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The Beast
On Fridays we find out what's been happening in gardens around the region. Send your updates and photos by clicking on the email link at the right. A couple of years ago I bought an old Ariens Rocket...
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Kitchen Garden
On a sunny morning a few weeks ago, Chef Kevin McCarthy of Paul Smith's College shepherded culinary students from his summer session into Gould's Garden, an area adjacent to the soccer field given over...
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Garlic Scapes Are In
Garlic scapes are the stalk and flower bud of the garlic plant. They emerge in June on hard-necked varieties, and start to curl around on themselves if not trimmed off promptly. We're picking garlic...
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Crows, and the Nose
On Fridays we find out what's been happening in gardens around the region. Send your updates and photos by clicking on the email link at right. Laments and curses were uttered this week by several of...
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Old Friends
The backbone of my flower garden, perennials pop up year after year like neighbors returning to camp in the summer months. Reassuring in their predictability, they nonetheless impart an element of...
View ArticleThe Life of a Gardener
When it began to rain this afternoon, I gave up weeding and moved onto the porch to read Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live Off the Land, written by restaurateur-turned-farmer Kurt Timmermeister....
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School's Out, Garden's In
On Fridays we find out what's been happening in gardens around the region. Send your updates and photos by clicking on the email link at right. First, a goof: though Anneke Larrance sent this update...
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Organic?
Beets "How do you grow your crops?" When customers at the farmers' market ask this question they often want to know: (a) if the item on my table is something that I have grown, and (b) whether it is...
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Woodchuck Remedies Sought
I received this message a few days ago from Janet Stein, site manager of the Common Ground Garden in Saranac Lake. Her plight is familiar to an unnumbered contingent, many of whom have failed to...
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Creating a Garden Paradise in the Village of Canton
The garden I'm reporting on today began with three neighbors hatching a plan over coffee more than 40 years ago. It's located right in the heart of the village of Canton, surrounded by houses, but...
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They hop, walk and fly
And now, for the latest episode of pest-of-the-week we bring you…grasshoppers! Wandering through my garden recently I noticed that not only had many of the recent plantings of chard and cabbage been...
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The Sweet (Wild) Side of Summer
With strawberry season winding down in our region, and raspberries just coming on strong, it's a good time to talk about fruit. Setting aside the fact that much of what we harvest from our vegetable...
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Freshmen
Donna and Bob Besaw wanted to grow some of their own food, so they rototilled an area behind their house in Vermontville this spring for their first vegetable garden. Luckily for them, the spot had...
View ArticleReader Asks for Advice About Cucumber Beetles
Canton gardener Judy Bailey called me this week to say that for the first time ever she has cucumber beetles in her garden. She's concerned that the population has increased beyond the point of being...
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More From Readers
Jan Rutella's potager in the village of Potsdam is luxuriantly healthy and productive this year. Jan made her first batch of pickled beets this week. Jan is very happy about the ripe eggplant in her...
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Worm Crawl! A Vermicomposting Disaster
Those who do not have outdoor space for compost bins can turn their kitchen scraps into rich soil for houseplants and container gardens by vermicomposting: using worms in containers to make compost...
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Sharing the harvest
So your 10 foot row of green beans has produced 20 pounds of beans – all at once! And more are on the way. How you can share the bounty? Most food pantries are happy to accept donations of fresh...
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Pickles
Anneke Larrance sends along this timely pickle recipe. Cucumbers like hot humid weather, something we’ve had a lot of lately. I returned home after a 2 week absence to find that my cucumbers were...
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His and hers market garden
Terri Gilchrist, Hannawa Falls, with radishes destined for relish. Terri steps off her back porch to this orderly garden of herbs, flowers, and some vegetables. I first caught sight of Rick and Terri...
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Out of thin air
It's a pretty neat trick: beans, peas, clovers – any of the legume family of plants – pull inert nitrogen out of the air and convert it into ammonia, an essential component of protein and DNA. These...
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Flavorfest 2011
Last Thursday, the Wild Center in Tupper Lake hosted a daylong event celebrating local foods, farmers and chefs. Visitors moved between tasting stations, the farmers' market, a music stage and...
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Save seeds – save our food?
Parsnip seeds Perhaps. Heirloom seeds and domesticated animal varieties may come to the rescue when we need new solutions. So says a beautifully illustrated article in the August issue of National...
View ArticleSummer reiterated
We eat what we can, and what we can't, we can. At least when it comes to tomatoes. The unique, height-of-summer lushness of ripe tomatoes can't quite be duplicated in a glass jar, but it's probably as...
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Sweeeet!
As a home gardener and market grower I have had my share of failures, to say the least. On the other hand, almost every year has brought a crop of delicately sweet melons. The first melon of the...
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Unwanted, underappreciated
"Roses are red, Violets are blue; But they don't get around, Like the dandelions do." Slim Acres In the beginning I patrolled the garden hawkishly, pulling grass and dandelions out by the roots,...
