I decide to do something about the climate, the microclimate, to prevent fruit plants from blossoming too early. In the cool basement, a potted ‘Pakistan’ mulberry is the first of the subtropicals to act like winter’s over.
Once cured, my New York olive harvest was delectable, spurring me on to prepare the potted tree for a bigger harvest this year. Figs, in basement, still sleep, thankfully so.
I come to appreciate death as a sign of life — in flower longevity. Not so happy with aging in the greenhouse, though; new seedings will, with spring-like weather in there, soon offer fresh, young lettuce, arugula, and other salad greenery.
It Mite be a Pest Mites! Eek! A new pest in town (for me). Actually, the mites, which showed up on some newly rooted Meyer lemon cuttings, don’t really scare me, nothing like the scale insects that regularly turn up on some of my citrus. Chigger mites, scabies mites, dust mites, itch mites — […]
What To Do With This Year’s Harvest? Olive harvest will begin — and end — here this week. Yes, it’s late. After all, the harvest in Italy was in full swing weeks ago, back in autumn. But this is the Hudson Valley, in New York. What do you expect? I’m talking about harvesting real olives, […]
More Plants?!?!?! You’d think, after decades of gardening in the same place, that I by now would have planted every tree, shrub, and vine I could ever want or have space for. Not so! Every year I make up a “Plants to order” list, unfortunately before I hone down just where I’ll sink my […]
Mushrooms Think It’s Autumn Again The 15 oak logs sitting in the shade of my giant Norway spruce tree more than earned their keep last year. Seven of them got inoculated with plugs of shiitake mushroom spawn in the spring of 2013; eight of the were inoculated in the spring of 2014. With little […]
New Seeds Needed? “Ring out the old, ring in the new.” But not all the “old,” when it comes to seeds for this year’s garden. I’m flipping through my plastic shoeboxes (I think that’s what the boxes are meant for) of vegetable and flower seeds, assessing what old seeds are worth keeping and what […]
Cardoon Gets to Stay I haven’t yet given up on cardoon — growing it. But eating it? I just about give up. It’s like eating humongous stalks of stringy celery having just a hint of artichoke flavor. As an ornamental is how cardoon has made itself garden-worthy. Like most perennial plants, it grew only […]
But Do I Want Flowers Now? The season has been “chill,” literally and figuratively, the former predicted by weather experts based on a this year’s strong El Niño. Because of El Niño, the West was pounded with rain; here in the Northeast, except for an occasional night, temperatures have been mild over the past […]
