Share my passion for all things gardening!
Have you watched the video about my pole bean trellis? I wanted to better show you how it’s set up in my garden. As you can see by the above photo, I have 4 arbors. They span a 3-foot-wide path between two of my raised beds. Each arbor has spikes that you push down into the soil for stability. If […]
Read moreThese blackberries have been frozen individually. Are you growing berries in your garden? We grow strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. While I enjoy making jams and jellies, it’s nice to freeze some of the berries for those winter fruit cobblers and crisps, too. Freezing blueberries is a piece of cake: you just pick them, wash them lightly, pop them into […]
Read moreI recently planted cover crops in some of my vegetable garden beds that are done producing for the year. So, what are cover crops anyway? They are usually members of the legume or grass families. They’re are planted in idle soil to suppress weeds or maybe to protect soil from erosion. They add nutrients into the soil as well. That […]
Read moreEvery year I grow a lot of green beans. I usually only grow pole beans (‘Italian Snap’) but am also growing bush beans (‘French filet’ style beans) which have been really productive. I have to admit that I’m a bit of a chicken when it comes to canning low-acid vegetables, which beans are. That’s because of the risk of botulism […]
Read moreThe veggies are ready to go into the oven for tomato sauce! Boy, are we in the middle of tomato-harvesting season and I’ll bet you are, too. We primarily grow paste tomatoes for making sauces and catsup. However, we don’t always have the time or inclination to break out all of the canning gear. Today, I picked our first big […]
Read moreI thought you might be interested to hear how things went in our quest to grow cherries organically this year:
Read moreMy veggie garden is in an area that can occasionally get pretty windy. Most of the crops do just fine but corn is particularly susceptible to the wind. I have to say that there is nothing quite so depressing as having a really great-looking patch of corn one day, then have it all snapped off at ground level and lying […]
Read moreI wanted to do a follow-up to my July 13 post (“Keeping the birds out of the cherries“). That way, you’ll know how things are going. You’ll recall I recently purchased some 2″-wide holographic bird scare ribbon. They’re my attempt to keep birds away from the ripening cherries. Well, it has worked great! It hasn’t completely kept the robins out of […]
Read moreDon’t you just love fresh cherries this time of year? I’m crazy about them but, unfortunately, so are the robins, magpies, starlings and sparrows. We have 5 cherry trees and it’s a battle to get any amount of fruit off of them. A couple of years ago, we tried an experiment of covering the trees with huge sheets of floating […]
Read moreCalibrachoa ‘Watermelon’ Here is a link to my column in today’s edition of The Spokesman-Review: For pots with impact, go for thrill, fill and spill. (or you can read my column lower in this post.) As you can probably guess by the headline, it’s about containers and choosing some wonderful annuals to use in them. Even though I have a […]
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