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	<title>LivingSmall &#187; garden</title>
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		<title>Signs of Spring</title>
		<link>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/03/01/signs-of-spring-2/</link>
		<comments>http://livingsmallblog.com/2010/03/01/signs-of-spring-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:28:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>cmf</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Making]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gardening]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[garden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[spring]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://livingsmallblog.com/?p=2114</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[These are the chives that overwintered in my mudroom &#8212; they started coming back about two weeks ago, which makes overwintering them totally worthwhile. Although it&#8217;s warm here &#8212; nearly 60 degrees yesterday! And the sun is beginning to shine again, the ground is still frozen, and the garden chives and parsley have only just begun to think about greening up. Yesterday I got the seeds out, and started organizing them again. I usually start tomatoes and peppers around the fifteenth of march, under lights in the basement. But it&#8217;s always an adventure deciding what to plant this year. I have a couple of new projects &#8212; among them, completing the fence around the raised beds to keep the chickens and dogs out of the food crops, and I think I want to try a hoop house this spring. I have a couple of square beds, six feet along each side, and I just need to get the Sweetheart, who builds things for a living, to calculate the materials for me, and I think I&#8217;m going to experiment with starting early in one bed. It would be nice to have some spinach, or early greens &#8212; maybe some Asian greens [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<title>Storm Windows, Already?</title>
		<link>http://livingsmallblog.com/2009/10/09/storm-windows-already/</link>
		<comments>http://livingsmallblog.com/2009/10/09/storm-windows-already/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:02:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>cmf</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Living]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[weather]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chickens]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[garden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[winter]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://livingsmallblog.com/?p=1208</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s supposed to go down into the single digits tonight, so this afternoon, despite the fact that it was only 25 degrees out, and snowy, I got the storm windows out of the shed, and put them up. Every year I forget what a colossal pain in the ass they are. I replaced all the old windows in my house except for those in the living room. They&#8217;re really old double-hung windows, so old that the glass is wavy, and I just fell in love with them. So I kept the clunky old wooden storm windows that go with them, and there I was, on a ladder, cursing and banging at them with a hammer to make them fit. Ugh. But now they&#8217;re up, and the storm-door insert is in my screen door, and the house is feeling all cozy and battened down for winter. It&#8217;s supposed to go back up into the 60s next week, so I buried the garden in straw and covered it in plastic. I&#8217;m hoping to keep at least the hardy greens alive. I decided this summer that what I really love are the spring and fall crops, I&#8217;m not so much for the mid-summer [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
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		<title>Seed Saving: Tomatoes</title>
		<link>http://livingsmallblog.com/2009/09/01/seed-saving-tomatoes/</link>
		<comments>http://livingsmallblog.com/2009/09/01/seed-saving-tomatoes/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:19:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>cmf</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Making]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gardening]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[garden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[seed-saving]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tomatoes]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://livingsmallblog.com/?p=1152</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I was picking tomatoes this morning when it occurred to me that part of my problem with seed saving is managing to remember which tomato is which. I planted nine varieties this year, and many of them are a lot alike &#8212; Perestroika and Grushovka, for example. And I tend to pick in a big basket, where they get mixed up. So tomorrow, I have to pay more attention, because it&#8217;s time to start putting some seed aside for next year. This morning I did Galina, this yellow cherry that I love, and Mountain Princess, which gets mangled by the flea beetle but which is my most dependable early producer (yes, I realize it&#8217;s September, hardly anyone else&#8217;s definition of &#8220;early&#8221; but we had a cold summer this year). Seed starting isn&#8217;t difficult but you have to be willing to put up with some uckiness. The seeds need to ferment, and mold, and get sort of disgusting in order to break down the gel packs in which the tomato encases them. My method is generally to squeeze out the seedy part into a jar, add enough water so they won&#8217;t dry up, and stick them in a corner until they [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<title>Unemployment, Week One</title>
		<link>http://livingsmallblog.com/2009/07/25/unemployment-week-one/</link>
		<comments>http://livingsmallblog.com/2009/07/25/unemployment-week-one/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 25 Jul 2009 17:47:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>cmf</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Living]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[work]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chickens]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[garden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[unemployment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[writing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://livingsmallblog.com/?p=1089</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[So far, so good on the unemployment thing. While it&#8217;s never ideal to be the one voted off the island, I find I don&#8217;t miss the job at all &#8212; I miss the people I worked with, but I don&#8217;t miss being chained to my desk from eight in the morning until six at night; I don&#8217;t miss the anxiety of thinking someone might send you an instant message while you were getting a cup of tea and then decide you&#8217;re slacking; I don&#8217;t miss being treated as an incompetent by my manager, and I&#8217;m beginning to get over the numbness that has been plagueing my right arm and shoulder for the past couple of months. This week, frankly, I&#8217;ve been sleeping a lot. This feels a lot like the summer after I finished my Phd exams, when I slept, read plotty, unchallenging books (that summer it was the Raj Quartet, this summer it&#8217;s the Inspector Montalbano mysteries by Andrea Camelleri), and just went into recovery mode. The first thing I did last week was to re-organize my office. Out went the big desk that was too high, and which I think was a major contributing factor to the arm [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
