Benefit plant sales are a traditional spring event. Gardeners can spruce up their gardens and benefit various community organizations. Which will you choose? Or will you choose them all? Have you thought about giving your mother a gift certificate (one way or another) so she can pick out some flowers herself? This Saturday, May5 the Greenfield Library will open its plant sale at 9:30 am on the front lawn. It will close by 12:30, unless everything is gone…
After a dry winter and an extremely dry spring we finally have rain - two and a half inches in the last 24 hours. I've been reading away the rainy hours with Northeast Fruit and Vegetable Gardening by Charlie Nardozzi. It has been a perfect rain. Hours of rain have penetrated the thirsty earth without washing away newly dug and seeded beds. The seeds and seedlings I planted just before the rain are really happy. More rain is…
If there is anything I enjoy more than gardening it is books. And eating. Therefore you can imagine my pleasure when I made an unscheduled stop at the Forbes Library in Northampton last week and found this Edible Books contest display near the circulation desk. According to the Books2Eat website "The International Edible Book Festival is a yearly event on April 1 throughout the world .This event unites bibliophiles, book artists and food lovers to celebrate the ingestion…
Yesterday my earliest daffodils began to bloom - just in time for temperatures to plunge from their unseasonable summer highs. Nothing is certain in a garden. How many times do we have to relearn this lesson? The following takes me back a couple of weeks - before we were all boldly planting seeds. Beginning tomorrow days will be brighter longer. The sun will not set until 6:46 pm. It will seem like spring has arrived – even though…
Chickens have been much on my mind over the past two weeks as I participated in The Chicken Encyclopedia virtual book tour with the participation of 15 of us chicken loving bloggers. I am one of the bloggers who gave away a copy of the book and passed on some information. However, I also passed on some misinformation. Happily I have been corrected by Gail Damerow and the editors at Storey Publishing and I want to make the…
I spent today at a wonderful Spring Symposium organized by our local Master Gardeners who do so much to help us all improve our skills while offering us lots of inspiration. I bought a copy of the Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener's Handbook by Ron Kujawski and his daughter Jennifer, who live near by. I know Ron from his days as a Cooperative Extension educator (and my days on the Extension Board). This sturdy spiral bound book published by Storey Publishing…
I am happy to announce that Gracia is the winner of Storey Publications book The Chicken Encyclopedia. Send me your mailing address and I will have Storey mail the book directly to you. Congratulations! Have fun with your chickens. While Gracia is celebrating with her chickens I am celebrating my snowdrops on this Bloom Day. To see what else is blooming across the country visit May Dreams Gardens. Carol, thank you for hosting this beautiful and useful meme.…
The chicken is a familiar farm animal, but even those who are setting up backyard flocks may not be aware of the more arcane facts of their life. Some may not be aware of the most basic facts of their biology. I cannot count the number of times people have told me they would love to have chickens producing eggs in the backyard, but they just cannot stand the thought of having a rooster. BASIC FACT: Hens, like…
According to the historical record the soldiers inside the Trojan horse gorged themselves on carrots to 'bind their bowels' an important precaution, but other records tell of the emperor Caligula "who had a fun-loving streak, once fed the entire Roman Senate a feast of carrots in hopes of watching them run sexually amok." Carrots have fascinated more modern characters like Henry Ford who was anti-milk, and anti-meat, but crazy about vegetables, especially the carrot. At one point he…
Seven weeks ago I gave myself an early Christmas present – a bowl in a classic shape (actually a sort of plastic flower pot) and four succulent plants. I had been inspired by reading Succulent Container Gardens by Debra Lee Baldwin which I had reviewed in this column earlier in December. I am not terribly good at caring for houseplants except for the succulents: a jade tree, an enormous orchid cactus, and Christmas and Thanksgiving cactus I had…