‘nature’s first green is gold’

IKEA

The harvest video was on Hudson Valley Seed’s Instagram account, and one of that New York-based organic seed company’s co-founders, K Greene, talked with me about growing shallots and their more commonly grown cousin, garlic. He also shared some other ideas for succession sowing of edibles whose planting time still lies ahead—whether for fall harvest or to over-winter and enjoying in the year ahead. Read along as you listen to the Aug. 7, 2023 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) o

In 2008 a google search for sunflowers would have found gardeners tips in the top 3 results. Now it would be luck to be found in the top 3 million. We are number 115th for the more specific ‘sunflowers gardeners tips’ as Tips for Easy Sunflowers from 2015.

I only have a garden to keep the weeds happy. In it trespassers will be composted and slugs treated to a grizzly end. However  the lawn deserves some reverence hence the following, first posted in 2011 and  based on an Original by Debbie, of Middletown – My Little Sister’s Humourous sayings

The two best complimentary colours are Red and Green.  There are many ways this is demonstrated in the spring garden and they will be sure to draw compliments. The Peonies are just opening under a bit of shelter and shade.

Shrubs rule the roost in August and apart from some Hebe there is not much other than green and a bit of leaf colour. Roll on the second flush of roses.

Smilax vines go by the common names greenbrier or catbrier due to the thorns covering their stems. There are 300 to 350 smilax species worldwide. Approximately twenty-four species are native to North America, with fifteen species growing in South Carolina. Smilax grows well in moist shade and is an important food source and habitat for wildlife, including birds, rabbits, and deer.

This heirloom grain, together with the skilled knowledge and forced labor of West Africans and their descendants, made South Carolina very, very rich. From 1720 to the outbreak of the Civil War, rice was the most economically valuable crop for this state. White landowners, who thought rice would do well in the low country, themselves lacked practical knowledge of rice cultivation. Instead, they paid a premium to slave traders to capture and transport laborers from the well-established rice region of West Africa to Carolina. During the 18th century, many enslaved people brought into Charleston came from this rice-growing area. These people and their descendants created the Gullah-Geechee culture in the low country.

First, of course, you want to make sure the crop you’re considering saving seed from is open-pollinated, not a hybrid. Hybrids won’t “come true” from saved seed one generation to the next.“Start with the super-easy things,” said Ken, “like anything with a perfect flower and a pod—beans, and peas, for instance.” Perfect flowers contain both male and female parts, or stamens and pistils, such as lettuce, tomatoes, brassicas, beans; in imperfect ones, such as on squash and cucumbers, there are separate male and female flowers.“Before you even transplant your first seedling, you can start thinking about seed saving,” Ken said, and also wrote in a new article on the Seed Library blog.For beginning seed-

Down the road apiece, all the flat, wide-open fields of my farmer neighbors revealed themselves the last few days, but not here. Not yet.Yesterday my beloved old friends from Windy Hill Farm in Great Barrington, MA, came anyway to prune the beloved century-plus-old apple trees, despite having to trudge through all the white stuff. We just couldn’t wait any longe

BEFORE THE APOCALYPSE BLEW IN SATURDAY, with its relentless 50-plus mile-per-hour winds, there was a brief moment of sanity. The snow was finally melting, revealing the first bulbs, and the very best part: I got my knees wet in the process of going to have a closer look.

THE FIRST REAL SNOW CAME SATURDAY NIGHT, December 5, depositing 4 or 5 inches of heavy stuff on an evening followed by the most brilliant day, the kind where the sun and moon were both in the sky. But all I could see at first when I looked outside: the pots that hadn’t made it into the safety of the shed or barn yet.