An Upbeat Closing I don’t know about you all, but I have a great urge to tidy up my garden this time of year. Partly it’s because doing so leaves one less thing to do in spring and partly because, as Charles Dudley Warner wrote in My Summer in the Garden in 1889, “the closing […]
Good in the Lab National Fruit Fly Month — October — has drawn to a close. (That designation is my own, not the federal government’s.) Sure, a few still flit about here and there. But no longer do clouds of them hover over bowls of fruit in my kitchen. In case you haven’t experienced them, […]
To Do List “It ain’t over ’til it’s over” said Yogi Berra, and so says I. Yes, the outdoor gardening season is drawing to a close around here, but I have a checklist (in my head) of things to do before finally closing the figurative and literal garden gate. Trees, shrubs, and woody vines can […]
Fruit Heaven I remember a few years ago of having a most fruitful — and I mean this very literally — experience visiting one of the USDA’s germplasm repositories. “Germplasm repository” doesn’t sound like the kind of place anyone would want to be, but these USDA repositories are, in fact, sunny, colorful places, often redolent […]
https://www.growingagreenerworld.com/episode-1007-gardening-with-the-masters-growing-unusual-fruit-with-lee-reich/?fbclid=IwAR38OASi5mi1JaezpeQ9aImCByAIvnkTFfGSdL0Z7zQIcSkGOBE8OZg_VAA
Some History I don’t know the score over the years, but this year’s victory is mine. The battles have been with scale insects, both armored scales and their cousins, mealybugs (but rarely both in the same year), on my greenhouse fig plants. Those fig plants are planted in the ground in a minimally heated greenhouse, […]
Lurid Ground Lurid, violet flowers have sprouted in the wood chip mulch beneath my row of dwarf pear trees. The flowers are autumn crocuses, the first part of the two-part flowery show that takes place each autumn in that piece of ground. The second part of that flowery show, soon to follow, will be autumn […]
Kale’s Delights I’m lucky enough to have a French window of two big, inward swinging panels out of which I can look over my vegetable garden every morning. Oddly enough, the garden bed that is catching my eyes these mornings for its beauty is the bed of kale plants. No, it’s not a bed of […]
Next Year’s ‘Chokes Ahh, such a leisurely time of year to sow seeds. And for some of them, I don’t care if they don’t sprout for months. You might wonder: Why sow now; why so laid back? I’ll start with artichoke, from whose seeds I did want to see sprouts soon. And I did. The […]
North Vegetable Garden I’m stepping outside this sunny afternoon for a walk around the farmden, pad and pen in hand to evaluate some of this season’s goings on to make notes for next season. Not that the season is anywhere near over yet. I expect to be out and about with pitchfork, harvest basket, and […]
