Maggie's FarmWe are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for. |
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Sunday, March 21. 2021Time to fertilize shrubs and young trees
I fertilized our garden beds last week. It will take some rain to sink it in. A good time to put down crabgrass preventer, and fert your nice lawns too. I spread Preen at the same time in the flower and shrub borders. It works, sort-of.
Saturday, October 31. 2020Garden fenceSquirrels, chipmunks, deer, woodchucks eat a lot of my stuff. I don't even bother with things the birds eat, like berries. Growing vegetables just isn't all that important to me. I always get my rhubarb and my figs. This guy is serious:
Friday, September 25. 2020Too late: My FigsMy Brown Turkey Fig shrub has been highly productive this year, and has grown about 6', but I think none of the fruit will ripen before the first frost. They usually ripen in August, and it's been a hot summer too. Too late now for these fruits to ripen. In New England, these plants tend to die back to the roots in winter. However, they revive and grow like weeds. Do any of our readers grow figs? Saturday, August 1. 2020Fractal BroccoliA reader is growing this interesting broccoli in the garden this year: ROMANESCO ITALIA BROCCOLI I guess it's more of a cauliflower than a broccoli, but whatever. Probably more interesting to look at than to eat - unless dressed with lots of garlic and oil. My view is that even dog kibbles are good with enough oil and garlic. Monday, June 22. 2020Nice lawnsI have posted often about grass lawns in the past. Meadows are far better than lawns, but pretty lawns are a suburban real estate necessity. They are completely artificial. They rely on irrigation, fertilizer, weed and bug chemicals. etc. Like hydroponic gardening. I happen to feel that lawns are perfect parts of English-style gardens. Lawn is one part of an appealing garden. How can one minimize the artifice and fragility of the unnatural thing which is a mowed lawn (especially in the northern half of the US)? - Irrigation. It fools the grasses into thinking it's Spring. - Topdressing. It's what woodland grasses get naturally from fallen leaves and detritus. - Aeration. It's what grasses get naturally from worms, moles, and digging animals.
Friday, April 3. 2020Did you ever grow cardoons (cardoni)?I never have, but a friend is sending me some seeds to try. Eating cardoons. Like finocchio (fennel), it grows wild in the Med region.
Tuesday, March 31. 2020Something else which is lovelyOrchids are cool, sexy. You can't go there now, but here's a tour of this year's NYBG's orchid show.
Saturday, March 14. 2020Indoor seed timeUp in Yankeeland you have to start more things indoors because of the short growing season. Just those 2 weeks of germination make food-gardening (aka hobby-gardening) more difficult. I only bother indoor starting with things I can't buy already grown at Home Depot. This year: Mouse Melons, Ground Cherries, Cucozzi, Heritage Cukes. Other seeds, like pumpkin, beans, root things, I just put in the dirt in May and hope for the best. "The best" never happens. Yeah, we love those Mouse Melons in salads. Spicy and crunchy, and they grow like weeds on a fence or trellis.
Wednesday, March 11. 2020Feeding the roots in YankeelandMarch is the time to use that general-purpose fertilizer on your flowering shrubs, fruit trees, etc. if you have snow-free ground. As we remind ourselves most years, the roots get working long before buds appear. Gotta let any March snow or rain to work the fertilizer deep to the roots. It works. Surface fertilizer for those things takes quite a while, maybe weeks, to soak down to where it's needed. More shrubbery: Tuesday, March 3. 2020An 80 year-old BonsaiMrs. BD emailed me this cool pic from the Phila. Flower Show today:
Wednesday, January 29. 2020Winter pruning of Wisteria - now or neverDoing mine now. Last chance, and easy to do if your August pruning was done correctly. I am not as careful as this guy. If I were that careful, I would have a Wisteria jungle
Sunday, January 5. 2020Groundcherries
One of my daughters likes to give me cool seeds for Christmas. Connecticut Field Pumpkins, Heritage Cukes, etc. Of course, the hassle is starting them indoors without a greenhouse. (I need one. My friend's wife had a nice one with heat, light, etc and she kept tropical lizards in it too, to eat bugs and spiders. Problem was, the small ones tended to escape outside in the summer when the vents opened so they had a good adventure of freedom until the first frost.) We told you about Mouse Melons (aka Mexican Gherkins) in a past post. They are great, grow like weeds, perfect in salads or just to munch in the garden. It seems the fun trial for this year will be Ground Cherries. We'll see. I guess they are in the nighshade family.
