Seed saving and end of summer projects

   I love it when my articles are published. It’s a thrill to pick up the newspaper or magazine, or click on the website, to see a piece I worked hard on (most likely late into the night since it’s the only quiet time I have) look gorgeous in a professional layout. Today Google Alerts [...]

Mid-summer (in)sanity

I’d really like to experience the “dog days” of summer. I thought spring was hectic, but this summer is rolling like a freight train. The produce is already starting to come on faster than I can freeze it. So far, I have peas, broccoli and spinach in the freezer, plus a crock of sauerkraut percolating [...]

How can it be July already?

~This is absolutely crazy. Tomorrow is the first of July, and I have no idea where June went. I know I finished up planting – this included four pepper plants and two eggplants just last night – and there are always writing assignments on the horizon, but it still seems as if I blinked and [...]

Time to finish planting and enjoy the “summer”

 ~ It’s a typical June - bask in a couple of nice, warm days followed by rain or a chance of snow. It’s a slow start to the gardens, but will be a fond memory during the likely convection oven climate in July and August!  The gardens are nearly planted. Today I’m planting over 4 dozen tomato [...]

Let it rain and other gardening wishes

It was a cold and rainy day, and I couldn’t be happier. We desperately need the moisture to germinate the newly planted seeds… plus, it wasn’t snow. About half of my gardens are planted. The corn, beans, peppers, squash and such will go in within the next week or so. Plus, we need to put [...]

Planting is in full swing

The weather is finally cooperating, and the ten day forecast looks like temperatures are going to stay above freezing, so I’m planting full swing for the next week or so. Besides my gardens (I have one at one and two plots at the community gardens), I’m helping plant the charitable plots at the River City [...]

Winter storms, saving seeds and new chickens

It’s been one heck of a May so far. Last Thursday we were nailed by a winter storm that dumped only ten inches of snow, but managed to pile into six foot drifts over the garden, yard and roads. We were out of power for four hours, causing me to melt snow to boil water [...]

Eating local, texting and marriage encounter

The beauty about my “job” is there’s never a dull moment. Although I love writing about the myriad of gardening topics, it’s fun to mix it up a bit. As far as growing goes, I’m working on a story about the benefits of local food ranging from the positive financial impact to the community as [...]

Raising plants and kids

Even though the forecast is predicting 5 to 10 inches of snow by tomorrow night, gardening is in full swing. I’m behind on transplanting in the greenhouse, but have the bulk of my initial indoor sowing completeed. Even two of my grafted tomatoes are thriving. It’ll be very interesting to see if these grafted Brandywines [...]

Spring is here – let the gardening begin!

Spring came in like a lamb, and seems to follow the same path into April. This is just fine with me! I’m working on an article about season extending techniques so I set up a couple of Wall-O-Waters in the garden to warm up the soil before planting peas. The tomatoes won’t go out until [...]

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