February 13, 2017

app updates

I’ve been working on updates to Skippy’s Calendar apps. It’s really fun – like imagining a summer garden in the middle of winter! We’ll have more plants and more seed sowing information added to both our Flower & Herb app and our Vegetable app. Updates will be available in a week or two (or three) to all purchases made now or later.

January 30, 2017

crop rotation

I recently finished making plans for my vegetable gardens and posted the diagrams. A reader noticed I always plant my butternut squash in one place: on the arbor in the middle of my community garden plot. I like it there. It looks nice and does well. But the reader asked: Why don’t you rotate its location? Well my view is crop rotation is more often important for farmers growing big fields of vegetables. Growing in a small space is different. It’s hard to separate plants in a 500 sq ft…

January 29, 2017

garden plans

So far, this is what I have for my garden plans. Maybe a draft, but for now it’s a start. I’m working on detailed plans for the plantings in the front three beds of my community garden. I want to make them look really nice.

January 27, 2017

I’m working on my garden plans today and hope to be done tomorrow. I’m encorporating crop rotation and allocating space for all of the varieties I want to grow. Plus, I want to include lots of flowers that attract beneficial insects and make the gardens beautiful. I want to reduce planting in rows this year and go for more patches and combined plantings.

January 14, 2017

seed catalog

Today I ran across a seed company I didn’t know about. NE Seed Co. They have a really nice catalog. I was getting my haircut and they had the catalog on the table. What hair salon has seed catalogs! Great reading. I just requested a copy. I can always find room for a few more varieties in my garden, but mostly I want to finish reading it. NE Seed Co is a seed distributor located in Hartford CT.

January 13, 2017

5 weeks ’til I start planting!

It’s 16 weeks ’til my last spring frost – which means only 5 weeks ’til I start planting! OK, it’s still a while, but why not start getting ready. I have to clean off my plant shelves, get my pots and trays out of the garden shed and clean them all, make sure I have potting soil, and get my seeds ready to go. I’ll be using my planting app again. It’s made it very easy for me to keep up with what to plant when. It’s at the Apple…

January 6, 2017

New Year’s “sort-of” resolutions

I’ve made a list of things I’d like to do better, or differently, in my garden this year. Not necessarily “resolutions”, but things to try to do. And not too many things. Three seems like a good number. Label plants better: I think this has been on my New Year’s to-do list for several years now. One problem is that I like to use compostable wood labels, but they, hmm, compost, in garden soil during the season. I’m going to use plastic this year. I’d really like to know what’s…

January 1, 2017

New Year’s lists

New Year’s Day is a good time for looking forward and making lists. I haven’t made a resolution list. I’m not so big on them since I’m usually not disciplined enough to follow through. I do like to write up seed lists. I love a new year and a new garden to think about. I’ve just finished up my 2017 variety list – between New Year’s family activities, and a lot of food, drink, and generally celebration. My list has 118 different varieties of vegetables, herbs, and flowers. Of these,…

December 29, 2016

my list of seed varieties to grow for 2017

My total number of varieties to grow this year is 132. I’ve saved 9 myself, have 102 packets saved from previous years, and I’ll buy (or share with other gardeners) another 21. I’ll just grow a few plants of most varieties so I can try a lot of different ones. I’m trying 14 new varieties and many varieties that I grew last year that I won’t grow this year. Vegetables: Beans, Bush: Maxibel, Jumbo, Black Valentine, WadeBeans, Pole: Wax, Shung Wang’s Beans, Emerite, Logan Giant, Kentucky Wonder Beans, Bush, Shell:…

December 29, 2016

few catalogs, lots of plans

I’ve only gotten 4 or 5 seed catalogs this year. Not sure why I like to see them accumulate in a stack this time of year. I suppose memories. I used to read them cover to cover. Curled up on the couch after dinner while a football game was on the TV. I used to read all about each plant, how to grow it and harvest it, what to expect. Then I’d circle it and mail in my order. These years I collect the catalogs but they stay in their…

weeks and counting until my last spring frost