Leaves have become a hot topic recently (finally), so I’d like to briefly address it.
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What about leaves?
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Tag Archives: garden
Still too cold for tomatoes
Please believe me when I say that I understand you want to plant your tomatoes already. I do too, but it is 44° outside as I type this.
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Stop wasting time and money on amendments
Trouble with your garden last year and you’re wondering what amendments will fix it? It is time to stop treating your garden like most Americans treat their health woes: With a pill or a fad.
Myth and mystery of cover crops
Shredded leaves keep soil in place, add nutrients to the soil and make a great, soft path material to keep weeds down. You can even alternate leaf-variety for patterns.
Cover crops are popular. People claim cover crops will add nitrogen to your soil (sometimes, sort of, but not much), they’ll protect the soil (kind of, sometimes) and prevent weeds (or they’ll act as weeds).
Let’s take a deeper look at this now that the end of the season is upon us.
Onions and rain
We grow Cortland onions from seed. They get sown indoors in February, and it’s nice to have something growing that early, a harbinger of the season to come.
Onions did well this year!
As noted in an earlier Facebook post, we’re getting rain daily. That’s great for growing lawn and carrots and other items, but not great for drying onions outdoors. After the onions “flop,” or bend over at the stem, they’re ready to harvest within the next few days. Onions that have sent up a flower stalk should also be harvested, and they’re the ones that should be eaten first as they won’t keep well.
Rain throws a bit of a wrench into the harvesting schedule though.
Time to buy, or at least think about, next year’s garlic
Believe it or not, now is the time to consider next year’s garlic because:
- You’re going to want to plant it by Halloween, at the latest, and,
- Preferred vendors are going to sell out of some varieties fast.
Harvest and store garlic rationally
A year’s worth of garlic.
There are a gazillion posts about when and how to harvest garlic all over the interwebs. They’re all variations on the same theme and they’re all generally accurate, but I want to add a bit of perspective for the typical home gardener growing a few head of garlic rather than a field of them. Continue reading
Garlic harvest: Good, okay and very much not okay
Early morning harvest
Last year the garlic had nematode issues. So after eight years of using our own garlic for both eating and sowing next year’s crop, we bought new heads from two highly regarded, reputable growers in the northeast with high hopes and dreams of big heads of stinking rose.
Our dreams weren’t dashed, but they didn’t turn out as planned. Continue reading
Making time for raspberries
I made a bit of time this morning to trim some of the raspberries and improve the soil with free used coffee grounds.
If you look at the photos below, you’ll see that all fall and winter, blowing leaves have collected and begun to break down around our raspberries. This required no work on my part (it actually required that I do no work) but it protected the soil, provided amendments as it broke down, and more. Continue reading
Beauty in the rain
I mostly share photos on Facebook, but yesterday’s rain was a great opportunity for photography and I want to share some here as well.
I found many bumble bees that had spent the night in the garden, several trying to escape the rain under cosmos that acted as umbrellas. There were also a few honey bees making their morning rounds among the nasturtium.
Wet bee
Rain falling off cosmos.
Cosmos and parsley after the rain
Honeybee in nasturtium.