Monday, September 2. 2019Vitex agnus-castusIt is sort-of like Butterfly Bush, but in the northeast it lives mostly as a large perennial which often needs to re-emerge from the roots after a chilly winter, growing to 3'. Further south, it can become a large shrub/small tree. It seems to be a very popular border plant on Cape Cod. It is a Mediterranean plant. I like it, and so do bees and butterflies. Thursday, July 18. 2019Fun plant du Jour: Poison IvyPoison Ivy, Toxicodendron radicans, is a vine, sometimes a standing plant, which is native to and common in the entire eastern US. It's a good plant for wildlife, both leaves and berries. It likes edges, roadsides, beaches, barren areas in sun. Only humans have reactions to Poison Ivy. People vary in their reactions to the urushriol in its sap (and leaves). Some have no reaction, some severe. I am prone to an itchy rash from contact, but Mrs. BD can develop several days of dramatic migrating hives just from patting a dog who has passed through some. Benadryl helps. Besides patting dogs, a serious danger in Poison Ivy is inhaling smoke from burning it when burning brush. Not good to burn it. Little-known fact: Poison Ivy is a close relative to the mango. Some people react to mango skin just as they do to Poison Ivy. Me loves Mangos, no problem. You're gonna need an ocean of Calomine Lotion:
Saturday, July 6. 2019Wild Poppies
We attended a garden party last weekend. The hostess is a serious gardener. She had so many poppies in bloom and post-bloom that I told her that I should perhaps call the cops. Poppies are best considered annuals, but they will self-sow if left alone. In parts of Europe, red poppies are considered roadside weeds. In our wild (no horses) meadow I strewed (?) poppy seeds around many years ago, and many of them took. Now the meadow in June has some naturalized poppies amongst the wildflowers and hay. Varieties of garden poppies Tuesday, June 25. 20192 mulchesMrs. Salt Water New England's garden. Not sure what the plants are. Deep leaf mulch from last fall, and the black stuff. Very neat. Everything she does is neat and stylish. So are her boats.
Thursday, June 20. 2019Life in America: Nice rural garden in Connecticut, and thoughts about gardening
I'm talking about the area from Great Barrington MA down through Salisbury CT, Kent CT, Litchfield, Washington, Warren, Goshen, Woodbury, Southbury, etc. Perfect semi-rural villages, each with its dominating Congo church. We visited the Hollister gardens again this weekend. I like the way that even their formal gardens are not manicured - sort-of random but always with good structure, good garden architecture.
Over the years, I think I have grown weary of the vegetable gardening hobby. It was more fun when the kids were young, and learned from it. Some of my pals have wonderful and attractive vegetable gardens, but it can become just a chore. I just focus on tomatoes for now. Too many other fun things to do on weekends, not to mention social duties. I focus more on shrub borders, perennial borders. I'd rather mow a meadow on a tractor, with a cold beer or two and a ceegar, than hoe a vegetable garden. To each his or her own, I guess. I have my eye on a rural property in Litchfield County with a pond, a trout stream, meadows, and woodlands. Antique farmhouse, barns, and cottage. Trouble is, we never seem to have free weekends. Sunday, May 26. 2019Serviceberry JamSome varieties of Serviceberry, more commonly known as Shadbush up here because it blooms during the Shad run, grow in most parts of the US and southern Canada. Some grow as shrubs, some as small trees. If you spend any time tramping outdoors, you will see them. Some varieties are used as landscape plantings (I have used them) but most grow wild, especially in brushy edges. The berries look somewhat like blueberries, and range from red to purple to black. Depending on the variety, the berries can be sour or sweet. All are edible raw, and you can make jam with them too. Serviceberry is not to be confused with the Huckleberry, also a common wild plant. Huckleberry is a common meadow edge plant. Thursday, May 16. 2019Buying earthworms
So every couple of years I order 2500 of these rapid breeders. If you have decent soil, to a decent depth, regularly replenished with good mulch and fallen leaves, these guys will do a good job for your borders and other gardens while feeding the worm-eaters. All of my shrub, lawn, and vegetable gardens have been carefully prepared. No pesticides, etc, with good deep loam fortified with maure, etc. I let grass clippings lie, and fallen leaves too (until autumn). Feed the worms! How can you tell whether your soil is lousy? If you dig up a shovel full of earth and do not find 5 or 6 wigglers, it's either not very good or it's been a rough winter for them.
