OTHER CREATURES ALSO LOVE APPLES
With more forethought, Adam might not have bitten the apple and I might not have planted apple trees. For my part, I hadn’t realized that apple trees had so many pest problems.
But Adam did bite the apple, and I did plant apple trees and we each have dealt with the consequences. I could have resorted to the season-long drench of pesticides recommended to kill every pest. Instead, I decided to research potential pest problems, then see how little, if any, pesticide I could use and still harvest an acceptable crop of high quality apples.
Home grown Esopus Spitzenberg apple
WOULD THE REAL (BEST) OREGANO PLEASE STAND UP
What’s in a Name
Ripe tomatoes bring to mind tomato sauce; tomato sauce brings to mind oregano. You would think that all that you needed to do to get oregano would be to mosey on down to the local seed store to pick up a plant or a packet of seeds, or send away to your favorite mail order nursery, right? Wrong!
Pizza
Oregano is, botanically, Origanum vulgare, a hardy perennial that sometimes parades under the names perennial marjoram, wild marjoram, or pot marjoram. As you can see, confusion is already creeping in. Marjoram is also the name of another herb. (Pronounce “marjoram,” with the accent on the first syllable, so the word sounds much like “margarine.”) Read more
EVERYONE LOVES GARLIC BUT ME
Influence of Planting Date on Head Size
I no longer grow “stinking roses” but when I did, it was the one vegetable that I was most likely to forget to plant each year. After all, although garlic, “the stinking rose,” is planted at the end of the season along with lettuce, endive, and radish, it’s not harvested along with these other vegetables, which all ripen or are at their best in the cool moistness of autumn. No, garlic ripens almost a year after planting, in the heat of summer. Nonetheless, now is a good time to plant garlic — and here’s a reminder for you.
Separating garlic cloves in head
True, many gardeners plant garlic in early spring and reap decent crops. And those of you who are more savvy — or who have done some reading on the subject — plant in late fall, which is when gardening books and magazine articles direct you to plant.
But let’s examine the logic of planting garlic in spring versus late fall versus late summer. Read more
