CREATURES LARGE AND SMALL
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Identity Crisis?
For the past couple of months, I’m not so sure that my duck knows that she’s a duck. She and another female duck once shared a drake, and they all lived together in their own “duckingham palace.”
Sometime after the other female and the drake were taken by a predator, probably a fox or coyote, I thought our remaining female might enjoy some company at night. So I coaxed her to take up nightly residence with our three chickens -- a rooster and two hens -- who have their own house (“chickingham palace?,” actually more palatial than duckingham palace).
Not only…
GOURMET COMPOST WORKSHOP/WEBINAR
WEBINAR: GOURMET COMPOST FOR YOUR PLANTS
Learn the why and the how of making a compost that grows healthy and nutritious plants, everything from designing an enclosure to what to add (and what not to add) to what can go wrong (and how to right it). Don't bother stuffing old tomato stalks, grass clippings, and leaves into plastic bags; just compost them! The same goes for kitchen waste. Learn what free materials are available for composting.
Also covered will be the best ways to use your "gourmet compost." Good compost is fundamental to good gardening; it put the "organic" into organic gardening,…
COMPOST, KALE, A FLOWER, AND AN ODD ONION
Ins and Outs of Compost
Mostly, what I’m doing in the garden these days is making or spreading compost. Lots of good stuff — old vegetable plants, hay, weeds, rotted fruits — is available to feed my compost “pets.” And compost spread now has the ground ready for planting in spring.
Do you have any questions about composting? Want to know how to make best use of compost? Interested in details about how to make gourmet compost? This is a reminder that on Wednesday, September 23, 2020 from 7-8:30pm EST, I’ll be hosting a webinar about composting. For more information and registration,…
I’M NO MICHELANGELO, BUT . . .
Lawn Nouveau
I’m taking up sculpture. Not in bronze, Carrara marble, or granite, but with plants.
My easiest sculpture is one I’ve been doing for years. I can’t really say “working on for years” because every year it vanishes, to be started anew each spring. It’s “lawn nouveau,” as I call it in my book, The Pruning Book, and then go on to describe the technique as “two tiers of grassy growth . . . the low grass is just like any other lawn, and kept that way with a lawnmower. The taller portions are mowed infrequently – one to three times a year, depending on the desired look…
COMPOSTING WORKSHOP/WEBINAR
COMPOSTING WORKSHOP/WEBINAR
Presentation by Lee Reich (MS, PhD, researcher in soil and plants for the USDA and Cornell University, decades-long composter, and farmdener*):
Learn the why and the how of making a compost that grows healthy and nutritious plants, everything from designing an enclosure to what to add (and what not to add) to what can go wrong (and how to right it). Don’t bother stuffing old tomato stalks, grass clippings, and leaves into plastic bags; just compost them! The same goes for kitchen waste. Learn what free materials are available for composting. "Bring" your questions…
DAILY GRAPES
As The World Turns...
Over the years, gardening has made me more and more aware of our planet’s annual track around the sun. How quaint. It gives me a certain kinship with the peasants at work in the 15th century painting for the month of September of Les Très Riches Heures de Duc de Berry.
As with those peasants, September is a month when I have abundant fruits for harvest. Like the peasants, I’m harvesting grapes; it’s been a bumper year. Unlike the peasants, my grapes are destined for fresh eating rather than being sullied by fermentation into wine. (Okay, okay, just kidding,…
UPCOMING COMPOSTING WEBINAR/WORKSHOP
Presentation by Lee Reich (MS, PhD, researcher in soil and plants for the USDA and Cornell University, decade-long composter, and farmdener*):
Learn the why and the how of making a compost that grows healthy and nutritious plants, everything from designing an enclosure to what to add (and what not to add) to what can go wrong (and how to right it). Don’t bother stuffing old tomato stalks, grass clippings, and leaves into plastic bags; just compost them! The same goes for kitchen waste. Learn what free materials are available for composting. "Bring" your questions about this important topic.
Also…
SICKNESS, MY CORN NOT ME
An Interesting Puzzle Unfolds
Sudoko and Scrabble and other games and puzzles offer endless hours of entertainment and stimulation. Or so I hear. I get those challenges and rewards from my garden. Case in point is a bed of sweet corn which has been stunted all season long and then last week, almost suddenly, all the plants’ leaves turn sickly as well. Needless to say, ears are developing poorly or not at all. Why, I asked?
I have to backtrack. Each year I plant 4 beds of corn, each about 20 feet long, which supplies plenty of ears for fresh eating and freezing. I spread out the harvest season…
READY FOR 2021
Why Now?
For the past week or so I’ve been getting parts of the garden ready for next year. Too soon, you say? No, says I.
A bed of corn and a bed of bush beans are finished for the season. Not that that’s the end of either vegetable. I planted four beds of corn, each two weeks after the previous, and the two remaining beds will be providing ears of fresh Golden Bantam — a hundred year old variety with rich, corny flavor — well into September.
The bed of bush beans will be superseded by a bed of pole beans, planted at the same time. Bush beans start bearing early but peter out…
