The Central VT Lifestyle
A Change of Seasons, a Green Thumb and Breakfast Carbonara
With the onset of April comes thoughts of spring, Easter, fresh blooms and hopefully, sunshine. The record breaking heat wave we endured in Vermont this month turned out to be exactly the type of madness I needed. A green thumb has lurked in [...]
Rain Gardens – Managing your Water Resources Naturally
Making a Rain Garden
A developed urban environment – even a rural or suburban residential environment – is comprised of many impervious surfaces that rain hits and quickly runs off, such as driveways, roofs and sidewalks. Instead of percolating gradually into soil and recharging groundwater, the rainfall becomes stormwater [...]
Roundup: Latest Studies & Effects
The Popular Weed Killer and Herbicide, Roundup
With almost any chemical in widespread use, we don’t have the full picture of what we’re dealing with, even as our habitat practically swirls with a chemical stew. Most understanding of long-term health effects is not fully conclusive, because trials are usually done in labs [...]
The Dandelion: Ruthless Invader or Superfood?
For most home gardeners, the dandelion is one of the most frustrating perennial weeds out there. If not the most frustrating, certainly the most ubiquitous. And there’s really no fighting it. The slightest breath of wind can send hundreds of tiny seeds floating several miles from a single flower on [...]
A Guide to Radish Varieties
The emergence of heirloom varieties of familiar, standard produce often has the power to get us excited about the thing we’d been eating for most of our lives. It’s not just a tomato (or eggplant, or pepper) anymore, but a unique treat that comes in all the flavors and colors [...]
Roundup: The Next Big Threat to Our Food System?
Every new technological fix in agriculture helps us forget a little more that it’s actually a living “thing” we’re dealing with. Kind of like an organism, a farm field lives and breathes and evolves. It’s a complex system that is quite biologically diverse and pretty capable of [...]
Early Defenses Against Late Blight
A few malignant-looking spots on the leaves and stem, perhaps a smattering of white fuzz beneath the leaves, and the bottom of your stomach drops out. The first signs of late blight. As a grower of nightshades, what do you need to know to come prepared for this silent ambush before [...]
Creating Your Dream Garden
You’ve browsed the seed catalogs and garden centers. Now is the time of year to roll up your sleeves, rake the debris out of your workspace, and figure out how to work with what you’ve got – what goes in the ground where, and when.
Consider your growing area. It should have as [...]
Hudson Valley Garden Show 2011
One of the most popular pastimes in America will be getting its due in the Capital region this month at the annual Hudson Valley Garden Show. This all out gardening event will take place from March 25-March 27 at the McDonough Physical Education Complex at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy. Over the [...]
Corn is a funny crop. It’s really a mutant grass, but as users of the grass’s seedhead (the cob), we’ve come to know it as both grain and vegetable, in varying genetic strains and stages of maturity. It is also uniquely genetically fragile–the only vegetable we grow whose current generation can be altered by the [...]
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