Do you feel like you could have been gardening for a month already? This is the weekend when Mainers traditionally plant their peas, lettuce, carrots, radishes and other cool-season crops. But except for a deluge here and there, the soil has been thawed and dry enough to plant for a month. Up until Easter weekend, […]

Books take time. An author gets a hot idea, perfect for the market at the moment. But then the book has to be written, edited, designed, published and delivered. And maybe the idea isn’t as hot anymore. That probably explains why the mailbox this year has been filled with books about growing food — fruits, […]

Growing apples as a backyard crop can actually work. Maine has been a commercial apple-growing state for centuries, and that means apple pests are everywhere. I had been told that backyard gardeners would have to use too many pesticides to make such fruit growing practical. But Wesley R. Autio, a professor of pomology at the […]

Maureen Heffernan, director of Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, spoke about native plants for Maine gardens at the Portland Flower Show earlier this month. Cheryl Rich of Southern Maine Community College spoke about blooms throughout the season. What I found interesting was that they ended up talking about a lot of the same plants. But they […]