UPCOMING PRESENTATIONS
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I will be offering lectures and workshops at a number of venues across the country in the upcoming year. If interested, go to the "Lecture" page of this website for a current listing, which will be updated as needed.
IN WITH ENDIVE, OUT WITH ASPARAGUS
First Harvest At Season's End
Finally, I’m harvesting endive from the garden, just as planned when I settled seeds into mini-furrows in a seed flat back in July. After leaves unfolded on the seedlings, I gently lifted them up and out of their seed flat, helping them up with a spatula slid beneath their roots, and into individual cells in a GrowEase Seed Starter.
Also as planned, a bed in the vegetable garden was freed up from harvested sweet corn in early September. After removing corn stalks and slathering an inch of compost on top of the bed, the endive plants were snuggled in, 2 rows down…
ALL-AMERICAN THANKSGIVING
Danger of Squashing
Thanksgiving is a most appropriate time to put together a truly American meal, one made up of native plants, many of which are easily grown, that might have shown up on the original Thanksgiving table about 400 years ago.
(The date of that first feast was 1623 but the date for celebrating Thanksgiving in all states— on the final Thursday in November — was not fixed until 1863, with a presidential proclamation. Lincoln hoped that a unified date throughout the country would help unify the nation during the divisive days of the Civil War. Not so. Confederate States refused…
SENSORY DELIGHTS, NOW AND FUTURE
A Scented Wave
For the past couple of weeks, every time I walk upstairs to my home office, a sweet aroma hits me like a wave a few steps before I reach the top stair. This wave pulls me forward, a room and a half away, to the Meyer lemon plant sitting in my office’s sunny, south-facing window.
The wave began when only a single Meyer lemon flower had opened. Now, the plant, only a foot and a half high, is decked out with more than 20 flowers.
This “tree” started life as a cutting I took from a friend’s old tree that anyway needed some pruning. With their bottom…
UBER ORGANIC & A BEAUTIFUL BLOSSOM
'Tis the Season
’Tis the season to really put the “organic” in organic gardening. “Organic,” as in organic materials, natural compounds composed mostly of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. “Organic,” as in materials that are or were once living, things like compost, leaves, manure, and hay.
I’ve spread compost over almost all my vegetable garden beds. A one inch depth laid atop each bed provides all the nutrients the vegetable plants need for a whole season, in addition to other benefits such as snuffing out weeds, holding moisture, improving aeration, and nurturing…
CHANGING STEMS, CHANGING LEAVES
Korean Giant Pear, In Training
Stepping down the two stones at one end of my bluestone wall, a friend looked up and asked, “Are you torturing or training this tree?” He was referring to the tree on one side of the the stairway, one long stem of which was arching overhead, held in that position with a string tied to a stone on the opposite side of the stairway.
“Training,” I replied. The stem was being coaxed into this seemingly submissive position both for form and function. Not to inflict pain.
But first, something about this tree. It is an Asian pear, the variety…
THE GOOD AND THE BAD OF A DRY AUTUMN
Just Like Korea?
The bone dry weather blanketing the Hudson Valley and much of northeastern U.S. does have its saving graces. For one thing, it forces perennial plants to shut down and direct their energies to toughening up for cold weather lurking over the horizon. That’s a good thing — unless, of course, the soil gets dry enough to kill a plant. Deciduous plants have the option, before that happens, to drop their leaves, drastically reducing their water loss and needs.
This dry autumn weather is not unlike that in many parts of Korea. So what? When it comes to cold-hardiness,…
NUTTY TIMES AND COLD WEATHER
Nuts Galore
What a nutty time of year, literally! Chestnuts and black walnuts, two of my favorite nuts, were raining down, figuratively, just before the middle of the month.
Black walnuts are free for the taking. Wild trees are everywhere around here, and keep increasing because of overlooked nuts buried by squirrels. The nuts are so abundant this year, and most years, that squirrels and humans can have their fill. (Not so with my filbert nuts; squirrels will strip those bushes clean.)
Black walnuts have a strong flavor. Like dark beer, fresh blackcurrants, and okra, not…
DUCKS AND TOMATOES
My Discerning Ducks
Every morning when I throw open the door to my Duckingham Palace (a name coined by vegetable farmer Elliot Coleman, for his duck house), my four ducks step out, lower their heads as if to reduce air resistance, and race to the persimmon tree. They trace a large circle around the base of the tree, scooping up any fallen persimmons and, still running, gulping them down quickly enough so no other member of the brood snatches it.
The circle is wide because of the low, temporary fence I’ve set up around the tree. Within the fenced area, I gather up most of the…
