COME TOUR MY FARMDEN

/
7 Comments
Read more

Gardening Workshop

/
0 Comments
Read more

Blueberries & Cicadas, Mmmmm

/
2 Comments
“It takes a patient man to net an acre of blueberries.” The New England accent added weight to the declaration, as did the gentleman’s 80-something year old frame standing ramrod-straight and adorned with checkered jacket, a cap, and chinstrap beard. That was 30 years ago, and I was standing in the New Hampshire garden of Elwyn Meader, looking across the field at his acre of blueberries. Elwyn was a plant breeder extraordinaire, then retired, who had developed new varieties of such plants as persimmons, chestnuts, lilacs, cucumbers, soybeans, watermelons, and everbearing strawberries. The…
Read more

Garden Extraavaganza

/
0 Comments
A gardening extravaganza is soon to take place, on May 11th, at the garden of Margaret Roach in Copake Falls, NY. (Margaret is a great gardener and was editor of Martha Stewart Living magazine.) It is a Garden Conservancy Open Day at her garden, I’ll be doing a presentation on “Fruit Growing Simplified” as well as a hands-on “Grafting Workshop,” and Broken Arrow Nursery will be selling plants. For more information and registrations for any of these events, see http://awaytogarden.com/2013-open-days-in-my-garden-and-nationwide.
Read more

Pruning, Not Too Late

/
7 Comments
Nicole, from near Madison, WI won the grow GROW FRUIT NATURALLY book giveaway. Congratulations Nicole! Contact me through my website, www.leereich.com with your mailiing address so I can get the book out to you.-------------------------------Time is running out to finish pruning my kiwi and grape vines, apple, pear, cornelian cherry, filbert, and chestnut trees, rose, gooseberry, currant, blueberry, raspberry, blackberry, yew, and fothergilla bushes . . . now that I list most of them, it doesn’t really seem like too, too much still to prune. Some people worry that it’s too late to prune. Nope.…
Read more
/
2 Comments
Read more
/
2 Comments
Write in your heirloom favorites soon . . . the giveaway (see below) will end Wednesday, March 27th at 1 pm.
Read more

A Jump on Spring

/
9 Comments
I got a jump on spring yesterday and started pruning hardy kiwifruit vines. The fruit is a kissing cousin of fuzzy, market kiwis, except, with smooth skins and small size, they can be popped whole in your mouth like grapes. Hardy kiwis are also cold-hardy, which their cousins are not. The vines need yearly pruning to let light and air in among the stems for productivity and plant health, to keep fruiting stems within easy reach, and to stimulate new stem growth each year off which grow fruiting shoots the following year. My plants are trained on 5 wires strung between T-trellises, one wire down…
Read more

PRUNING, I CAN’T RESIST

/
4 Comments
Now is generally not a good time for pruning outdoor plants. Too bad. With the lawn nicely trimmed and vegetable and flower beds tidied up, it’s all the more difficult to resist the urge to lop back at least some misplaced or congested stems on trees, shrubs, and vines.Redosier dogwood, neglected I can’t resist. I figure little or no harm should come as long as I choose carefully what to cut. One reason not to prune now is that any wounding -- and pruning does wound -- stimulates a certain amount of cellular activity near the cut at a time when plants should be hunkering down for winter. Resulting…
Read more