“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.” — Chinese proverb Unlike the hard-wearing daylily that can be uprooted time and again, woody plants should grace the garden space we give them for decades. Their planting should be approached thoughtfully and ...

Organic gardeners are always on the lookout for compost feedstock: for sources of summer grass clippings, autumn leaves, barnyard manure and stable litter. I’ve been known to rake a neighbor’s lawn for the leaves. You can never have too much. In the last two weeks of August, Marjorie and I ...

Is it too late to plant a deciduous tree? In short, no. Fall planting can help deciduous trees replace the absorbing roots that were lost during harvest and handling in the nursery as well as roots lost during planting. Deciduous trees planted in spring must establish a new root system ...

For this gardener August means ripe blueberries and ripening tomatoes, fresh cucumbers every day, the first basil harvest, a river of orange and yellow self-sown calendulas flowing through the vegetable garden. August is stepping gingerly over elephant-ear leaves of winter squash, broccoli seedlings growing on the porch rail, goldfinches pecking at sunflower heads, ...

I am reluctant to leave the garden on a summer day, but when Marjorie suggested we visit The Worm Wiz, I dropped my rake and we took off for Bowdoinham. I was excited about seeing a large-scale vermiculture operation and learning more about using redworms (red wigglers) to recycle food ...

Since early spring, I have made weekly visits to the rain garden at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension office in Ellsworth, chronicling with photographs the development of native plants growing there, both woody and herbaceous. Now in its second year, this garden absorbs a tremendous volume of water with ...

School is out and I have time to stand at the porch window watching finches, some gold and black, others strawberry red, cracking open sunflower seeds at the porch feeders, juncos cleaning up kernels dropped on the deck. The chickadees of winter flocks are nesting somewhere north of here; those that ...

Last week’s column discussed the use of floating row covers, made of Spun Polypropylene, to exclude insect herbivores from vegetable crops. These row covers are light in weight (less than 0.5 oz. per square yard), admit up to 95 percent of available light, and allow rain and irrigation water to ...