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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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