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How to get motivated about fall crops despite the summer heat
It's easy to get into the swing of spring gardening when there's an empty brown canvas waiting to be painted green. On muddy knees you worship the strengthening sun, cheering on the sprouted peas as you would a baby's first steps.
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How to avoid insect bites in the garden
My friend Aubrey and I are weeding the carrot beds, and the Deerfly Air Force has found us. By now, the tiny black flies of spring are on the wane. Big, noisy horseflies are yet to arrive. Meanwhile, the deerflies are doing their best to ruin our day.
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Tips for using, buying wheelbarrows
A lot of the work in gardening is getting stuff from one place to another, and the larger or more distant the garden, the more moving around. Tools, plants, weeds, compost, bark mulch, bags of soil amendments, rocks, bricks, gravel, firewood, buckets of water, UPS packages, jugs of cider and giant zucchinis are all things I have trundled about with my trusty metal contractor's wheelbarrow.
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Kansas City relaxes ban on front-yard 'row crops'
Primaries in 12 states held the nation's attention in early June, but all I could think about was the close race in Kansas City, Mo. Would the Planning and Zoning Committee's ban on "row crops" in front yards be overruled by the City Council? Which would win, corn or pachysandra? I was betting on corn.
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A Cook's Garden: How my sweet peppers turned hot
Seeds are like jewels in spring, tiny genetic packages dropped into moist soil, then lovingly tended. After that, the focus is on plant growth: the height of stem, the greenness of leaf, the sweetness of fruit. If you are a reader of plant catalogues, you might even get the impression that seeds are a form of plant debris that interferes with the pleasure of eating grapes, watermelons and cucumbers.
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Heirloom tomatoes: So good, so good for you
Heirloom tomatoes, like Ol' Man River, just keep rolling along. It doesn't seem to matter that their yields are often less than those of modern varieties, or that some have less disease resistance. People continue to pay extra for them at farm stands and markets, and the enthusiasm for growing them is unabated. No one dares publish a seed catalogue without a diverse selection.
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The parsnip, rooted in history
A parsnip is like a pasty-faced, overweight carrot, ancient and unrefined. The difference is hardly one of pedigree: The carrot began as the skinny white root of the Queen Anne's lace plant, not much use until breeders brought it to its crunchy, candy-colored, tangerine-flake glory.
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Currants: Tiny jewels make a big statement
Currants are uncommon in this country. Most likely, your experience begins and ends with the dried ones that look like tiny black raisins. Well, guess what? Those are raisins, produced from the tiny grapes of the Zante variety.
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Volcanoes provide a boom for gardeners
A volcanic eruption, unlike a giant oil spill, is an act of nature, not the outcome of risky behavior on the part of man. Nothing we do could have caused or prevented a vent near Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull glacier from spewing flames, molten lava and plumes of ash into the air.
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Spring hose muster: Time to work out those kinks
There's a little ritual I go through at the start of every gardening season: the hose muster. It prevents endless frustration and fits of temper as the summer gets hotter, drier and busier. I know that the only way I will ever keep on top of watering is to have an easy-to-use system well in place.
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Gardening News
