By Will Bonsall Water is essential to every biological process, so successful gardening depends on enough water being available at the right time. It may be in the soil or even in the plant tissues themselves, but it must be present and available. Without it you can load the soil with endless nutrients and they
If you’d like to grow your own flowers from seed, this basic calendar can help. Below is a list of common flowers that grow well in Maine with dates for sowing seeds indoors and transplanting out seedlings, as well as direct seeding, informed by what is recommended for each flower type. The dates are approximate,
By Caleb Goossen, MOFGA’s Crop Specialist One of the events that I look forward to at the Common Ground Country Fair every year is the “Answers to Your Organic Vegetable Questions” session that I put on each morning in the MOFGA Tent with Eric Sideman, MOFGA’s crop specialist emeritus, and Mark Hutton, University of Maine
By Ivonne Vazquez There are many methods for making compost and just as many types of compost bins. I’m going to focus on building a cold compost bin using wooden pallets. Why Cold Compost? Cold composting is a method of composting in which you do not regularly turn your compost pile. It is easy to
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
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
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
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
By Jonathan Mitschele Years ago, The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener published an article about starting corn in mid-April in forestry trays from Stuewe & Sons, and I have used this method for growing early corn ever since, transplanting seedings in mid-June. There are downsides, however: (1) the trays with shipping are an expensive initial
by Sue Smith-Heavenrich If you garden, you’ve seen flower flies, though you may not recognize them. They’re the ones that look like bees and wasps and hang out on many of the same flowers that bees visit. Flower flies are also called hoverflies because of their ability to hang in midair by rapidly vibrating their
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