Little red buds are appearing in the rhubarb patch. It will be another month or more until it is ready for harvest, but now is the time to divide it if you haven’t done so for several years. Dividing rhubarb keeps it producing well. If the stalks are getting spindly, it’s time to divide. [Continue]
My vegetable garden is a large rectangle running east–west along the northern boundary of our property. Over the years, the open field north of our fence has grown up into a wooded area. In mid-summer, even though the woods is north of the garden, it casts quite a bit of shade. The garden once [Continue]
There are few plants that thrive when planted in late autumn, but red, white and black currants do. The weather is likely to be wetter and there is still enough warmth in the soil to encourage the plants to grow some roots before winter. There is a difference in the way the different [Continue]
One of my favorite fresh vegetables coming out of the garden this time of year is edamame. It’s a garden soybean, pronounced “eh-duh-mah-may.” Edamame translates as “beans on branches.” Regular soybeans are allowed to dry on the plants before processing but edamame pods are picked green. In Japan the pods are popped open [Continue]
Have you been experiencing sticker shock every time you go to the grocery store? Have you ever held off buying lettuce, spinach or tomatoes because of a scary news story about e-coli or salmonella? Have you read the articles attributing cancer, hormonal abnormalities and neurological disorders to pesticides and fertilizers? If any [Continue]
Does anyone grow turnips or rutabagas anymore? I recall references to turnips in the Grimm’s Fairy Tales book I read as a child and I remember my great-aunt in Michigan serving us rutabagas. Although I don’t know of anyone who grows either of these root crops today, I have to think that there are a [Continue]
A few days before Christmas, the mailbox yields a couple last minute greeting cards and the property tax bill folded inside the spring Jung Seed catalog. In the days after Christmas after the gifts are put away and the tax check is written, it is nice to sit down to peruse the catalog and begin [Continue]
It was late summer and I just wanted to grow something, anything. It was too late to plant seeds outdoors. I’d been thinking about growing alfalfa sprouts for years, but thought it was too complicated. It turns out it is easy, fun and best of all, fast. Sprouts can be grown on your [Continue]
Do tomatoes need pruning? Garden experts disagree. The bottom line is that tomatoes will do just fine without pruning . . . but there are some good reasons to prune. Pruned tomatoes take up less space than unpruned ones and are less likely to become top-heavy and topple their support cages. There will be [Continue]
Potatoes have always been cheap in Wisconsin and for that reason I never grew them until I began to have concerns about the chemicals that may have been used on them for fertilizing and pest control. I also became interested in trying some unusual potato varieties that I couldn’t find in the grocery store, [Continue]