When do you get the traps out and set? Good question! And the answer is — of course, in keeping with organic gardening tradition — “it depends.”…
The first couple of years I just didn’t know that codling moths had to be attacked with a multi-pronged approach.
There’s nothing that strikes fear into the heart of an organic gardener more than a new pest. There’s the moment you discover the interloper: “Now what the hell are you?” you say out loud, to nobody in particular, as you go through the encyclopedia entries in your mind and panic takes hold.
With our exceptionally warm October, many trees decided to just keep on photosynthesizing and put off losing their leaves. Then came a weird early cold blast paired with a few inches of heavy snow.
Arranged in chapters named for each non-supermarket friendly, bizarre and downright hostile fruit she explores, the book is a deep dive into fruit you have probably never heard of.
Like most 75 year-old farmers, it is the simple things that interest me. Take twine for instance.
Why am I willing to tie up vegetables in paper with string, wait a month then blanch them again after carefully removing their spines?…
I may have mentioned that one of my favorite things to do is bite off more than I can chew and then tend that group of items obsessively using highlighted lists and intricate schedules. I didn’t make an obsessive farmer statement’ for nothing. But I do sometimes know when to say when and to take advantage of a simple, good thing when I see it. Enter weed fabric. This humble product allows me to keep the large lower garden from becoming a jungle (and to have time for fun stuff in the summer like rolling around in Lake Pend Oreille like an otter).
Objectively, bald faced hornets are quite beautiful, emblazoned in bold black and white, with a powerful look and a sentience that seems to go beyond the usual insect.
If you see cars swerving in downtown Sandpoint or in the Selle Valley around September, there just may be a roadside dahlia spotting involved. They’re that astounding. Tall and stately, crowned with colorful mopheads of eye-catching petals, dahlias take up space in the most pleasing way at harvest time. Dahlias are flamboyant and almost always get a reaction from anyone paying any attention.
