By Roberta Bailey Few plants are as carefree and easy to grow as elder or elderberries, Sambucus canadensis and S. nigra. Also known as common or American elder, this pest-free perennial shrub grows in many soil conditions and prefers the wetter areas where little else will thrive. Yet some people would ask why they should
By Sue Smith-Heavenrich As a Girl Scout, I spent one Saturday morning every summer month weeding and pruning a formal herb garden. I decided, right then, that herbs required more care than they were worth and vowed I would never grow them. Ever. They’re a waste of time, I tell my husband as I tuck
Jean English photo. By Sue Smith-Heavenrich Every summer I put in a garden: a patchwork of red and green lettuces, the traditional trio of corn-beans-squash, a splash of cosmos and bachelor buttons. Our garden puts food on the table, I tell my husband when I ask him to till up just one more weedy patch.
By Nicolas Lindholm Supported primarily through a grant from the Maine Dept. of Agriculture, this is the third of five articles covering some of the most commonly produced and potentially profitable seed crops being grown by small-scale organic and biodynamic farmers in the Northeast. As co-founder and Executive Director of the Maine Seed Saving Network,
By Jean English Tom Hoerth of Bath ate a handful of raspberries, “big, full, really nice berries.” Locally grown berries … Maine berries … on the 27th of March this year! Hoerth says that he still has to pinch himself to believe that he has 1800 raspberry plants going in his greenhouse, located in Wiscasset,
By Jean English Keeping a vegetable garden is like keeping a family: Both need continuous care and nourishment if you want them to thrive. In the case of the garden, that means keeping up the weeding and/or mulching now, and keeping bare spots planted. If you’ve planted all of the lettuce, spinach, carrots and other
By Eric Sideman, Ph.D., Director of Technical Services, MOFGA Tunnels and greenhouses are now being used widely to produce early and often blemish free tomatoes. However, high humidity is difficult to avoid under plastic, and it creates an ideal environment for fungal diseases that can spread very quickly and cause widespread damage. Two common diseases
The Ecologist Provides Overview of “Slash and Burn” Control in the UK By Diane Schivera Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) has other common names: hoof and mouth disease, aftosa (other diseases with similar symptoms use this name) and apthous fever. It is an acute, highly contagious disease caused by one of the smallest, filterable viruses
Toki Oshima drawing By Roberta Bailey I have such gratitude toward Jean Ann Pollard. She has been a guide and inspiration to me in the kitchen since 1987, when she published The New Maine Cooking. Until then, I would go to the garden or the root cellar, choose vegetables for the day, then thumb through
By Roberta Bailey Who can resist the smell of a rose on the coast? The smell of beach roses, Rosa rugosa, pulls up a lifetime of memories for me, but the memories of sitting on sun-warmed rocks using my teeth to scrape the bright orange flesh from ripe rosehips are the strongest. To this day,
