Photo #1 shows the condition of my "soil". It is more rocks than dirt. This is New England. Photo#2 shows a potato plant. I am about to dig the tubers with my hands only. Photo #3 shows some of the potatoes that I have dug. Photo #4 shows me fishing around for the deepest ones. When the soil is this rocky, I build soil on top of the ground. Sixteen inches of leaves were put down. Then 4-6" of horsebarn bedding was put down on top of that. Pumpkins were planted in it the next spring by digging down to the dirt and placing the seeds on the dirt and covering them with an inch of soil. Thus, a crop of pumpkins grew the first summer, while it was decomposing. This spring, I dug down to the ground level and put in a potato and covered it over. These pictures are of me harvesting that crop.

This is the kiwi arbour that we built. The wires are 16" on center. It is two arbours, end to end. Each arbour has nine plants. It measures 24x42'. Each plant is given an area 8'x14'. The plants are set up like a tictactoe board, 3 across, 3 down. The middle plant is a male. The other 8 are females. The plant is grown up in the middle of the 8x14' area to the 6' height of the wires. The permanent structure of the plant is shaped like a capital T, long ways, 14'. New shoots that are saved for fruit grow out from there each year. The old shoots are removed, and new ones replace them each winter, when pruned. We are growing several varieties. The two that have fruited have excellent taste.

These are Jerusalem artichokes, sometimes called sunchokes. They are native to the prairies of North America. These are 9-10' tall and they are invasive. They produce good eating tubers that can be harvested in the fall, all the way through to spring, if the ground is kept from freezing. These were planted here 20 to 30 years ago. We mow around them or till around them to keep them from spreading.

These are called "Matt's Wild Cherry"tomatoes. The color is this intense. At first I thought they didn't taste good. They need to sit on the vine for a week or two, after they turn red. This is the only tomato of the six or seven varieties that I grow that gets no late blight at all. According to the folks at "Totally Tomatoes", a catalog that I order from, there is no variety that does not get late blight. According to Fedco Seeds ,this tomato was found growing wild in Mexico. These tomatoes are approximately the size of the wild tomatoes that I found growing in Hawaii, where I lived a number of years ago.

This is our vegetarian turkey, alias Hubbard squash. Isn't it amazing that the vine can support this heavy squash? It must weigh 10 lbs. or more. I can remember seeing squash vines growing on top of a shed and squash hanging from the vines that were draped over the shed. These squash are good keepers, they will keep til the summer. Their skin is very hard and using a hatchett to open them is common. The squash is at it's sweetest in Feb. and onward.

These are carrots, gone to seed. They are from my test patch. I am rejecting this variety, as they are going to seed in the first year. I want a variety that will produce only a root the first year. Then I can store it and eat it. When I want seed, I will save some roots and plant them back in the ground next spring. Then they will flower, as in the picture, and produce seeds.

This is called redroot, a weed. It is an Amaranth. It has grown up to 8' tall in our garden. This is a seed head. These green flowers produce shiny black seeds, that when cooked burst open and produce a cereal like cream of wheat. This is a different species than the commercial amaranth sold in stores, but it is an edible nourishing food.

This is garlic. It was planted about the first of September, from cloves dug the same day. I had not harvested it on time and all the wrapper leaves were gone. I was told that this early planting, rather than waiting til the end of October, as most growers do, would give me better bulbs. Last year was my first year of growing garlic. I decided to just plant it all, rather than harvesting any for the kitchen, so I can increase the size of my patch. Only hardneck varieties will grow well in my northern climate.

This is butternut squash. The leaves are just about all dead. They squash have that chalky haze that indicates that they have reached maturity. We will soon be picking them. The chalky haze is due to many different species of microorganisms, replacing the ones that assisted the fruit in it's growth.

These are Concord grapes. I got this variety from a friends' backyard 30 years ago. This variety had been growing in his yard for 75 years. This year I harvested half of the grapes from each plant. They were averaging 15 brix. Within 3 days, the remaining half now averaged 19 brix. When God says to leave the fruit that you missed while picking, for the poor, the stranger and the beasts, He is giving them the best quality fruit. I observed a similar incident one winter in a Florida citrus grove. A freeze was coming. Half of the tangerines were picked from each tree, in part of the grove. The remaining fruits on these trees was not freeze damaged, because the brix level was increased in these fruits. In the section where no tangerines were picked off the trees, the fruit was freeze damaged.

