear in our mudroom. I’ll spend ten minutes every evening from now until winter trying to Read More