Entries by Lee Reich
TIME TRAVEL
18th Century, Here I Come! I just returned from time travel one month forward and a couple hundred years backward. Both at the same time! I did this with a trip to Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, where black locust trees were in full bloom, which is about a month ahead of when they will be blooming […]
Fruit Tree Pruning
The Why, and the Easiest Following last week’s missive about pruning fruiting shrubs, I now move on to pruning my fruiting trees. Again, this is “dormant pruning.” Yes, even though the trees’ flower buds are about to burst or have already done so, their response will still, for a while longer, be that to dormant […]
Pruning Gets Hectic
Easiest to Prune Plants Most of the pruning I do is “dormant pruning,” that is, pruning while plants are leafless. A few weeks ago, pruning was a relaxed affair with still-cold temperatures keeping the buds only slowly swelling in anticipation of upcoming growth. Then a few warm days kicked them into gear, making pruning more […]
SOIL MATTERS
Plastic on My Bed?! You’d be surprised if you looked out on my vegetable garden today. Black plastic covers three beds. Black plastic which, for years, I’ve railed against for depriving a soil of oxygen, for its ugliness, for — in contrast to organic mulches — its doing nothing to increase soil humus, and for […]
A Podcast and a Workshop
I was recently on Joe Lamp’l’s gardening podcast talking about “uncommon fruit.” They’re worth growing because they’re easy, they’re ornaments, and, with few or no pest problems, they’re easy. And they have excellent and unique flavors. Listen to the podcast here. Also, I’m hosting a pruning workshop at my New Paltz, NY farmden:
The Season Begins
One More Thing? Ha! I have one more important task to do before planting any vegetables this spring, and that is the annual mapping out of the garden, something I generally put off as long as possible. In theory, mapping out my garden should be easy. I “rotate” what I plant in each bed so […]
Increasing My Hyacinthal Holdings
Hyacinth City I’ve admitted this before; here’s more evidence of my addiction — to propagating plants. I currently have a seed flat that’s only 4 by 6 inches in size and is home to about 50 hyacinth plants. Obviously, the plants are small. But small and sturdy. The genesis of all these plants goes back […]
A Farmdener, That’s Me
A New Word is Introduced I’d like to introduce the words farmden and farmdener into the English language. I wonder if there are any other farmdeners out there. What is a farmden? It’s more than a garden, less than a farm. That’s my definition, but it also could be described as a site with more […]
Down in Dixie
Green, Green, Green, and Flowers! After delivering a couple of lectures about gardening in North Carolina, I set off on a very short, whirlwind tour of the southeast, specifically North Carolina and Georgia, and ending with a stay in Charleston. How different from my spot here in New York’s Hudson Valley! For all Charleston’s uniqueness, […]
