Variable Climate, Consistent Garden It’s no secret that weird weather is the norm these days, case in point: one of the strongest “El Niño” patterns in decades is developing before our eyes. This phenomenon will likely have an effect on weather conditions for several months, particularly late fall through winter, with a trend of warm,…
Green Manure Cover Crop Cover cropping is a well known practice, and the current groundswell of interest in backyard organic gardening has everyone doing it. It is pretty common to find field peas, oats, buckwheat and other traditional agricultural cover crops in garden centers, packed in small packets to sow in plots as small as fifty…
Soil Gardeners spend lots of time digging, weeding, fertilizing, transplanting and working at a host of other chores. Sometimes it’s helpful to take a moment to think about what we’re doing. After all, what are we trying to accomplish by gardening in the first place? We all have our personal reasons for getting a little…
Goodbye Summer or Hello Fall? I can never decide whether to think of Labor Day weekend as Summer’s grand finale or Autumn’s grand opening. Maybe it’s just a reminder of constant movement; which is actually fitting since the holiday was created to celebrate the achievements of American workers, who have been world renown for busy-ness,…
Fall Is The Best I used to think that planting time was the day after you bought your stuff that needed to be planted. I went to the nursery whenever the mood struck and planted it in the next day or so, and really that worked just fine. Our mild climate means that we really…