Looking Back On Our Gardens of 2024, And Ahead to 2025

I am a bit embarrassed to admit this, but I believed in Santa Claus longer than anyone I have ever met. Fifth grade, maybe sixth. To this day, some 70 years later, I still believe in the mystery and joy of giving wonderful gifts that suit the receiver, things that will surprise and delight the recipient – just as Santa always did for me. Let’s look at some great gifts you might consider for your loved ones this holiday season.

 

Books are always wonderful gifts. My favorite new book is by Barbara Damrosch, author of the fabulous “Garden Primer”. It is called “A Life in the Garden: Tales and Tips for Growing Food in Every Season”. It imparts lots of information from a lifetime of gardening and farming in Maine, alongside her husband, author Eliot Coleman. Along with good information, it has delightful snippets about her life and views. I learned that I can plant rows of carrots just 2 or 3 inches apart – each carrot needs just 4 square inches. I’ve been wasting space! Reading it is like sitting down with a knowledgeable Auntie and listening to stories and tips. Unlike most gardening books, it made laugh outloud, too. Hardback $40.

 

Another favorite this year is “Plants for the Winter Garden. Perennials, Grasses, Shrubs, and Trees to Add Interest in the Cold and Snow” by Warren Leach. Since we have 5 months or more of cold, this book is very useful. Leach is a prize-winning garden designer, and his book is nicely illustrated with lots of photos and useful information.  Hardback $40.

 

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that I have re-printed my book, “Organic Gardening (not just) in the Northeast: A Hands-On Month-by-Month Guide. It is a collection of my articles gleaned from 10 years of this column. Each of the 12 chapters has eight articles relevant to a month in the garden. Get a signed copy by sending $24 To Henry Homeyer, PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746.

 

It’s not just regular visits to the garden that make a good gardener: it’s also tools. Good tools make gardening more efficient, less work and more fun. Every year I mention my favorite weeding tool: the CobraHead weeder (www.CobraHead.com). It is a curved single-tine weeder that easily gets under weeds and allows you to tease out all the roots. Mine is a steel extension of my hand, and I use it for planting, weeding, and more.

 

New to me this year is the 10-tine bedding fork. The one I use is made by Ames and comes with a sturdy wooden handle (which is better than fiberglass, I believe). Originally made for cleaning manure out of stalls, it is perfect for moving mulch, wood chips, straw and compost. It can also be used to smooth out the mulch after spreading it.

 

Watering cans are often a disappointment. I no longer will buy plastic ones – the material often breaks down in the sun after just a few years.  But good galvanized metal watering cans can be expensive, and are not often sold at your local garden center or hardware store. Here’s what to look for: get one with a handle that runs from the front to the back of the can. This allows you to easily carry it and to water with one hand. Handles going from side to side require two hands. Size is important. I like big: 2.5 gallons. Smaller people may want smaller cans. Water weighs 8 lbs per gallon. Make sure the rose (nozzle) is removable for cleaning out leaves. Mine is antique, and you might find a good one in a second-hand store.

 

Seeds are good stocking stuffers and offer friends new varieties to try. I started cardoon seeds indoor under lights this year, starting in early February. At maturity, the plants stood up to 3-feet tall with handsome gray-green leaves. Best of all, the ribs of the leaves, when cooked properly, taste just like their relative, artichoke – and provide much more food. Got a favorite winter squash? Give a packet of seeds.  Kohlrabi is another lesser-known veggie with seeds you might give to a friend to try. 

 

Heirloom, self-harvested tomato seeds you saved can also be shared if your recipient is willing to start seedlings indoors. Or give seeds from your favorite annual poppies or morning glories.

 

My wife Cindy and I are committed to minimizing our use of plastic – both for the environment and for our health. Plastic is a petroleum product and has been found to exude micro-particles of plastic that we ingest. If you agree, think about buying glass containers for left overs and store purchases. I get all my deli meats wrapped in paper and transfer them to glass containers when I get home. I recently solved the problem of how to keep bread fresh from the bakery without using a plastic bag for storage: King Arthur Flour makes a cloth bags with an inner bag of waxed fabric. It really works!

