It’s not every day, nor is it everywhere that a brand new botanic garden opens, but the city of Santa Fe New Mexico recently became home to one. Although the garden opened its gates just this past July, only two months later in September when I visited the gardens looked remarkably filled in. The Santa […]
People looking to introduce their kids to the benefits of fruit and veg have been advised to teach the children to grow their own food. According to Examiner.com, this is a fun way of encouraging little ones to take an interest in their diet. It suggested starting with a simple plot of just a few […]
One of my favorite places, the great Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago, is all shiny and sparkly. In a good way. I remember when it was shiny and sparkly in a bad way: the day in June 2011 after golf-ball-sized hailstones smashed 60 percent of the glass in the nearly 2 acres of display greenhouses […]
Every greenhouse gardener needs a good compost in order to raise seeds and plants, but in recent years it’s been very difficult to find a good compost that’s consistent in quality. Historically price mattered more than anything else, so it was quite possible to buy a good bag of something one week and then get […]
Peterborough, New Hampshire, is one fortunate town. Between the Contookuk River and Nubanusit Brook, it was a thriving mill town in the nineteenth century. The home of the MacDowell Colony (the first artist’s colony in the country) since 1907, the town is thought to have been the model for Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, which he […]
Growing Peanuts in your greenhouse is an excellent way to get children interested. Pea, Ground or Monkey nuts are known to kids everywhere, if not as fresh nuts then roasted salted ones and certainly their famous butter. Actually Arachis hypogaea is not a nut from a tree but a member of the Pea family, somewhat […]
Apart from the few days of summer last month we spent most of last month in low light, constant rain and chilling winds, so the ground is still too cold and wet for sowing crops directly and will be for a while yet, so thank goodness there is plenty to do in the greenhouse. Seeds […]
We gardeners all rely on the common wisdom passed along through books, magazines, blogs, or the neighbor down the street. However, John Fischer, a retired meteorologist, Master Gardener, and garden writer, offers this—make your own observations. Throughout his career as a television meteorologist, John always tied together the weather and gardening. When horticulture questions arose, […]
The leaves started turning early this year, but not before the first little pumpkins appeared in the grocery store. It seems a little odd to have pumpkins on sale at the same time as zucchini, but not as odd as the fact that pumpkins and zucchini are the same species, Cucurbita pepo. “Pumpkin” is a […]
Winter has raged into Chicago. It was down in the teens a week before Thanksgiving, the kind of weather that freezes the soil like concrete and drives even diehard gardeners like me to the shelter of a greenhouse. I can’t quit gardening yet, though, because I have a problem: Some 300 bulbs I didn’t manage […]
While some herbs overwinter in sunny windows or greenhouses, and others dry well for later, there’s a handful of culinary herbs that– to my mind– are best grown only during summer and enjoyed when fresh. Though they can be preserved one way or another, there’s no substitute for their fresh presence in summer’s signature dishes. […]
The latter days of April were an unnerving experience for many gardeners. I watched rain soaked, fearful and powerless as heavy rain and hailstones battered my apple blossoms and chill winds blew, yet now that ‘weather’ has passed, I’m thankful that the garden seems remarkably intact. A quick check with the soil thermometer revealed that […]