Saturday, March 23. 2019Around here, plant your peasSt. Patrick's Day is a traditional time to plant peas around here. Sometimes you have to scrape snow off the garden. Sometimes the seeds never germinate. Still, tradition. I'll try to do it today if 1/2 inch of soil is soft. I don't grow them for the peas. I grow them for the early sweet and crunchy pea-pods. We just eat them raw usually, while checking out the garden. Tuesday, December 4. 2018Vodka for your PaperwhitesIt's the time of year when people begin forcing bulbs indoors, especially Paperwhite narcissus but other bulbs too. The trick we learned but keep forgetting from my garden club Mom was to regularly give those forced bulbs a shot of cheap vodka or gin. Paperwhites and Amaryllis benefit most from some booze. I don't know how it works, but they grow stouter, somewhat less tall and tippy stalks that way. No effect on the blooms. We rarely have hard booze in the house, but I'll pick up some cheap vodka to keep the bulbs happy and strong. Sunday, August 12. 2018Worms for your gardens
Serious commercial farms don't have many earthworms: The Coming Worm Apocalypse Should Terrify You. Gee, I am not terrified. People with serious, large compost piles often throw in a pile of Red Worms, but I like Nightcrawlers for my vegetable garden and flower borders. Of course, they spread into turf and shrub areas too if the soil is nice. If your turf is lousy, with clay and no food (ie no lawn clippings or shredded leaves), they will not go there to do your aeration for you. You can buy them here, and other places. They will work hard for you, and reproduce quickly. Release them at night, preferable on recently weeded or tilled soil.
Sunday, July 15. 2018How and when to deadhead flowersAnd if you are out there in your gardens, now is a good time, and the last chance, to shear back the late summer and fall-blooming perennials that you don't want to grow too tall and scraggly, eg Asters, Daisies, and Seaside Daisies. It's been a cold Spring in New England. Tomato plants aren't growing vigorously. New England is marginal for tomato compared to New Jersey or South Carolina, but home-growns are so tasty that we persist anyway. We really only get a crop in July-Sept while in south Jersey they can be harvesting garden tomatoes June-October. Unless you have a greenhouse. Some days, like today, I wish I had one. But naw, not really. Who wants the hassle? Saturday, June 16. 2018Happy lawnLawns are foolish things but unless you live in the woods, a desert, or a beachy place, they are sort of expected. A lawn is a certain sort of constantly-cut garden, copied from the estates of England where sheep kept the grass neatly cropped and sheep poop kept it fertilized. (Thus putting greens.) If you want a happy lawn, I recommend aerating a lawn every two years with a coring machine, in late Spring. Or now. Every year, if it is used heavily by kids, animals, sports, or heavy mowers. If you have bare patches, overseed before coring. At at about the same time, you topdress the grass with compost, manure, sand, or mixes of those. It works as mulch, fertilizer, worm food, microorganism food, etc. Health, because lawns are not natural and you have no sheep. You can rent a coring machine anywhere for a day or two. Leave the cores on the grass. They disintegrate fast. For large lawns or golf courses, large machines almost like farm manure-spreaders do the topdressing, but you can spread good compost mixes with a fertilizer spreader or with shovel and rake. Around here, you can have a pleasant and useful lawn without irrigation and maybe only once or twice/year organic fertilizing if you treat it as the garden that sod is. You have to assume that lawns will brown up in the greatest heat of summer, but it's only a few weeks. That's natural grass dormancy. It bounces right back. Irrigation and nitrogen fertilizer are like photoshopping a lawn. Fake. An important garden lawn might need irrigation though, to look Spring-like during the late summer weeks. How to Topdress Your Lawn with Compost Photo is a commercial aerator/corer. The ones you can rent are like heavy lawn mowers.
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