 

Fend Off: Deer and Rabbit Repellent is another good gift. A package contains 25 small cylinders with a close pin attachments. They contain garlic oil and last all winter! These really work for me.

 

A gift certificate to your local, family-run gardening center is another great choice. It helps them make it through the winter, and it provides choice for your loved one.

 

Henry can be reached at henry.homeyer@comcast.net. His column appears here monthly.

Winter is fast upon us. The shortest days of the year are ahead, but gardening is done for most of us. That being said, I still have flowers in bloom outside: my witch-hazel trees are showing gorgeous, twisty-petaled yellow flowers, even after a light snow and several hard frosts. And I still have a few blossoms on one of my ‘Knockout’ roses.

 

If you planted any trees or shrubs this year, make sure they go into the winter well-watered. We’ve had dry times this summer and fall, so a slow, deep watering is needed now. A woody plant’s roots are still growing now – even after leaf drop, and until the ground freezes around them.

 

I’m not sure why, but I saw very few Asian jumping worms this summer – perhaps the hot, dry weather inhibited their spread. I think I only have them on one portion of my property, but I am being careful about the possibility of spreading egg cases. I like to chop up my fall leaves and save them for use in the garden, but I don’t do that with leaves in the area where I’ve seen those dreaded worms. Instead I just use them for mulching beds already infected with the invasive worms.

 

This is the time of year to think about protecting our woody plants from deer predation.  I can’t afford to encircle our 2.5 acres of gardens with an 8-foot tall fence, the best way to protect plants. And Rowan, our 4-year old Golden/Irish Setter mix helps discourage deer but he lives indoors and sleeps by the fire all night – just when hungry deer are marauding. Winter is when they want to munch your rhododendrons and other yummy things.

 

There are several ways to discourage deer. I have found that garlic clips attached to branches about 3 feet off the ground are good. I buy some called “Fend Off Deer and Rabbit Odor Clips”. These are little green plastic cylinders that contain garlic oil. They repel deer for up to 5 months. Unlike sprays that wash off after a hard rain, these really do a great job. I’ve seen footprints of deer that approached tasty shrubs, sniffed and walked away.

 

If you have had deer eat the lower branches of you yews, a favorite evergreen for deer, you can also protect your plants by wrapping them with burlap. Yes, tedious, but it is 100% effective. I have done it for years for a client.

 

Voles, chubby rodents with short tails, are common everywhere and love to nibble on the bark of young trees, particularly fruit trees. You can protect your trees by placing a cylinder of quarter inch “hardware cloth” around them. It comes in 18-inch rolls, which you can cut with tin snips. Wear gloves, it’s razor sharp when cut. But don’t let your tree engulf the wire – which it can do in 3 years or so.

 

I know that March is traditionally the time for pruning fruit trees, but November is fine, too. And you shouldn’t have to wade through deep snow to do so. A quick reminder of how to do this: Start by removing any dead or damaged branches. Next evaluate the overall form of the tree: Is it a handsome plant? Can sunshine get to every branch? Is there clutter that should be removed? If so, get to those branches next. Evaluate the future of any branch in question: what will it be like in 5 years?

 

Branches on the outside of the tree that are headed back to the center of the tree should be removed. And of course, remove those pencil-thick upward racing water sprouts before they become big. Rubbing or crossing branches? “Off with their heads”, as the Red Queen would say in Alice in Wonderland.

 

It is not too late to plant spring bulbs. Selection in stores and on-line may be limited, but there is no such thing as a terrible tulip or disgusting daffodil. Daffodils are, generally, more successful than tulips as they are slightly toxic and not eaten by deer or rodents. But next spring you can surround or cover your tulip beds with chicken wire to keep deer from eating them. I generally plant 100 tulips inn my vegetable garden each year to use as cut flowers and as gifts or friends and the elderly. I treat them as annuals, pulling the bulbs to make room for tomatoes or lettuce in summer.

