Category Archives: Horticulture

Plea to Preserve the Gardening Past

Picture 2
Source: Garden Organic, on-line newsletter, home page, March 2009.

The Heritage Seed Library needs your help keeping heritage vegetables alive in a world where fewer varieties are available every year and hybrids dominate seed catalogues.

The only organization of its kind in the UK, the Library is dedicated to preserving and spreading open-pollinated vegetable seeds. It sponsors a seed swap, puts out a catalogue each December, and provides seeds for school gardens. It’s constantly working to identify and cultivate more heirloom varieties, which it then makes available to members.

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Taste of Summer in March

Feb tomatoes 2 '09

That, folks, is a picture of tomatoes. Yes, I know: duh.

But wait: I picked them yesterday. (!!) They were growing on the tomato plants I brought indoors in October. (!!!) (Yes, the same aphid-infested items I've written of here.) Save for one tiny (even tinier than these) specimen that I simply ate two days ago (it was delicious), these are the first harvest from last summer’s hail-devastated plants. (!!!!)

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Aphid Alert II: Indoor tomatoes

(Scroll to the bottom for today's story in honor of Black History Month. It's not a happy one, but it matters. I've removed the video clip at the end of that section as it downloaded too slowly for some computers.)


WARNING: This post contains graphic photographs of pests on leaves.

White fly '08

Our December report on the aphids infesting the Manic Gardener’s indoor tomatoes has continued to fascinate viewers everywhere,  so we recently sent a crew for a follow-up story. The unfortunate events surrounding this interview have been vastly exaggerated, leading to the promulgation of false information across the web. (The Manic did not lift up our camera-man bodily and throw him out of the house, though she may have tried.)

We are happy to inform you that our EFG (Exposing False Gardeners) personnel sustained only minor injuries. The camera, we regret to report, was destroyed and all visual footage lost save these few photographs. (Final results from the lab indicate that it was the bricks, not the orange juice, that did the damage.) Fortunately, the audio survived, so we are able to offer you the transcript below. We hope that this clears up all misunderstandings.

EFG has no plans to return to the home of the Manic Gardener in the foreseeable future.

At last report, the woman known as the "Manic Gardener" was holding off a SWAT team with a combination of unripe tomatoes and pure invective. As one team member was heard to say, "The mouth on that woman!"

Here is part of that fateful interview: 

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Greenhouse construction

(In honor of Black History month, I've decided to spend some time educating myself about notable blacks; I'll append a brief note about some of my discoveries at the end of my posts.) 

Alley tr 1

This is one of several small greenhouses we put up last winter. I could have cropped this photo to emphasize the greenhouse, but I decided instead to emphasize how damn big and how damn numerous are the many trees in and near our yard. This structure, built against the side wall of the garage, faces due west towards the alley that separates our back yard from those of our neighbors. Alleys, like fences, make good neighbors.

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Greenhouse Blues

I hate to spring this on you so suddenly, but there’s really no point in tip-toeing around the matter: I have a greenhouse.

 Grnhs interior 2

Why has this not been mentioned here before? I could say that the moment never seemed quite right, or that something else always seemed to get in the way, or that I hoped to perfect it before unveiling it. All these things would be true if inadequate explanations for my silence.

In the spirit of complete disclosure that now possesses me, I’ll point out that it’s not particularly green at the moment, this greenhouse, because I couldn’t finish establishing the beds

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