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Flooded, again
The hoophouses, greenhouse and fields are full of ripe and ripening produce, all brown under a thick coat of mud. Snowslip Farm, owned by Lesley and John Trevor of Lake Placid, fell victim to the...
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The thick of it
Wild apples A half-bushel of greenish Macintosh apples cools in my basement, fruits of the first visit of the season to Everett Orchards' farm stand in Plattsburgh. Later on in the fall I'll be...
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Little House
Now the potatoes and carrots, the beets and turnips and cabbages were gathered and stored in the cellar, for freezing nights had come. Onions were made into long ropes, braided together by their tops,...
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Never more than 10 feet away
You've probably heard or read at some point that, "you're never more than 10 feet away from a spider." Sometimes it's 6 feet, sometimes 3. According to the American Museum of Natural History, this...
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MGVs
Amy Ivy teaching volunteer Master Gardeners Every Tuesday this fall, I'll be joining 25 or so other passionate gardeners who are gathering in the Elks Lodge in Keeseville to sharpen gardening skills...
View ArticleYou gotta fight for your right
To garden! An Oak Park, Michigan family decides to landscape their front yard with vegetables in raised beds after a sewer line renovation; a math teacher in Memphis provides a place for a few students...
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Tomatoes 3 ways
Now, in these warm fall days, the true nature of tomato plants is revealed. They are perennial plants in their native Peru and many varieties will continue to grow and produce fruit as long as the...
View ArticleDecomposition constructed
When the instructors asked "How many here have compost piles?" many of the Master Gardener Volunteers halfheartedly raised their hands. I soon realized that most, like me, had heaps of garden debris...
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Closing out the season
Shoving garlic bulbs into the earth is usually the last planting chore of the season, and it coincides with my last blog post of the season. Thanks for reading, and thanks for the thoughts and tips you...
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The dormant season
January wanes, yet we are only a third of the way through winter. The coldest and snowiest periods of the season still lie ahead. The ten-hours-of-daylight milestone that farmers Eliot Coleman and...
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Too high a price
We love tomatoes. In 2009, an average of 20 pounds of fresh supermarket tomatoes was consumed by every man, woman, and child in the US. The plants are grown by the thousands (millions?) in backyards...
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Everything you always wanted to know about carrots
Q: Where can I find information on the most popular carrot-playing musicians available for hire? Oh, and I was quite embarrassed last Carrot Sunday to not remember the correct rhyme to recite while...
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Weekend in Saratoga
The chatting never stops. For people who have chosen to spend their day, on the whole, working by themselves or with a few others the farmers at the NOFA-NY (Northeast Organic Farming Association of...
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Paper gardens
What is it about gardening – besides the aching back and dirty fingernails – that inspires romantic hyperbole? Yeats pined for Lake Innisfree where " peace comes dropping slow." When Thoreau needed...
View ArticleKeep it movin'
Crop rotation is a little like contradancing. You start at one end of the hall (or field) with a group of acquaintances, and end up at the other side surrounded by a completely different set of...
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Roundup Ready or not (seeds, part I)
Open-pollinated or hybrid? Conventional or organic? Heirloom or AAS winner? GMO or non-GMO? If you are a new gardener, the pretty pictures in the seed catalogs may influence your purchase more than...
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George Brewton's Tahitian Sweet Potato Squash (seeds, part II)
Open Pollinated or Hybrid? This... When Columbus sailed back to Spain with news of a New World, his ships' holds may have carried seeds from Cucurbita pepo. This group, which today includes zucchini,...
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The tilling of Tull
Before you pull out the ol' rototiller this spring, pause a moment to reflect on Jethro Tull. No, not that one. This one . Tull revolutionized British agriculture in the 18th century with his...
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Rise up
I have a confession to make. After extolling the virtues of no-till gardening in my last post, I found myself on Tuesday facing an expanse of garden beds almost indistinguishable from the weeds...
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Not too late to start
This spring!! 80° F in Canton on March 21st; 20° on March 27th. It makes predicting the last sub-freezing temperatures of the season more difficult than usual. And missing your guess by a day or two is...
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Who ya gonna call?
When Martha Foley lets us listen in on her Gardening Conversations with horticulturalist Amy Ivy every Monday, some of you might be thinking, "Cornell Cooperative Extension? I thought extension agents...
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Reports from the field
It's your turn. We're cresting another hill on the roller coaster that is this spring's weather, and I know that many of you are out in the garden checking on emerging perennial shoots, or building new...
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All together, now
So, that bowlful of paperwhites blooming on your table in January has inspired you to take up rake and shovel and plant your first garden this spring. But, you don't have a rake, or a shovel, or a...
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Some (don't) like it hot
Up here in the North Country, the hard-to-grow warm season crops get all the oohs and aahs. Can you grow okra? Or artichokes? (If you can, tell me how you do it.) Sweet potatoes are a recent triumph...
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Out standing in her field
That's where you'll be likely to find me this summer. Unfortunately, that means that I need to step away from the blog for a while. Here are a couple of other places to look for good gardening...
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