SWEET POSSIBILITIES
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It's time to prune, and to help you, I’ll be holding a PRUNING WEBINAR on March 29, 7-8:30 EST. Learn the tools of the trade, how plants respond to pruning, details for pruning various plants, and enjoy a fun finale on an easy espalier. There’ll be time for questions also. Cost is $35 and you can register with Paypal or credit card here.
Choice Syrups
I’ve given up on maple syrup this year. The tree I tapped was too small to yield anything significant.
I’d almost given up on river birch syrup. I thought perhaps it was the timing — and, have since learned, that it is! Sap from any…
PEST PLANS
My Sweet, Corn
Spring is here this week, weatherwise, at least. Not to bring back bad memories, but with real spring just around the corner, now is a good time to revisit two or three of last year’s worst pest problems, and plan some sort of counteraction. Not that those memories are really that bad; the interaction of pests, plants, the environment, and my hopefully green thumb is always interesting.
The most serious pest problem last year, most serious because it affected one of my favorite vegetables, was a disease that devastated my later plantings of corn. Looking at the symptoms — …
FEARLESS PRUNING
FEARLESS PRUNING WORKSHOP/WEBINAR
A workshop/webinar to take the mystery out of pruning, so that lilac and rose bushes, apple trees, blueberry shrubs -- all trees and shrubs, in fact -- can be pruned to look their best and be in vibrant health. Fearlessly.
Topics will include:
•Why prune?
•Tools for pruning.
•How plants respond to various kinds and timing of pruning.
•Details for pruning flowering shrubs, trees, evergreens, and fruit plants.
•And a fun finale on creating an easy fruiting espalier. (Don’t know what espalier is? You’ll learn it at the webinar.)
And, of…
HOW ABOUT THOSE OLD SEED PACKETS?
It’s wasted effort to sprinkle dead seeds into furrows either in the garden or seed flats. Seeds are living, albeit dormant, embryonic plants which do not live forever.
When you buy a packet of seeds, you’re assured of their viability. Government standards set the minimum percentage of seeds that must germinate for each type of seed. The packing date and the germination percentage often are stamped on the packet. (The germination percentage must be indicated only if it is below standard.) I write the year on any seed packets on which the date is not stamped.
Your old, dog-eared seed packets…
OUTDOOR MAPLES AND INDOOR KUMQUATS
Sap Season
Get your taps in. It’s syrup weather. Maple syrup. At least here in New York’s Hudson Valley, the sunny days in the 40s with nights in the 20s that are predicted should get the sap flowing.
I say “should” because I haven’t yet checked sap buckets that I hung out on the trees a few weeks ago when winter temperatures suddenly turned warm; it was sap weather back then. That day was hopeful: I drilled holes an inch and a half deep, lightly hammered in the spiles, hung buckets, and attached covers over the buckets. Frigid days and nights that descended soon after that kept…
WEED-LESSNESS FOR 2021
WEEDLESS GARDENING WORKSHOP/WEBINAR
with Lee Reich, PhD, writer, scientist, and farmdener*
Introducing a novel way of caring for the soil, a 4-part system that minimizes weed problems and maintains healthy plants and soil. Learn how to apply this system to establish new plantings as well as to maintain existing plantings. The principles and practices are rooted in the latest agricultural research and are also applicable to sustainable, small farm systems.
This system works because it emulates, rather than fights, Mother Nature who, as C. D. Warner wrote (My Summer in the Garden, 1887),…
THANKS
I’d like to highlight, today, what makes this blog possible.
First of all, it’s you, readers. The positive feedback I get is very rewarding. I’ve had great opportunities — academically and “in the field” — to learn about growing plants and caring for the soil, and have put all this into practice for decades. My hope is that in entertaining you with all this, your tomatoes, apples, zinnias, and all the rest grow healthier and tastier or prettier. I appreciate the positive (even the sometimes negative) comments from you all.
Second, if you’ll look at the bottom right corner of…
TELLING SNOW
I Grow Taller
“Make hay while the sun shines” is fine advice in its season. For winter, how about? “Prune while the snow is high and firm.”
My apple and pear trees are semi-dwarf, presently ranging from seven to eleven feet tall. Even though I have a pole pruner and various long-reach pruning tools, I still carry my three-legged orchard ladder out to the trees with me to work on their upper branches. Sometimes you have to get your eyes and arms and hands right up near where you’re actually cutting.
A few years ago, as I was looking out the window and admiring the foot or of snow…
GET YOUR DUCKS IN ORDER FOR SPRING
WEEDLESS GARDENING WORKSHOP/WEBINAR
Presentation by Lee Reich (MS, PhD, researcher in soil and plants for the USDA and Cornell University, decade-long composter, and farmdener*)
Introducing a novel way of caring for the soil, a 4-part system that minimizes weed problems and maintains healthy plants and soil. Learn how to apply this system to establish new plantings as well as to maintain existing plantings. The principles and practices are rooted in the latest agricultural research and are also applicable to sustainable, small farm systems.
Success comes from emulating rather than fighting…
