dreaming of a ‘new heirloom garden,’ with ellen ecker ogden

Everyone loves falafel—it’s a year-round staple, and the frozen options at Trader Joe’s make it incredibly easy to prepare. But today, you should probably rid your freezer shelves of any Trader Joe’s falafel: In the company’s third food recall this week, on July 28 Trader Joe’s recalled its fan-favorite Fully Cooked Falafel after being informed by the supplier that rocks were found in the food.

Tom Stearns is founder of High Mowing Organic Seeds in Vermont, with more than 20 years specializing in breeding, selecting and marketing of organic varieties. From microgreens indoors to baby-leaf to mini-heads and up to full-sized heads in the garden, we talked about timing, spacing and making lettuce happy—even which types hold up best in the heat (and ways to help all lettuce do better when summer arrives).Read along as you listen to the Jan. 14, 2019 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).success with lettuce, with tom stearnsQ. Over the years on the show you and I have talked about tomato h

CRAZY, BUT TRUE: I ALWAYS THOUGHT the quirky “voice” of the Fedco Seeds catalog, named C.R. Lawn—get it? Lawn?—was a fictitious character, the made-up but pervasive green spirit of the longtime seed cooperative’s brand. But he’s not make-believe. He’s the Maine-based Fedco’s founder, and an organic gardener, market grower and seedsman with more than 30 years’ experience, and he took the time to answer some of my questions on what to grow and how to grow it better. The result is a vegetable-gardening Q&A (from peas to potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, mineral dusts and more), with the very real C.R. Lawn—and the chance to win three $20 Fedco gift certificates I bought to share with you, and say thanks to him. Let’s jump right in:

A little about Michael:“That’s Michael Dodge,” I say, when I show people around the fall garden, as we pass a large group of show-offy, yellow-fruited Viburnum I enjoy all fall into winter. V. dilatatum ‘Michael Dodge’ is truly a standout plant.But the original Michael Dodge, the one that great shrub was named to honor, is a well-

Kate Spring, and her husband, Edge Fuentes, founded Good Heart Farmstead in Vermont in 2013, which serves up to 100 customers each season who subscribe to their CSA share program. Their farm is a hybrid business structure called an L3C, a low-profit, limited-liability company, where part of the mission is to support Vermonters in need of food access.Kate’s also a writer and the only person I know with her very own brand new yurt, which I couldn’t wait to hear about after having seen it be constructed on her Instagram.Read along as you listen to the December 14, 2020 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).mastering microgree

FEBRUARYMonday, February 13, 11:30 AM: lecture for Farmington Garden Club Founders’ Fund Celebration meeting, at Hill-Stead Museum Makeshift Theater, 35 Mountain Road, Farmington, CT; free admission.Saturday, February 25, 1 PM: lecture for Germantown Public Library, Germantown, NY, at 31 Palatine Park Road.MARCHThursday, March 1, 9:30 AM: lecture for Pleasantville Garden Club, in the social hall at Presbyterian Church, 400 Bedford Road, Pleasantville, NY.We

WITH A NEW BOOK TO SHARE, my traditional winter event season kicks off with extra vigor—just as I hope the garden will in its time. I’ll be in Darien, Connecticut (January 8th); Madison, Connecticut (the 19th); Millerton, New York (the 20th); Manchester, Vermont (the 26th); Cohasset, Massachusetts (the 27th) and Newton Highlands, Massachusetts (the 30th).

Selecting a short-season variety, giving the seeds an indoor headstart of four or five weeks, then transplanting to a raised bed that was warmed up first with a mulch of black plastic puts melons on a path to success. Covering transplants with Reemay for the first four to six weeks outdoors is Stearns’s other key headstart tactic (details below, and in the podcast).“It’s like they’re in their own little New Jersey,” the Vermonter says of his plants that are positively bursting to escape from the insulating fabric by the time he uncovers them a week or so after flowering begins.Instead of a spindly little vine or two perhaps 1 to 2 feet long, Stearns says, melons given this extra protection may have as many as 10 vines 3 or 4 feet in length by the time they’re out from under cover to allow insect pollinators to do the melon-making.  Sound good?more

First, some background: Great Lakes Worm Watch is a citizen-science outreach organization, working to map the state of the earthworms—and the habitats they’re living in.“We want to know where earthworms are across the landscape,” says Ryan—and that means even beyond the Great Lakes area, where the project began.  (There is a Canada Worm Watch, too, for those across the border; researchers at the University of Vermont, at the Cary Institute in Millbrook, New York, and elsewhere are likewise studying earthworm invasion.)Individuals, schools or garden groups can sign on help collect data on what worms are fou

As I told my six-friend panel, I have four such transport devices, each that has stood up to many years of rough use:one large and one medium Vermont Cart (wood, oversize spoked tires, removable end panel); one aluminum-frame Smart Cart with similar tires, aluminum frame, and removable high-density polyethylene tub that can be used as a soil-mixing vessel; one single-tire, 6-cubic-foot True Temper r

THE FIRST PERSON to photograph snowflakes did so in 1885, harnessing the combined power of a camera and also a microscope given to him as gifts by his parents. Then 20-year-old Alwyn Bentley of Jericho, Vermont, came to be known as the Snowflake Man for his lifetime of work, which also included years of close examination of raindrops. A fascinating tale of Bentley’s life, and more photos, via DomainReview [dot] org. Image above from the Smithsonian Institution collection. And yes: Bentley is responsible for the “no two are alike” lowdown on snowflakes.fresh as a frog’s skinA BIT OF RUSSIAN folk-wisdom that calls for keeping milk fresh by putting a live frog in the milk bucket has led to the examination of chemicals secreted from the frog’s skin. Apparently they are powerfully antifungal and antibacterial…but will they have implications for new drugs

How do birds get their food, and what do they eat, anyway? Well that depends on the bird, and Ellen Blackstone of BirdNote.org has some answers. A million people a day and more than 200 radio markets hear the 2-minute public radio show called BirdNote, and now “BirdNote” is a book too, which Ellen edited.Read along as you listen to the Aug. 20, 2018 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).how birds find foo