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		<title>Tomato Seedlings for Sale</title>
		<link>http://livingsmallblog.com/2009/05/20/tomato-seedlings-for-sale/</link>
		<comments>http://livingsmallblog.com/2009/05/20/tomato-seedlings-for-sale/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 20 May 2009 16:59:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>cmf</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Making]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gardening]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[garden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tomatoes]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://livingsmallblog.com/?p=1035</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For all of you in the Livingston area &#8212; I have tomato starts for sale. They were started from seed on March 15, and although you could put them in this weekend (the traditional start time) I&#8217;d suggest using Wall o&#8217;Water&#8217;s if you do. We&#8217;re more than likely to get another snowstorm before it&#8217;s over, and I&#8217;ve had great luck with the Wall o&#8217;Waters in the past. Seedlings are $5 per plant, and all of them are cold-hardy varieties. They&#8217;ve been in the cold frame for about 3 weeks, so they&#8217;re hardened off and although they&#8217;re small right now,  a week or so in a nice warm weather in a wall o&#8217;water and they should sprout right up. (Plus I transplanted them deep for better root growth.) Also, since I started them myself in sterile soil mix, you shouldn&#8217;t have to worry about picking up verticulum wilt. I have the following varieties available: Milano Plum: this is a determinate plant (bushy, not viny) and last year it gave me a bumper crop of heavy plum style tomatoes (about 4-6 inches long). These tomatoes were fabulous for salsa. Mountain Princess: Another determinate plant that sets nice round mid-sized tomatoes (about 3 [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://livingsmallblog.com/2009/05/20/tomato-seedlings-for-sale/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Clean Beds</title>
		<link>http://livingsmallblog.com/2009/03/25/clean-beds/</link>
		<comments>http://livingsmallblog.com/2009/03/25/clean-beds/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:24:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>cmf</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Making]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gardening]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[compost]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[garden]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://livingsmallblog.com/?p=965</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This was my other weekend project &#8212; cleaning out the garden beds and turning over the soil. I used straw mulch last year, which was a great success, but it was a seedy batch, and I wound up with a sturdy winter cover crop of wheat. I experimented a couple of months ago with just turning it over. But like the grass that I also have troubles with, it kept coming back. So this weekend I went through each bed, digging out the wheat, and the carcasses of dead vegetables, and turned over the soil, breaking up lumps along the way. It was good solid physical work. It felt good after a long winter inside. And it&#8217;s the sort of quiet, repetitive task that gives you time to think about the things going on in your life.  The sun was shining, it was warm, I was back in the garden, and all was good. This compost bin was nearly empty when I started pulling wheat sprouts. I think it&#8217;s going to make a nice start to the season &#8212; by default it&#8217;s a pretty good mix of green and brown. We&#8217;ll see &#8212; maybe it&#8217;ll heat up. But it was [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://livingsmallblog.com/2009/03/25/clean-beds/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>5</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Gearing up for spring</title>
		<link>http://livingsmallblog.com/2009/03/03/gearing-up-for-spring/</link>
		<comments>http://livingsmallblog.com/2009/03/03/gearing-up-for-spring/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:10:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>cmf</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Making]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gardening]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[other]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[small town life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[weather]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[garden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[herbs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[seeds]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://livingsmallblog.com/?p=918</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s raining today &#8212; a nice soft spring rain, so I took the poor scraggly herbs from the Winter Herb Garden and put them outside the back door. The rosemary seemed particularly crunchy, but it did it&#8217;s job &#8212; it didn&#8217;t die. The thyme has been remarkably successful &#8212; the last few weeks it&#8217;s been sending out delicious little soft green shoots. I also got my act together last weekend and organized my seeds. As you can see &#8212; my &#8220;system&#8221; is nothing fancy. A couple of cheap bins from Pamida and a paper bag &#8212; but by the end of any garden season they&#8217;re a mess &#8212; some are in the basket with the cheapo tongue depressor/craft sticks that I use for garden markers (easy to write on with a sharpie, and they compost nicely), some wind up on the seed starting shelves, some sleeves were empty, in general, it was all a mess. So I went through and got everything organized by type &#8212; tomatoes, greens, herbs, cucumbers, beans, peppers, etc. Some people organize by planting order, but that&#8217;s too daunting and frankly, feels a little constricting. I know the spinach and broccoli rabe will go in first, [...]]]></description>
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