A neighbor asked us if we wanted a strawberry pot – a ceramic pot that you fill with dirt and plant strawberries in the 8 or 10 holes on the sides and in the top. We took it and just put it in the upper part of our vegetable plot that gets little sun. The existing strawberry plants did not like being confined to the pot, so they began sending out sprouts and soon took hold in the … [Read more...]

My garden, that is. Every row has been tilled and planted and every hill has been filled. All but my one row of beets and 3 hills of squash have green occupants and I hope the recent sun will encourage those stubborn seeds to emerge. The only thing to do now is dust the squash plants with Sevin, water the tomatoes and cukes and hope for the best. I sympathize with actual farmers whose … [Read more...]

  I have never liked tomato cages. Typically, the cages I have tried to erect in the past do quite well until the tomato vines grow larger and begin to hang heavy with fruit. Then, one day I go out to the garden and the cages are no longer erect but lying sideways on the ground. I have tried stakes, which do okay until the vines grow and fruit hangs heavy, then the tomato limbs flop down … [Read more...]

We had a small bed of irises in our yard when we moved in over 50 years ago. They were planted on the side of the house and the only time I really saw them was when I mowed the lawn. They say you need to dig up the irises from time to time and re-plant them with more dirt on the roots, but I never did anything. About 20 times, I vowed I would transplant a few to a more visible spot, but I never … [Read more...]

  Once upon a time, there was a guy named Jim who decided one day to put magic seeds in a Jiffy Pot and start his own squash and cucumbers. The magic seeds just sat there for about a week and moped. But then one day, they peeked out of the soil in the pots, decided that they should sprout and sprout they did… and sprout, and sprout and sprout some more. With a few days they were six inches tall … [Read more...]

Seeing that first seed sprout, whether it’s in the garden or a Jiffy Pot in the windowsill, is always exciting. It’s a marvel of nature, really. Imagine a seemingly dead seed coming to life a couple inches beneath the earth, then pushing its way upward through much heavier soil and thrusting itself into the new world. The tiny sprout has everything it will need to grow and develop into a large … [Read more...]

I am going to have to watch my step, I am becoming so green that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might recruit me as a “Squad Member” – and it don’t get no greener than that. She wants to ban cows because they ‘toot’ and create methane gas However, I recently started recycling plastic bags, not the brown ones like you get at the grocery store, but bread bags – they are actually stronger. They have all … [Read more...]

We can’t plant yet, but we backyard gardeners can always dream. That means seed catalogues and hopes for an early spring. Every year I buy way too many seeds. I have a fifty-acre garden appetite on a 12 x 40-foot budget. This year will be different. I will buy fewer seeds to accommodate my mini-garden and I’m off to a good start. Instead of buying 10 pounds of onion sets, I bought one bag, … [Read more...]

Our first jonquils are just beginning to pop up, but our Lenten Roses are in full bloom Snow, sleet, frost, cold - it doesn’t matter to these hardy plants. They are the Energize Bunnies of all our flowers. They are early bloomers, they are beautiful, they flourish in shady areas, and they have earned their rightful place as the most important flowers in our yard. Though the blooms resemble … [Read more...]

Some say that the benefits of putting eggshells in your garden beneath young plants is a myth – a waste of time. I, however, will continue to “waste time” and will absolutely put some crushed eggshells in the ground when I plant my tomatoes. I tried that last summer for the first time and I never picked a single tomato with that black end rot on the bottom. That was a first. I also had the … [Read more...]