Share my passion for all things gardening!
Over the years, I’ve written about my battles with leaf miners, which are the larvae that tunnel in between the cells in the leaves of spinach, beets and Swiss chard. How do they get there in the first place? Well, the adult is a fly that lays eggs on the leaves. Once the eggs hatch, the maggots do their damage […]
Read morePhoto #1: Getting ready to swap out the old T Tape for Aqua Traxx Last year, my husband and I installed a new irrigation system on our raised beds. We’ve used soaker hoses on each bed for years but they frequently clogged with minerals, which reduced the amount of water coming out of them. We felt it was time to […]
Read morePhoto #1: drip irrigation Continuing our discussion (see previous post) of the new drip tape system we recently installed in our garden, I wanted to show you what we did on one of our 3′ x 8′ raised beds. Photo #1 shows the supplies we needed: 1/2″ tubing to make the manifold, 1/2″ figure-8 ends to seal off each end […]
Read moreSince seed-starting is our hot topic right now, I wanted to give you more information about what I’m starting and the types of seed-starting kits and containers I use. I mentioned in my Sunday column that I start peas, beans, squash, pumpkins, corn and melons indoors. You don’t have to do this unless you have the same situation I do: […]
Read moreYesterday, a friend of mine was asking what floating row covers are since I mention them frequently in my columns. I decided it wouldn’t hurt to do a post about this topic because it’s one of my favorite tools for growing a productive vegetable garden. Floating row cover is a lightweight, woven fabric that looks very much like the interfacing […]
Read moreAs you know, birds absolutely love to eat cherries. We have a few cherry trees in our little orchard and every year, it’s a battle to keep them from robbing our harvest. Last year, we covered our trees with huge sheets of floating row cover — partly to keep the cherry fruit flies from laying their eggs on the cherries […]
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