This is Green Ice lettuce, a looseleaf semi-heading type. This patch here is from seed that I saved. It is the best tasting and sweetest of the lettuce varieties that we have grown here. It is enjoyable to eat straight, as is, out of the garden. To save seed, leave several plants in the ground and they will shoot up a flower stalk. It will grow 3-4 ' tall and will have hundreds of tiny flowers. When the flowers finish blooming, each flower head will have several seeds in it. Cut the whole stalk and let it dry and save all the flower heads. It will look like a mess of debris, but scatter it on tilled ground for a fall crop of lettuce. That is how I got the patch that you see in the picture.

Here are some of my fall greens. On the top is collards, which need to be thinned. In the middle is Chinese cabbage, variety fun jen, a very delicious tasting green. On the bottom is Red Russian kale. They were put in the first week of August; it is now the second week of September. These greens can take alot of frost. The Red Russian kale has stayed alive after temperatures dropped to 5 below zero, because it was mulched with 8" of leaves, which kept the roots alive.

This is part of a tomato taste-off that was held at our house this past sabbath. In all, there were 33 different heirloom varieties, along with 2 hybrids! The hybrids had the highest brix readings of all. This is an example of breeding a hybrid for the right reason. Winners of the heirloom varieties included Old German and Caspian Pink (which tested out at 8 brix).

This is popcorn. If you can grow corn to maturity in your climate, popcorn can be grown as well, and is an easily prepared grain. There are many, many varieties of popcorn. They come in every color of the rainbow. This variety will pop up like a commercial type popcorn.

These are the northern grown fuzzless kiwis. They are the size of grapes and the whole fruit is eaten, skin and all. The variety is Issai. It is an old variety. Newer ones are larger and of many different flavors. They are ripe when very soft, almost mushy, and are deliciously sweet. One male plant must be planted per several females. It is said that it takes from 3 to 9 years to flower and fruit, but I have grown them so that they flower in one year by mulching them deeply with a mixture of dry and green grasses, mixed with legumes.

Here is a planting of fall greens, put in the first week of August. The front patch is lettuce up to the stakes. To the right is brocolli raab. The middle row has small cabbage and collards. The row on the left is mesclun salad mix. They are big enough now that I can harvest individual leaves. Then the rest of the plant will continue to grow and provide until the weather is too severe.

This is a pawpaw. I transplanted it 2 years ago. It has finally taken off and started to grow, despite the fact that the deer ate the top half of it's leaves this spring. They are usually planted by seed, because they do not transplant well. I am looking forward to it's custardy fruit.

This is butternut squash. The squash itself looks good, the leaves are dying due to potassium deficiency. The stem end of the squash has formed very well. There was no potassium deficiency during it's formation. These leaves are closer to the roots and the potassium has been sucked out of the leaves and moved to the end of the vine. The last 7 feet is flourishing. I have plenty of squash, more than I can use. It will keep til March, sometimes April.

These are Niagara grapes, the type used for making white grape juice. Notice the shriveled black grapes. This is black rot. The last 2 years I lost almost all of my grapes to this fungus disease. The unaffected grapes can be eaten, but the clump looks bad. If I can increase the brix level of the young green grapes and leaves to 5% or above, I am told that black rot will not flourish. I recently met a Sardinian wine grape grower. He told me to extend the arms on the trellis to 3 and a half feet, instead of 2 feet. This will allow room to pull the leaves off above the grape clusters, yet room enough to run the vines back and forth along the wire on the ends. Exposing the grape clusters to sunlight causes the brix level to increase, making sweeter, more nutrious grapes with hopefully, more black rot resistance. These grapes are testing 17-20 brix. They taste sweet and good and I am soon going to make grape juice.

This is a seed head of a lettuce plant that is ready to harvest. It grew up in this cold frame this spring. If I let it self scatter, I will have another crop of lettuce in this cold frame in late fall and early spring, if the winter is not too severe. Or to gather the seed, I break off the head and stick it in a paper bag and label the variety. This variety is Green Ice, a frilly semi heading type. The seed will not cross pollinate if there are no other lettuce varieties within 25 feet.

These are blueberry plants that I put in this spring. The plant on the bottom is healthy. The one on the top has interveinal chlorosis, which shows iron deficiency. Note the yellow between the green veins, on the new shoot. The soil here has come from basalt rock. This rock is 17% iron! But it doesn't get into my plants, because the ground is not acid enough. I put aluminum sulfate on the ground to make it more acid. Some of the plants have already greened up. I expect this one will, as well.

These are Egyptian onions. They are used for onion greens, not for bulbs. This patch was planted last summer. It gave me onion greens in the fall and spring. They produce bulblets in late spring and then dry up. This is the way that they multiply. I gathered the bulblets and spread them around, to expand the size of the patch. They just began growing this last week, after a good rain.