Last summer, my small garden overwhelmed us with tomatoes, and almost every one was perfect. This year? Not so much. All but a few tomatoes I have picked this year have had black-end rot where the blossom end of the tomato turns black and leathery. According to the Garden Gnomes, this is caused by a lack of calcium, but in my case, it’s not a lack of calcium in the soil, it’s a lack of water … [Read more...]

Many backyard gardeners have simply given up. Why go to all the expense and trouble to plant a garden only to have a few deer wipe out and entire planting in one night. All deer repellants ultimately fail as the deer do what they do best - eat stuff. There are two ways to overcome the deer invasions. One involves a 30.06 cartridge, which is frowned upon in most subdivisions and the other is a … [Read more...]

It should be a National Holiday, a day of celebration knowing that after 6 months of eating tasteless Roma and Big Boy tomatoes from the grocery store, the first tomato from your garden has turned red-ripe enough to pick. It’s the First ‘Mater Day, and for the Brewer’s it was celebrated on Tuesday of this week. Nancy’s above-ground garden came through with a beautiful tomato. It was perfect, … [Read more...]

A head of Iceberg lettuce in most grocery stores continues to be over $2 a head. Usually less than a dollar, lettuce is now higher than the cost of a dozen eggs. Why? First, the weather. California and Arizona – two key lettuce producers – have endured extreme weather this year.  Heavy rains, flooding and unseasonally high early temperatures have weakened harvests and there is not as … [Read more...]

Last fall, Nancy found a small volunteer tomato vine that had sprouted in the same pot as a mature vine she was about to pull up. Rather than pulling up the young plant, she repotted it and brought it inside. Throughout the winter, she trimmed it back so it wouldn’t get so spindly and she watered and nourished it. I thought she was crazy. You can’t carry over a tomato vine from one year to the … [Read more...]

We take rain for granted and often we are disappointed when it comes and rains out our golf match or family picnic. But when we don’t get rain for a while, that’s when we know how much we need it. Last year it rained a bunch and our yards and gardens prospered. This year, however, we had like one inch of rain during the entire month of April. Gardens and lawns suffered. Last year I was mowing … [Read more...]

I am now reaping the first fruits of my small vegetable garden. The early stuff is coming in while I bide my time to plant the summer crops. Afterall, it was in the low 30’s overnight two times this week. But my lettuce and spring onions are bursting forth and saving me money!We love spring onions, or scallions as some call them. I enjoy just plucking them from the soil, then take the outer skin … [Read more...]

Every year it happens. After snow, sleet and frigid weather, March delivers beautiful, warm sunny days, which get even nicer in April. Time to get stuff in the ground, right? Then, every year – just when you think winter has moved along – it happens again. A cold snap. Like this week when the evening temps plunged to the low 30s. But this year, I am showing a rare trait for me – patience. … [Read more...]

I first heard about candy onions last spring when loyal Cville Buzz reader, Cheryll Seiber, mentioned them in an email. As a fellow onion lover, she said they were so sweet you could eat them like an apple. Then, that weekend at a Farmer’s Market, I saw a bunch for sale, bought them and loved them. I immediately made plans for a few rows in my small vegetable garden. I even bought some seeds but … [Read more...]

I am getting excited about getting my little vegetable garden underway - first, because it’s fun to see stuff grow, and second, the recent prices of some vegetables. Two things I regularly enjoy from the produce department are spring onions and fresh lettuce. Little clusters of onions have been selling s for 69-cents or so. They were $1.69 recently. We enjoy plucking young onion plants for the … [Read more...]