what garden ‘pests’ are trying to tell us, from eliot coleman’s ‘the new organic grower’

How you manage garden pests and diseases is a personal choice, and there are many management philosophies. Two of the most common methodologies are integrated pest management (IPM) and organic pest management. IPM was developed in the 1970s as a response to conventional gardening practices that relied heavily on pesticides. In contrast to those practices, IPM promoted sanitation, the use of disease- and pest-resistant plant varieties, and monitoring pest populations.

Evil Weevils do everything but ride motor bikes.

Permission is granted to copy  this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

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.

Virginia copperleaf is a tall, branched summer annual that can grow three feet tall. It takes its name from the copper colored leaves of its late summer color. This weed is a North American native that is found from Maine to Georgia and as far west as Texas and north to South Dakota. It is a member of the spurge family and is poisonous, but it does not have the milky sap that is typical of other family members. The simple leaves are oppositely arranged on the stems when the plant is a young seedling, but they change to an alternate arrangement as the weed matures.

With the New Year comes the New Year’s Resolutions and goals. If you are making a resolution or goal, aim for the goal to be SMART. What does a SMART goal mean?

January is a special month as it is the start of a new year filled with the hope of great things to come. After holiday decorations come down, with the lights, sparkles, and glitter of the holiday season put away for another year; it is the perfect time to add an orchid for their unique appeal and charm.

When I started this series of K.I.S.S. gardening advice, I hoped to inspire those who didn’t know where to begin gardening and those who may have lost joy in their gardening pursuits. After all, there are plenty of things to worry about these days, and gardening should not be one of them. Gardening should provide a respite and an escape from our screen technology culture. So let’s take the advice of Willie Nelson’s boy, Lukas, and “Turn off the news and build a garden.”

I’ll be roaming the Northeast in the early going, in places as close to home as the Berkshires of Massachusetts and the Hudson Valley of New York, but also across Massachusetts and as far as New Hampshire, Maine, New Jersey and coastal Connecticut. Events here in the garden will begin again in April; stay tuned for a fuller schedule of those, with just the first couple mentioned below.What’s planned already:Saturday, February 19, 2 PM: Lecture to benefit Berkshire Botanical Garden, Monument Mountain Regional High School, Great Barrington, MA.Thursday, March 3, 7 PM: R.J. Ju

THIS WEEK I BUILT A GREENHOUSE. Well, to be more correct, Susan (who has worked with me in the garden for many years, for which I am endlessly grateful), built a greenhouse.

BESIDES OUR SOMEWHAT OFFKILTER HUMOR, Andre Jordan and I have another thing in common: We not so long ago each headed for the hills. (Wait, are there even hills in Nebraska?)

The Red-Spotted Newt starts his life in the water, hatched from one of 300-400 eggs his mother lays, becoming a tadpole-like larvae, gills and all. After several months he sheds them and becomes terrestrial, and is called an eft (the term for the red juvenile stage). This stage lasts a couple of years or up to seven, according to some references, before the next metamorphosis in the salamander’s life occurs and he once again changes colors…and habitats…returning to the water. Now I know why some of the salamanders swimming in my garden ponds are slightly different from others: some are tadpoles, some adults back from their years on land.  The University of Michigan says these creatures can live 12-15 years!Of course as with everything in nature, there are exceptions: populations that skip the red eft stage (in some coastal areas) and others that never undergo the second metamorphosis back into the water. I think my pals are cut from the classic mold, but I am not a scientist.In all this reading sinc