When we moved into our house I was thrilled that there was also a hen house in the back yard. The building is about 30 feet long, divided into three sections. We store the feed, kept in metal garbage cans, as well as bales of shavings, in the first section. We also brood our chicks in that section when they arrive around the first of June. There is a chicken door that allows the chicks to go outdoors into a…
Storey Publishing is helping me celebrate my Third Blogoversary by giving me three books to give you starting with Recipes from the Root Cellar: 270 fresh ways to enjoy winter vegetables by Andrea Chesman. I have been using my own copy of this book for the past month, making Festive and Fruity Coleslaw for Thanksgiving Dinner and Applesauce Crumb Cake for a weeknight dessert with friends. I can tell you that coleslaw is really good with turkey and…
Everywhere you go there are instructions on how to be more ‘green’. The Reduce, Reuse, Recycle logo shows up on recycling barrels, and on our clothes. We organic gardeners have certainly been recycling as we turn our garden and kitchen waste into valuable compost, but a whole new level of reusing and recycling is turning up in the garden. I’ve managed to rescue chicken wire fencing and cardboard from our transfer station, but in his new book The…
I don’t know about you, but I am already starting to work on my holiday gift list. Those who know me, know I think that few gifts are as good as a good book. Books teach and inspire, and often offer great encouragement. Gardening has long been one of the nation’s most popular pastimes, but recently with our difficult economy, and worries about the energy costs of agribusiness, many people are turning to the vegetable garden, for fresh…
It's time to renew memberships! What are you a member of? My most local membership is in the New England Wildflower Society because their propagation operation and nursery are so close by. An individual membership is only $50, for which you get free admission to the famous Garden in the Woods in Framingham, discounts on workshops and lectures, discounts at Nasami Farm and in the Gift Shop. NEWFS also participates in a Reciprocal Admissions Program that will give you free…
Some say that almanacs have been around for thousands of years, but perhaps the oldest American almanac most people are familiar with is Poor Richard's Almanac published by Benjamin Franklin long before he fiddled with kites and string or became our Ambassador to France. Baer's Almanac is new to me, but the editor's give a bow to Franklin with a few of the aphorisms that helped to make him popular. How about "A slip of the foot, you…
Yesterday, Christopher Petkanas in The New York Times Design Section called Constance Spry a 'Flowering Inferno." I have written about Constance Spry myself in the past, once after interviewing a neighbor, Charlotte Thwing, who has since passed away, but who in her youth worked for Spry in her Madison Avenue shop just before World War II. Petkanas, in talking about a new biography, The Surprising Life of Constance Spry, bySue Shepard, passed on much juicier gossip than I…
When I was a child being driven from New York City to my uncle’s dairy farm in Charlotte, Vermont, I was sure I knew the minute we crossed the state line because I could smell the scent of manure in the air. For me, Vermont meant a perfumed cow barn and manured fields; I could think of no lovelier fragrance. I still feel that way. Gene Logsdon, farmer, anthropologist, cultural critic and author of Holy Shit: Managing Manure…
“Invasive species have the potential to completely alter habitats, disrupt natural cycles of disturbance and succession, and most importantly, greatly decrease overall biodiversity, pushing rare species to the brink of extinction. Many ecologists now feel that invasive species represent the greatest current and future threat to native plant and animal species worldwide, greater even than human population growth, land development and pollution.” William Cullina of the New England Wildflower Society We do not have to travel far to…
"Few things are more annoying than dogmatism; and dogmatism is nowhere more misplaced than in horticulture. The wise gardener is he whom years of experience have succeeded in teaching that plants, no less than people have perverse individualities of their own, and that, though general rules may be laid down, yet it is impossible ever to predict with any certainty that any given treatment is bound to secure success or failure." Reginald Farrer in My Rock Garden. No season was…