Snow is a good thing – not only for all the school children who relish a few extra days off to break out their sleds and toboggans, but it is an essential element in growing flowers and vegetables. We “backyard farmers” need snow to turn out a successful harvest come summer and fall. The recent snow will blanket our gardens and when it melts – we assume it will melt eventually – our small plots … [Read more...]

  Frost is coming. It always does and puts a dagger into most of the vegetables in a backyard garden. But early this week, before the frost, I picked 4 of the prettiest tomatoes of the season. I suppose my little garden had saved the best for last. They were near perfect in size, shape and color, except for the one Heirloom tomato. Heirlooms are almost always a little gnarly, but this one … [Read more...]

  I bought a single Anaheim pepper plant from the Corner Store Nursery this spring. One of my other transplanted pepper plants died and I needed something to replace it. I had never heard of an Anaheim pepper, but the tag said it was a “hot” pepper and several in my family enjoy hot peppers. So, I decided to give it a try. It turns out that the pepper was not hot at all, at least when … [Read more...]

  I bought dwarf okra seeds last spring because I was tired of trying to fetch ripe okra pods that had grown to Jack and the Beanstalk heights. It would be nice, I thought, to actually bend down and pick the delicious okra pods. Bend down my rear end. All seven of Snow White’s Dwarfs could stand on each other’s shoulders and still not be able to reach the top blooms. My dwarf okra … [Read more...]

  I had a decent garden this year, though the mid-summer drought played hell with several of my plantings, like squash. But production was decent – especially with my completely enclosed cage which kept squirrels and rabbits at bay. Overall, we had a good year for tomatoes. Nancy has a small, above-ground enclosed cage for her garden and she always gets a head start since the ground … [Read more...]

  Our son Jimmie gave us some flowers to plant when we saw him in early August. Jimmie worked for Hines Nursery and knows his stuff. He said it wasn’t too late to plant the Dahlias and that we would be impressed with the flowers. They grow to be as big as dinner plates. Well, they sure did. Nancy picked 4 or 5 huge blooms yesterday. They were, as you can see, lovely. Jimmie said not … [Read more...]

“Come look at all the bees!” my wife had called. “What kind of bees?” I asked, wanting to make sure this backyard visit was worth missing part of the football game I was watching. “Honeybees?” she exclaimed. And they were! Real live honeybees, by the dozens, flitting their way between blooms on what was for us at that time an unidentified flowering plant. Our son Jimmie had given us these … [Read more...]

This year I devoted a small row in my garden to peppers – and I really don’t like peppers, but Nancy likes to can some hot peppers for our kids and some stuffed door-knob peppers which I actually do like. So, I planted a couple of jalapeno pepper plants and 4 doorknob pepper plants, but one of them died. On a subsequent trip to the Corner Store Nursery in Ruckersvillle to pick up some seeds, I … [Read more...]

Every summer, Mom shipped me off to Clemmons, NC to spend a week with my Brewer relatives. Several times, they put me on a Greyhound bus and shoved me off solo, sometimes seated next to a soldier on leave. I’d spend a couple nights with Aunt Lena, a night or two with my cousin, Bob, and several nights with my cousin Steve. Steve’s dad, Uncle Bud, had married my father’s sister, Aunt Mary. Mary and … [Read more...]