Tillage radish is a cover crop I had never heard of until this summer. One of the amazing things about the tillage radish is its rapid growth. After my neighbor Rol harvested his garlic he planted this bed to tillage radishes in mid-July. Already the wide row is completely covered with lush foliage that will die down once we have a killing frost. The long daikon radish roots that have developed will also rot over the course of…
Green manure is a crop that is planted in the fall; its purpose is to improve soil fertility and tilth in the spring. I have just seeded a fall green manure mix from Johnny’s Selected Seeds in three of my newly weeded and watered (thanks to the rain) garden beds. This mix contains annual seeds like crimson clover, annual rye grass and yellow peas, as well as winter rye and hairy vetch that will go dormant but begin…
Berries are the best. They are delicious summer fruits, especially when they are picked right off the bush and brought in for a morning bowl of cereal, a beautiful fruit tart, or a pot of jam. They are easy for the gardener because they are perennial plants and require little fussing over the years of their life. In Heath we pay a lot of attention to blueberries. One section of town is called Burnt Hill because the hillside…
Deer have come and gone in my garden. Our gardens (and house) are essentially in the middle of a large field bordered by woodland. The deer population crosses the field and goes down to our Frog Pond. Very beautiful when they are not hungry and there is plenty of forage. But are they satisfied? Earlier in the spring I did not see any deer in the garden and I thought perhaps I had planted so many deer resistant…
We’ve all faced the spring task of combing through the seed catalogs trying to decide which squash, or tomato or whatever variety to buy. Will it be dark green Raven zucchini, the light green Magda or the striped Safari? We might be considering days to maturity, disease resistance and spininess of the plant. If we agonize over our few choices, can you imagine what a seed company has to take into consideration? Recently I spoke with CR Lawn,…
“O beautiful, for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain . . .” These words, written by Katherine Lee Bates in 1895 capture an image of our country that we still treasure today. However, there are differences between 1895 and 2012. The tall waving wheats that gilded our midwest in 1895 are now only a foot tall, barely shuddering in the breeze.. The early 1940s saw the beginning of the Green Revolution, an agricultural shift that used technological…
During our trip to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art I found a new way of looking at meadows and art. The plan is to turn Mass MoCA's rear access utility road into a green space and a work of art. The Rounds are created by using rammed earth and dry-stacked stone. The Rounds provide places to sit and visit and picnic in the midst of wildflower gardens. Thyme is a another featured plant in this meadow. I…
When a 5 foot tall bug appears on the Bridge of Flowers we all take notice. Especially when it is a shimmering shade of emerald green I wasn't the only one taking photos of this beautiful creature. But beauty is as beauty does, and the Emerald Ash Borer is no beauty infesting and killing ash trees. The USDA Forest Service has created a website with full information about how to watch ash trees for damage. These bugs are…
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…
It is planting season. I have been planting roses. That means I have been digging holes. And I have been dreaming of a book, first published in 1952, that I often read to my young children, A Hole is to Dig by Ruth Krauss and illustrated by a young Maurice Sendak, who has recently departed our world. Sendak’s lively children are shown digging, energetically planting a garden and jumping and sliding in the mud while yelling doodleedoodleedoo. I’ve…