Share my passion for all things gardening!
My husband, Bill, and I grow three kinds of grapes: ‘Canadice’, ‘Glenora’ and ‘Vanessa’. The first to ripen is ‘Glenora’. Sometimes we use the grapes for jelly and oftentimes we make grape juice. Doing the latter is very simple, especially if you have a steamer/juicer. Step by step: 1. Pick the grape clusters, leaving them on the stems. 2. Wash […]
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For years, I’ve grown geraniums in pots on my front porch. At the end of each garden season, I’d toss them in the compost pile. That seemed like a huge waste of money to me. Then I learned that overwintering geraniums is easy as can be. That’s the subject of my column in today’s edition of The Spokesman-Review. Here’s a […]
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The growing season is coming to close. Yet none of us wants to fill our basements or closets with green tomatoes, right? It’s a topic of great interest to gardeners these days because they’re frustrated and watching the days zip by. As you might already know, I’ve been filming short videos on how to get your green tomatoes to ripen, […]
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I’ve been growing celery for several years now and just love how flavorful it is. The only down side is that there’s always more than we can keep up with but we certainly don’t to waste it. What’s the answer? Preserving it, of course! Today, I’m going to show you how to freeze celery. If you’re wondering why you’d want […]
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Every year, we grow a nice patch of Swiss chard. We love how tasty it is and how it doesn’t bolt to seed in the heat like spinach can. But there’s always more than we can eat at any given time. Bill and I have come up with a great method for preserving it. I wanted to show you how […]
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I recently wrote a post on Growing apples organically, but wanted to do a follow-up today. I get a lot of questions from readers about how to do this, so this post should help. Last week, we decided it was high time we thinned and covered our young apples. The covers help protect them from the apple codling moth, which […]
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Tomatoes have got to be a vegetable gardener’s favorite crop! I mean, you just can’t beat the flavor of a homegrown tomato, right? Now that we’re into the middle of May, it’s time to plant these gems. I just filmed a video on growing tomatoes. Take a look: More thoughts on growing tomatoes In the video, I mentioned two types […]
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I just planted my pole beans. It’s exciting to see them in the garden because, to me, that really means the season is underway. Planting pole beans is pretty easy, provided you have a sturdy trellis for it. If you haven’t seen how I grow mine, I’m hoping this photo will give you some inspiration! Several years ago, I got […]
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It won’t be long before we plant our warm-season crops so I wanted to make sure you saw this video to help you get excellent germination rates. It’s all about proper seed orientation. What’s that, you say? Well, there are certain irregularly-shaped seeds that will germinate more successfully if they are planted in the correct direction. The types of seeds I’m […]
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I have to admit it. Watching the solitary bees coming and going from our insect hotel is addicting! We built ours last spring and some insects had found it. But it wasn’t the hub of activity that it is this year. That’s because the eggs that the Mason bees laid last year are now hatching. The females are busily laying […]
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