 

If the previous owners of your house planted shrubs around the house, snow from roof may slide off and break branches, particularly if you now have a steel roof. You can save them by making little plywood A-frames. Do this by screwing legs made of strapping or hardwood stakes onto lightweight plywood. Drill holes at the tops of the legs allowing you to connect front and back with a piece of wire so you can spread the A-frame out as needed, and fold it up to put away in spring.

 

Be sure to drain your hoses and put them away before winter.

 

Thanksgiving is coming. I celebrate the harvest, as well as my good health, good friends and family, and living in a safe part of the world. I make a point of celebrating by serving vegetables that I have grown myself. This year I have, from my garden, potatoes, carrots, Brussels sprouts, Swiss chard, kale, Italian dandelion greens and garlic. And we’ll make extra applesauce to give to our guests.

 

So do a little more work in the garden now. It will help dispel the winter doldrums.

 

Henry lives and gardens in Cornish Flat, NH. E-mail him at henry.homeyer@comcast.net or write him at PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746.

Despite some hot sunny days, fall is fast approaching and it’s time to start thinking about cleaning up the garden and putting it to bed. No, I not suggesting you cut back all your perennials or pull all your vegetable plants. But October, the time most gardeners put the garden to bed, may be cold and rainy. We even got 5 inches of wet snow one October. So get started!

 

Let’s look at the most neglected area: the vegetable garden. By October many gardeners are sick of weeding, so they pick their peppers, pull the carrots, and quit. I recommend cleaning up each bed as soon as all the food has been harvested. So far I have pulled my garlic and dug my potatoes. Each time I took half an hour or so to weed the bed, cover it with old newspapers (4 to 6 pages) and then covered that with 4 to 6 inches of straw. That way, next spring, weeds and grasses won’t take over beds while the soil is still too cold and wet for planting vegetables.

 

The leaves and stems of any vegetable that showed signs of blight should be treated with care: instead of putting the diseased plants in the regular compost pile, put them in a separate pile – one that will not be used to produce compost. Spores are the “seeds” of disease, and can survive most composting. Squash family plants often have fungal diseases, as do tomatoes and potatoes.

 

Your flower beds need weeding, too. If you don’t use an edging tool to create an impenetrable canyon around your flower beds, it is important to pull creeping grasses and vines like ‘Creeping Charlie’ that have probably been sneaking in all summer. Use a good weeding tool to go down deep when you weed. I like the CobraHead weeder best. (www.cobrahead.com. It is a curved single-tine cultivator that can get below weeds so you can pull from below as you tug on the tops. It can tease out long roots of things like goutweed.

 

Once Jack Frost visits, you can cut back any annuals to the ground. If you pull them, you leave a bare spot for wind-borne weed seeds to settle in and wait for spring. And on slopes leaving loose soil exposed is likely to allow hard rains to wash away some of your good soil. You can pull the roots of those annuals when you plant more next summer.

 

I use three methods for minimizing weeding each year in my perennial beds. The best is to just fill every square foot of each bed with plants you love. Groundcovers like barren strawberry or foam flower will spread and fill in around the peonies and coneflowers – even if they are shaded by them. With time, most perennials create bigger clumps until weeds are shaded out and new airborne seeds don’t easily find a place to thrive.

 

The next alternative is to mulch those bare spots around existing plants with chopped autumn leaves. Chopped leaves break down more quickly than chopped branches or bark mulch. They provide organic matter to feed the soil organisms, enriching the soil. They also provide a soft landing and good places to hide for caterpillars that are ready to make their cocoons that become butterflies and moths. This fall think about running your lawnmower over the leaves on the lawn and either using a bagger, or raking them up. You can spread them this fall, or save in a pile to use in the spring. 

 

Since I rarely have enough leaves, the third alternative for keeping down weeds is to buy finely ground bark mulch in bulk. For big gardens like ours it would be expensive to buy mulch in bags – but for around $50 a scoop of a front end loader, I can get a pickup truck load from my local sawmill or garden center.

