Plant spring bulbs now to bring early color, hope and joy to the garden. English photo. By Roberta Bailey Maine winters are long, but our cool, wet spring season is made longer by our impatient yearnings for fresh greens, dry paths and more color in the landscape. Spring bulbs are the bright spots, the color-rich
Jack Kertesz spearheaded the alley cropping demonstration at MOFGA’s orchard in Unity, showing how annual and perennial crops could be interplanted in a young orchard to gain income while waiting for fruit trees to mature. By Jack Kertesz Imagine working with a blank slate of ground and feeling that the outcome might look like some
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,
By Nicolas Lindholm Supported primarily through a grant from the Maine Dept. of Agriculture, this is the fifth in a series of five articles covering some of the most commonly produced and potentially most profitable seed crops currently being grown by small-scale organic and biodynamic farmers in the Northeast. As cofounder and Executive Director of
2009 Farmer-to-Farmer Conference Linda Mercer described ageratum as a “workhorse plant” in bouquets. This bouquet displayed in the Exhibition Hall at the Common Ground Country Fair, combines zinnias and ageratum. English photo. Adding Value Through Bouquets, Arrangements and More By Dr. Lois Berg Stack and Jean English Linda and Jim Mercer of Sheepscot Flower Farm
Toki Oshima drawing By Ellie MacDougall Roses may not seem an obvious candidate for the dinner table, but their presence can turn the relatively mundane into something quite extraordinary. Buying and Planting Roses Hundreds of named rose varieties exist, and large categories of roses do well in various environments. Studying rose catalogs in print or
By Deb Soule I have often wondered where plant pollinators, such as bumblebees and hummingbirds, sleep during the night. Recently, while gathering fresh calendula flowers the evening before a tropical storm was to hit, I began seeing individual bumblebees nestled inside dozens of calendula blossoms, as if someone had told them it was time to
Growing cut flowers can be management- and labor-intensive, but they are a high-margin crop if managed well – and they beautify your fields. At the November Farmer-to-Farmer Conference in Bethel, Maine, Barbara Murphy of the University of Maine Cooperative Extension in South Paris, Nancy Stedman of Little River Flower Farm in Buxton and Don Beckwith
A small representation of some 300 daylily varieties grown at Deerwood. Photo courtesy of Brian Hendricks. by Joyce White Beverly and Brian Hendricks bought their small farm in western Maine’s Waterford in 2001. They had always wanted to own an old farm, and Bev smiles in acknowledgement that their early dream “to feed the world
“Der Rosenmeister,” Leon Ginenthal (sitting on his rose bench), owns Der Rosenmeister in Ithaca, New York, a source for hardy roses for local folks and of information on hardy roses for the rest of us. Photo by Sue Smith-Heavenrich. by Sue Smith-Heavenrich While I love roses, I have been intimidated by the idea of actually
