Obvioulsy I had to try potatoes in shallow water because I love potatoes and am always looking for better or different ways to grow them. If you follow this blog you know I have grown red potatoes and blue potatoes. I have grown them in both bags and pots and in wire fencing. I have even grown them in the ground like everyone else! But I had never ever done this before I heard about Al’s friend’s dream.
This spring we are expanding into the “back 40” as my dad used to call the back pasture on the farm. This is an area we recently had to fence because we joined the lot behind us with our main house lot. In doing that we had to clear out the branches and brambles and big stumps that were in the way. And so we were left with a field. A new planting opportunity. This post looks at edible shrubs and will be of special interest to green-thumb gardeners or farmers on a budget.
Once the snow melts it is usually only a few weeks until the earliest alpine flowers start to bloom… even in Northern Gardens. The Adonis vernalis is one of the earliest ….
Soil Research shows improving Your Garden Soil by adding organic matter improves the world by reducing climate change. New York Times writer Kendra Pierre-Louis says soil research shows ordinary back yards are more likely to reduce climate change over parks. This isn’t the first time I have heard of gardeners saving the world one back yard at a time….”Terra Pretta: How the World’s Most Fertile Soil Can Help Reverse Climate Change” impressed me last year. Adding Biochar is one way to permanently boost carbon in the soil and take carbon out of the air.
I was asked to mentor youth as part of the Goodseeds program earlier this winter and I wondered what two students and I would do together for a week once my shed was clean and shears sharpened. It was snowy outdoors so we couldn’t attack my unlimited weeding. I had to get more creative….
So recently there was some humble pie served in our kitchen. My Helpful Husband did a price check and found out butternut squash costs more than ten dollars each last week. I am bad with numbers so it might have been 12 dollars or 17 dollars – I can’t remember exactly. What I do remember is that when we first discussed Helpful Husband’s cost-efficient, engineered solution to gardening it was fall and squash were falling off trucks and being virtually given away by farmers. He couldn’t see why I bothered to grow them…. I understand the trend where farmers grow only the most cost-efficient crops on their land and I see where Helpful Husband was going with his gentle suggestion. He wants me to be a farmer. But then again he wouldn’t let me cash in the house to buy that small farm
