It’s the time of year when all things seem possible.  I dream of verdant growth, record harvests, perfect blossoms, and fruit unmarked by insect damage and snacking birds.   My wish list of seeds and plants is long and well over budget, yet still I dream.  I’ll grow long, tall rows of corn and salad greens [...]

The common violet is one of my favorite spring flowers. It’s fragrant, pretty, tough and prolific. What’s not to love? This particularly sturdy violet pushed its way through a layer of sand deposited a couple weeks ago when the creek overran its banks and flooded the crossing we use to access [...]

This winter’s tatsoi (mustard greens) crop is in full bloom in the greenhouse. The leaves are no longer yummy, but I’ve left the plants to flower because the blossoms make me smile whenever I step inside. The seed saver in the neighborhood is hoping there’s enough insect activity in the greenhouse now to sufficiently pollinate [...]

Champion collards, planted in the greenhouse September, 2007. Collards, like most brassicas, are biennial – that is, they go to seed their second year. Collards don’t keep calendars. They had their warm season and winter, and now it’s warm again. So it’s the second year by plant reconning.
It looks like little side shoot of broccoli, [...]

Lately, everywhere I turn, everything I do, I see pairings. Nature all around me is courting and matching up. Maybe it’s just the season, spring springing and all that. Maybe it’s because I’ve written a few romances and my mind is attuned to that sort of thing. Whatever the case, spring seems to be the [...]

I’ve never cared much for mustard greens. The canned variety just tastes nasty, I think. The fresh ones gathered in the pasture when I was a kid weren’t much better. Still, they were on the list of cold hardy greens likely to do well in an unheated hoophouse, so I tried them.
Surprise! They’re yummy! When [...]

January 3 overnight low – 14 degrees.
January 5 high – 71 degrees
January 6 high – 73 degrees
January 7 high – 71 degrees
Cover the greenhouse beds, uncover the greenhouse beds, yada yada yada. We had moderate damage to the mature lettuce on that 14-degree night. The low temperature reading under the floating row covers was 21 [...]

I’ve been using floating row covers in the greenhouse lately to add an extra level of protection on cold nights. Jugs of water around what few tender plants remain in there help a lot, too. The water warms with the day’s heat, and at night, when temperatures drop, the heat radiates from [...]

Photographed November 30, 2007 – one very confused, but delicious ripe strawberry. You’d better believe I washed it off and ate it.
Variety: Jewel
Planted: September 2007
My supplier kept the dormant plants in cold storage for the summer, so they arrived in the usual state of bundled roots I’ve always dealt with in spring plantings. The warm [...]

I always grow purple petunias, not because I like them, but because my younger daughter liked them so much when she was small. I think she still favors them, but not with the single-minded exhuberance she exhibited a decade ago. She’s grown now, and she no longer spends summers weeding at my side [...]