Greenfield Garden Club Farm and Garden Tour

  • Post published:07/07/2012
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Denise Leonard, current chair of the Greenfield Agricultural Commission, past president of the New England Border Collies Association, and chief farmer at TANSTAAFL Farm is one of the featured farmers on the Greenfield Garden Club’ annual garden tour which is including farms for the first time this year. THIS VERY DAY! July 7! Denise explained that her husband David came up with the name of their farm when they were still living in Leverett more than 25 years…

Vermicompost Harvest – Garbage to Black Gold

  • Post published:07/06/2012
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With the first lettuces cleaned out of the garden it was time for a vermicompost harvest. Vermicompost, compost filled with worm castings, otherwise know as worm manure, is a rich compost that will get my second or third plantings well nourished. I have written about my vermicomposting adventures before here. Once the weather became dependably warmer, over 50 degrees, I moved our worm bin outside. It now lives on the north side of the house where it is…

My Soil Test Reveals All – Not Bad!

  • Post published:04/27/2012
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I had not yet received the results of my soil test from UMass when my onion sets arrived from Dixondale Farms. I wanted to get them right in the ground, but I was worried about my soil pH. Dixondale says onions prefer a pH between 6.2 and 6.8. I feared my soil might be too acidic for optimum results so I tilled in another couple of handfuls of lime before I planted the onions. Two days later I…

Feed the Living Soil – Soil Test Needed

  • Post published:04/21/2012
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Soil is alive. It is more than sand, silt or clay particles. It is even more than rotted organic matter. It is full of bacteria and all kinds of fungi, good and bad. Soil is alive and it needs to be fed. Some people go to the garden center and buy bags of 5-10-5 fertilizer. The numbers stand for the ratio of nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), and potassium or potash (K). This kind of fertilizer is soluble and…

Feed Your Living Soil – Soil Tests Needed

  • Post published:04/14/2012
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Soil is alive. It is more than sand, silt or clay particles. It is even more than rotted organic matter. It is full of bacteria and all kinds of fungi, good and bad. Soil is alive and it needs to be fed. Some people go to the garden center and buy bags of 5-10-5 fertilizer. The numbers stand for the ratio of nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), and potassium or potash (K). This kind of fertilizer is soluble and…

Look At My Loot

  • Post published:01/05/2012
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As Christmas drew near a  friend asked if I his Christmas gift had been delivered. I said no deliveries and then waited every day for my treat to arrive. I did get a Package Too Big notice from the Post Office and picked up this bag of compost that had a mailing label right on the bag. I assumed it was some sort of sample from the Seven Years Gold company, although it did seem an odd time…

We Love to Eat – Blog Action Day 2011

  • Post published:10/16/2011
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I live in a ruraltown of 750 souls in the western corner of Massachusetts that sits on the Vermont border. On the Fourth of July in 1981 I happened to meet two other friends at the spinning wheel in the town museum. We were celebrating the holiday, but got to complaining that we never went out to dinner, we  couldn't afford to, and besides there were no good restaurants closer than 40 miles. Actually there were no restaurants…

Weeding and Compost

  • Post published:08/09/2011
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A 40 foot Herb Bed lies in front of our house where lilies and roses vie for space with rue, parsley, basil, variegated sage and thalictrum at  the west end of the building past the Welcoming Platform where you can see yarrow, golden marjoram, sage, tarragon, rosemary, Ashfield black stem mint and chives to the end of the Bed where there is more basil, horseradish, lemon balm and dill that was knocked down by the rain that fell briefly last…

Norm and his Can-O-Worms

  • Post published:07/30/2011
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Twenty-seven years ago Norm Hirscheld of Greenfield visited a permaculture farm where he met his first red wigglers (Eisenia foetida). “I was awestruck by how you could get rich black compost from vegetable scraps right in your house,” he said. He decided right then to become a worm farmer himself and built a wooden box, providing holes for ventilation, and put in a sufficient amount of wet shredded newspaper for bedding. He sent away for his pound of…

Faster and Faster

  • Post published:05/30/2011
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The Holiday Weekend started for me on Friday afternoon when I visited the Heath School's Garden Day. The classes have been working before now, of course, but on Garden Day, the whole day is given over to planting, weeding, mulching - and learning.  I am impressed with their energy, which I expected, but also with the quality of the child-sized tools they are using.  Many hands make light work was certainly the motto on Friday. You may wonder…