Forget what you’ve heard: There is no official time of year to plant a garden. Around the date of the last hypothetical frost, people might ask you, “Got your garden in?” If you’ve been feasting on greens from a cold frame all winter, and pulling up sweet carrots, leeks and parsnips, your garden was never …
Can taste buds have spring fever? Most gardeners have caught what Emily Dickinson called “A Little Madness in the Spring.” They’re salivating over catalog descriptions of juicy tomatoes and melons as their windowsills overflow with seedlings. In the old days, this period was called the “hungry gap.” Produce in the root cellar had seen better …
“I ignore what the books say,” my friend huffed. “If I planted my vegetables as far apart as I’m supposed to, they’d be in my neighbor’s yard.” I know what she means. In today’s small gardens the old guidelines don’t apply. If we had to grow cabbage in rows 3 feet apart, few of us …
Some birds are so much a part of farm life that they’re considered co-workers. A fortunate barn has its barn owls, to feast on grain-nibbling mice. Or barn swallows, patrolling for mosquitoes. In spring the kildeer, a type of plover, skitter across newly tilled fields and gardens in search of caterpillars, worms, grasshoppers and bugs. …
The saying goes, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” But why not a cherry? Or a plum? Maybe because in the old days, apples were one of the few homegrown foods you could eat fresh all winter. A cellar full of long-keepers supplied you with a daily, living package of vitamin C right …
One of the most important crops of all time is one you’ve never eaten. It’s the strange, inedible gourd, one of the first plants ever cultivated, and grown worldwide. Inedible it may be, but it’s a kitchen in itself. When mature it develops a hard shell, hollow inside except for the dried inner parts and …
A hero with feet of clay is one with hidden flaws, but if your garden has feet of clay its flaws are obvious. In spring, clay soil remains cold. Puddles refuse to drain. If you squeeze a handful of wet clay soil it will remain in one piece, slippery, sticky and marked with your fingers’ …
In gardens, as in families, there are occasional cases of twins separated at birth. Beets and chard, for example, are intrinsically the same plant. It’s because of differences in their breeding and environments that they occupy separate produce bins or garden rows, as unlike in appearance as carrots and kale. Over the centuries, beet growers …
Two things about winter dampen the spirits: it’s cold, and it’s dark. Fortunately, the two do not precisely go hand-in-hand. During the darkest time, the Winter Solstice on Dec. 21, the Earth still holds some of the sun’s warmth. By the coldest time, in late January, days are noticeably longer. The sun has begun to …
The best gardening practices are the old ones, arrived at by observing processes already at work in nature, and steering them to the gardener’s advantage. They produce the best-tasting crops, with the safest and most economical use of resources. They contribute to the ongoing quality of the soil. They are easiest, because most of the …
It’s funny how some American plants have to leave home to become famous. We have a wealth of native treasures, but it’s the Germans developing all those interesting cultivars of goldenrod and black-eyed Susan, the English planting named varieties of shadblow considered a “weed tree” by folks this side of the pond. Even some of …
Summer’s salad days are over, not to mention fall’s. We’re supposed to welcome root vegetables, stocked away in the cellar, garage or cool pantry, as the season’s great gift. And we do. Nothing like a good beet borscht or garlic potato mash. But for true salad lovers, the show must somehow go on. Our household, …
