Backyard Farmgals

Crabapple. My tree is blooming.  I walked out to it today to smell it and looked up to see and hear more bees than I could count humming away gathering pollen and nectar.  I inhaled and smiled, this tree is so fragrant.  I almost ripped out this tree when we first bought our house.  It had more suckers than tree and was scraggly and undernourished.  I think you would agree that it is a good thing we decided to keep it.  People drive down our road to see it every spring.  It is absolutely beautiful and all it needed was some pruning and fertilizer.  Like most things in life with a little love, ugly and seemingly lifeless things can become the most radiant.   This will be my last bloom with this tree because we just sold our house.  It sold really fast, the first day we put it on the market, to the first person who walked through.  So fast!  I am not quite ready to say goodbye, I love my house and I adore my gardens. ...

Weezer... helper goat and knowledgable pruning specialist If you haven't started your spring pruning, there is no time like this weekend to get busy with it.  I am taking an arboriculture class and have been thrust into the fiery furnace of pruning so to speak.  We were given an assignment to prune five different types of woody plants and take pictures.  We had to spend a total of 10 hours, which ended up being a lot of trees for me because I do have some experience.  I thought I would share what I did as well as pictures for those of you who feel like I did a few years ago, not knowing where to start. There are some general rules to follow.  With fruit trees, I alway start with water sprouts.  They are those horrible long vertical shoots that come back year after year.  While I am pruning water sprouts, I am looking for anything dead, diseased, or broken.  All of these things I prune out as I go. I prune out any suckers at the base of the t...

Asparagus season is fast approaching and I am craving those tender green spears, grilled, wrapped in prosciutto, in salad, in soup... the possibilities are endless and very tasty, I even love it raw.  While ranting away this week about my love of asparagus, I was asked to write a bit about how to plant it.  To know how to plant it, you must understand how it grows. Asparagus is a fascinating plant, you might be amazed at what it is capable of... Asparagus is a perennial plant, which means that if properly cared for, it will come back year after year.  Asparagus patches have been known to live for 30 years or longer, but typically a patch will live for about 15 years.  Because it is so long lived, it is important to prepare the soil properly and select an appropriate site.  Asparagus likes sunny, well drained and fertile soil.  Before planting, a good well rotted manure compost should be incorporated into the soil as deeply as possible, as well as a fe...

Spring, how I have missed you!  I have missed being barefoot in the grass and the feel of dirt between my toes.  I love you because you make me realize that light is so much more penetrating than darkness.  I feel relief lift me to my feet and point me in the direction of sunshine, green bits edging their way up through brown crusty dirt, and warmth wrapped around bare skin. Isn't it exhilarating that spring is finally here?  I find myself unable to stand a single minute indoors.  I have to be outside.  I crave it, like chocolate... one moment, like one bite, is never enough. With the coming of spring, my seedlings were ready to be transplanted to bigger 4-inch containers.  The first day of spring was spent with a fork, gently persuading tiny roots and soil into larger real estate.  It was easier than I thought.  I was terrified of losing a few of my precious tomato starts to transplant shock. Lucky for me only two wilted slightly, bu...

I love this time of the year, my first moments running my hands through thick composted soil, dirt under my fingernails, and the smell of hummus in the Earth puts my mind at ease; Spring is just around the corner.  I can feel it.  I can smell it.  All of my senses go crazy with the first awakenings of the Earth after a cold, dark Winter. As I opened up my potting mix for my seeds, I sank into a comfort of knowing that the sun is coming back to me.  Three more weeks of official Winter.  Three more weeks of muttering nasty things about the groundhog and his insanely accurate predictions.  (When he makes me mad I really enjoy calling him names like "gopher" and "fat little ground rat".  I'm not saying name calling is okay...only when it involves a nasty, little, long-Winter-inviting, overweight squirrel.  Okay...I am done...love you Phil...sometimes...) Sunday I planted tomatoes.  Lots and lots of tomatoes!  The list is very ...

Ahhhh...warmth and sunshine!!!  Relief from the dreary winter seems to have finally come, for a moment at least.  I am sure we will get snow again before the spring is officially here (in, fact, it's starting to snow now), but I thought that while I had 60-degree weather and the warmth of the sun I might get started on my cleanup efforts.  With the horrible wind storms that we had throughout the winter, cleanup seems a little daunting this year.  There are toys and trash hiding in my beds, trinkets from neighbors homes, pieces of shingles and siding, all kinds of surprises to make you wonder whose house these items once belonged to.  It's a bit of a guessing game. This weekend, I attacked the kitchen garden at my house.  It seemed like a reasonable place to start, seeing as it is the first of the gardens to be planted.  I was tickled to see that the lettuces I planted in the cold frame late last fall were alive and thriving.  I should hav...

I had this idea in my head that the farming would slow down in the winter...it hasn't!  I have spent almost every extra minute of every day, thinking about, reading about, obsessing about soil, fertilizer, heirloom varieties and most importantly what I am going to plant this spring.  With all of this sifting around in my head, there is a constant beat in the background, a drum that beats for March.  March is seed starting month, and I have more than ever to be thinking about when I think of March.  I have ordered almost 200 packets of seeds...yup...200!!!  I will plant the majority of them when March finally creeps up on me.  The thing that I have found to be overwhelming, and I am hoping that I am not alone, is sorting through all of the seed catalogs.  There are pages and pages of varieties; I want to plant them all.  I need forty acres, I have already got the mule, so to speak.  I have found a few tricks to ordering and I would like to ...