Category — Jim's Thoughts

I suspected that it wouldn’t work at least not as well as I’d dreamed. The sprouting trays I’d so carefully set up with clear plastic lids kept in enough moisture that the surface of some peat pots is now covered with a downy coating of mold. The good news however [Read more →]

I experience the garden as a great place of forgiveness and opportunities for second chances. If I forget to plant cool weather crops in the spring, I have another chance in the fall. If I neglect to clear the beds in the fall (which I did!) they’ll still be there ready to be cleared out in the spring. There are consequences of course for non-action as well as to actions but life is too short to fret much about regrets such as these: [Read more →]

We’ve mostly used our local “free-cycle” mailing list to discard no longer needed items. Similar lists serve various parts of North America at least, the most famous of which is craigslist. What we like about “free-cycle” is that everything is exchanged for free. Last month an ad came up for free grape cuttings suitable for crafts or propagation. This opportunity seemed something we couldn’t pass up, even though we have little experience with propagating cuttings. [Read more →]

We’ve had two good days largely above freezing. The warm weather has made good progress toward melting the snow that covered our garden beds, even if it’s left our dirt driveway rather “mud-luscious” and “puddle-wonderful” as I think e e cumings would say. I walked to lunch without zipping my coat let alone pulling on my gloves. But most importantly, the warmer weather has rekindled a hankering for rhubarb. [Read more →]

Winter is more than just a couple months of bad gardening.

Another inch or so of snow settled during the night, snow as fine as parmesan cheese grated off the bottom of the clouds. As I pushed it off my car, I pondered again how many different kinds of snow there are and how many different kinds we’ve seen this year. Last week it was the sodden, thick kind of snow, the snow that makes shoveling nearly impossible and which often has a layer of water at the bottom, water that so easily turns to ice. [Read more →]