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Vertical Garden: Wall of Mint

by Ivonne Vazquez Unused materials for a different project turned into an opportunity to create a vertical garden. The project: a wall of mint. “Wha-aat?” you say with great interest while conjuring images of the delightful possibilities, the scent of mint swirling about in your thoughts. With some pieces of wood, plastic plant pots, a

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Working with the Taprooted Nature of Chestnuts

By Anson Biller The appearance of the first taproots of our future chestnut trees emerging from their shells was a pivotal moment at Full Fork Farm in China, Maine. Never mind that I was observing them after the seeds had sat in plastic bags in a walk-in cooler for four months. This was big: The

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Summer Crops for Fall Harvests

By Sam Schipani Summer may feel like the middle of the growing season, but the warmest days mark a time when Maine gardeners can start a new round of crops for autumn harvest. Emily Pence, seeds field coordinator at Fedco Seeds in Clinton, says that planting in the summer can make for an easier growing

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Wirey Weeders: Ridiculously Simple or Simply Ridiculous

By Jack Kertesz Farm and Garden Tool Hacks As MOFGA’s landscape coordinator I am frequently out in the sun on the fairgrounds. Ok, I do wear a hat, but as revealed in this article, it has an effect on my brain. I don’t enjoy repetitive, tedious work, but for some reason, weeding in full sun

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The Maine Rice Project: Insight and Developments

By Ben Rooney There have been plenty of highs and lows during my 10 years of rice production in Maine. In fall 2020, I was feeling dispirited with hard freezes in June and mid-September and yet another dry summer. My paddy system at that time was based on climate change models from 2010, which, following

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Carrots, Reliable and Sweet

By Will Bonsall I can’t think of any other crop which has proven so reliably productive as carrots. I’ve had some disappointing carrot yields on rare occasions, but even then I ended up with plenty of food on the table, even if small or poorly formed. Moreover, due to their growth habit (small footprint with deep

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Lyme Disease in Maine

Land Management for Mitigation By Tim King Maine is among a cluster of eastern seaboard states, trailing south to Virginia, that are considered “high incidence” Lyme disease states according to the Center for Disease Control’s measurement of confirmed cases. For 2017 to 2019, New Hampshire, which is included in the cluster, averaged 73.6 cases of

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Strawberries in Three’s

By Donna Levy Heaven, earth and water; body, soul and spirit; the beginning, middle and end. Threes are attributed to symbolism, aesthetic beauty, crop rotation schemes and, in this case, managing strawberries in raised beds. An avid gardener for years, I tended to get lazy about taking care of strawberries. Inevitably I didn’t renovate them

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Butter: A Wholesome Food

By Roberta Bailey Some of my most vivid childhood memories pertain to butter: making butter in kindergarten, Pilot crackers (4-inch-round crackers with flavor similar to oyster crackers) spread with butter at my grandmother’s house, buttering my hands to form popcorn balls, and making scrambled eggs with butter in seventh grade home economics class (I had

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Brushing Up on Soil Improvement

By Jack Kertesz There is an area of MOFGA’s fairgrounds where we have placed various types of fences to restrict human entrance to where livestock activity happens during the Common Ground Country Fair. Among some traditional and sometimes crude wooden rail fence designs are examples of even cruder types of make-do arrangements. There is a

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