A COLDFRAME IS WARM, UNLESS IT’S…
Riddle: When is a coldframe not a coldframe. Answer: When it’s a hotbed. So what is a coldframe, what’s it good for, how can you make one? And what supersedes coldframes. Explore all this in my latest blog post
New Search
If you are not happy with the results below please do another search
GREAT GARDEN = HANDS ON + BOOKS
/1 Comment/in Books/by Lee ReichFishing, Gardening “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” How true, also in gardening. Not to mention the emotional and intellectual gratification, the “companionship with gently growing things . . . [and] exercise which soothes the spirit and […]
GOURMET COMPOST FOR ALL
/12 Comments/in Soil/by Lee ReichYour Pet Needs: As the bumper sticker on my truck reads, “COMPOST HAPPENS.” Even so, problems sometimes arise along the way. Is your main complaint that your compost “happens,” but too slowly. I like to picture my compost pile as a pet, except this pet is made up of many different kinds of macro- and […]
COMPOST, LOOKING AHEAD, LOOKING BACK
/4 Comments/in Soil/by Lee ReichSpring Readiness I’m frantically getting ready for spring. A large portion of that readying means making compost. Compost piles assembled now, while temperatures are still relatively warm, have plenty of time to heat up right to their edges, quickly cooking and killing most resident weed seeds, pests, and diseases. I like to think of […]
GARDENING “HANDWORK”
/6 Comments/in Soil/by Lee ReichTo Haul or Not to Haul Hauling manure hardly seems to make sense these days, considering that lugging 500 pounds of horse manure gives plants about the same amount of food as a 50 pound bag of 10-10-10. And the latter for only about ten bucks! But whereas 10-10-10 supplies only food (and only three […]
CREATURES LARGE AND SMALL
/18 Comments/in Fruit, Pests/by Lee ReichIdentity 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 […]
GOURMET COMPOST WORKSHOP/WEBINAR
/2 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee ReichWEBINAR: 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, […]
COMPOST, KALE, A FLOWER, AND AN ODD ONION
/8 Comments/in Flowers, Vegetables/by Lee ReichIns 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 […]
I’M NO MICHELANGELO, BUT . . .
/5 Comments/in Design, Pruning/by Lee ReichLawn 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, […]
OF COMPOST, MICROWAVES, AND BLUEBERRIES
/15 Comments/in Fruit, Soil/by Lee ReichManure Unnecessary Manure or not, it’s compost time. I like to make enough compost through summer so that it can get cooking before autumn’s cold weather sets in. Come spring, I give the pile one turn and by the midsummer the black gold is ready to slather onto vegetable beds or beneath choice trees and […]
