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I made an inordinate amount of jam last year: strawberry, mulberry/raspberry, blueberry-spice, peach-orange. Gave a good amount away over the holidays, but kept a few jars of each flavor for myself. I now have about six jars of jam left in the pantry, and looks like I will have a strawberry...

Just got an email from the local apiary. I had ordered package bees from them in January. Got the PayPal confirmation and everything. Called last week to see if everything was on schedule, as they had a notice on their website that they were running late on some things, please call and check...

1. Identify your trees. This is most easily done in the fall. You don't have to use only sugar maples, silver maples and black maples work fine too--the syrup will be a bit darker, but it will taste fine. 2. Measure the trees. Trees are old enough to tap when they are one foot in diameter. To...

I just realized it this weekend. Yeah, I am slow, that's why it took me this long to figure it out. :rolleyes: The garden is pretty well done. It is now under snow, and nothing but freezing weather is coming for the foreseeable future. The freezer is full of veggies, so many that I described my...

OK, I posted some time ago about maybe getting bees. I had a concern that if I got bees, my neighbor's bees might be duking it out for territory. Apparently this concern was completely unfounded. :rant I just harvested my flax. I was growing the flax mainly for edible seeds, and it dutifully...

We heat our house mainly with a woodstove. This makes the air exceptionally dry, so we keep a cast-iron steamer on top of the stove filled with water to help humidify the place. In lieu of potpourri, we throw aromatic plant stuff in the steamer to make everything smell nice. Exceptionally...

I have many apple trees in my orchard that had been badly chewed by deer before I installed the fence. Some were rare varieties that are no longer offered anywhere, yet there were sparks of life left, so I kept them. Quality bittersharp cider apples, without a hint of sugar, are really really...

You know, I was sure the broccoli was no good this year. I got one little crown, and the rest was et by slugs, nibbled by a very acrobatic woodchuck, and generally reduced to stubs. I had planted Waltham 29 and Thompson, which are supposedly very short season, figuring maybe I can get two crops...

My brother the arborist came up to visit a couple weekends ago. I told him I wanted to thin my woodlot some more, and here's what I learned: When lots of trees grow really tall together, if you thin the bigger ones out, the others will not grow in bushy to fill in the gaps. They will fall over...

This year's popcorn winners were Blue Pop and Red Bird from Sand Hill Preservation. Faribo White Hulless did not pollinate well at all for some reason, but the Blue Pop (which is actually blue and yellow) and the Red Bird filled out reasonably. Both look very pretty--no, I don't have a picture...

Hey youse guys, I need some shrub selection help. I'm re-doing my front yard, as the plants that were there got smashed during a recent renovation. Planted six white roses in front already: there are two climbers, which will be trained around some sort of ornamenty things, on either side of...

Yeah, I am picking fresh raspberries. :drool Best raspberry of the year, even better than the summer raspberries--and I have some wicked good summer raspberries--Autumn Britten from Nourse Farms. Holy smokes, is it ever tasty. You know how raspberries, if you don't pick em just right, they...

I was out picking zucchini (of course), and I found two teeny tiny little watermelons hiding under the squash leaves! Every last one of my watermelons has failed in the past! This one has survived both a sub-optimal, part-shaded spot AND the dreaded powdery mildew! It is called Black Tail...

I know it doesn't feel like autumn with 90+ degree heat. But it's coming.

We put up a bat box a couple years ago, and some bats moved in. Previous bats had been of the little brown variety, not much bigger than a mouse, but last night I counted two new large brown bats flying out with what appeared to be four pups! Seemed like the pups were following the moms and...

OK, I have officially gone insane, per DH. I decided I would like to make my own soda, the old-fashioned fermented kind. We have any number of random plastic bottles with screw caps, plenty of the Grolsch-type beer bottles, and it turns out to be very easy, just like making bread. Last night I...

I would like to have pickles and sauerkraut that are actually crisp this year, so I'm researching various pickling methods. I have lots of cukes at the moment. If I screw up a bit, that's OK. I still have pickles from last year, because by December all the pickles have turned into dill-flavored...

I guess ground cherries grow wild? I failed to weed-whack diligently enough along the side of our rock wall. A big leafy green thing grew there amongst the grass and bishop weed. It developed little paper lantern type of things, and as it so happens it turns out to be ground cherry. I never...

This year, the clear winner is All Red, seed potatoes bought from SSE. 12 lbs. All Red from 2 lbs. seed potatoes. 6 lbs. Purple Peruvian, 2 lbs. Banana fingerling. And a couple of big Vikings that overwintered. The plant in the Banana fingerling basket is pineapple sage, which is going on...

Thought I would share the various types of things doing well/not so well for me here in Massachusetts: Clay soil with rocks and extra rocks, partly shaded by hardwoods. Flowers: Hungarian bread seed poppies, carnation poppies, rugosa roses of all breeds, all kind of pansies, borage, Arikara...