 

I recommend buying a natural-colored bark mulch. The orange or black mulch has been dyed with chemicals, and I don’t want them in my garden. Hemlock and cedar are probably the longest-lasting bark mulches but hardwood mulch may be better for your plants and the soil. Never apply more than a couple of inches of bark mulch on your beds – otherwise moisture from short rains will not seep through to water your plants. And NEVER make “mulch volcanoes” around your trees – they will rot the bark and eventually kill the trees.

 

When your perennials look bedraggled it’s time to cut them back. But I leave flower stalks with seeds that birds can eat in winter. These include purple cone flower, black-eyed Susans, Joe Pye weed, sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ and anything else that would feed the birds.

 

You can cut back your perennials with your hand pruners, but I find it slow and tedious. I prefer to use a harvest sickle or even a serrated steak knife. These allow me to grab a handful of stems, and slice right through them all. You can use a string trimmer to work even faster, or even a lawn mower, I suppose.

 

By the way, if you haven’t cut the tops off your Brussel sprouts yet, do so today. This will keep the plants from getting taller, and they will instead make them produce big, fat “sprouts”. I did it much earlier than usual this year, and I am already getting nice big sprouts. Kale is very frost hardy, so I will leave mine alone, just harvesting what I need for smoothies or soups. It can last until Christmas in the garden.

 

So enjoy the warm and sunny days of September to get a jump start on your fall cleanup. And read a good book by the woodstove on those cold, gray, drizzly of October.

 

You can reach Henry at henry.homeyer@comcast.net.

It seems to me that summer has been zooming by. Of course, I did plant many vegetables two to three weeks earlier than usual and crossed my fingers that Demon Frost would not appear. It didn’t. We’ve had a very sunny summer, and my garden is thriving.

 

I planted 35 tomato plants this year. Why so many? I eat tomatoes 3 meals a day when they are available and like to have enough to share with friends and neighbors. But most importantly, I freeze them to use for the rest of the year. I eat stews with a tomato base all winter, and love having tomatoes that I know are organic and picked at their peak of perfection.

 

If you have a big vegetable garden, you probably should have a freezer. I have two. I cook with frozen vegetables from last year until this year’s crop comes ready. 

 

You can freeze whole tomatoes in freezer-grade Ziplock bags. Make sure the tomatoes are clean and have no bad spots. Close the bag right up to a straw that you place in the corner of the bag and suck out the air. Quickly pull the straw out and finish closing the bag. Put several bags in a single layer on a cookie sheet and put in the freezer. Nine medium tomatoes will fill a quart bag.

 

When you need some for a soup or stew, just take a few out, rinse them under hot tap water and the skins will rub right off. Put them on a chopping board for a few minutes and you can dice them.

 

I grow 8-10 ‘Sun Gold’ Cherry tomato plants each year. They are a delight popped in the mouth right there in the sunshine, but I usually dehydrate most of them. I cut clean, ripe Sun Gold cherry tomatoes in half and place them cut-side up on the tray of a food dehydrator. I start the process at high heat – say 150 degrees – for 30 minutes, then drop the temp to 125 or 130 so that I don’t damage the vitamins in the tomatoes. You can take them out when brittle, or earlier when they are leather-like. They store well in a dark cupboard, in the fridge, or in a freezer.

 

I love kale fresh or frozen. It is great in winter stews, smoothies or Colcannon, an Irish kale and potato dish. I blanch kale and other brassicas by dropping the chopped leaves into boiling water for a minute, then removing them and dropping in cold water in the sink. I drain, spin dry in a salad spinner, and spread out the kale on a cotton tea towel and blot dry. This process is easy if you have a blanching pot with an inner pot that has drainage holes so you can pull all the leaves out quickly.

 

Most green vegetables need blanching to store well in the freezer. This includes Brussels sprouts, broccoli, beans and squash. The quick boiling kills the enzymes that cause aging, making for a better product. I don’t blanch tomatoes, peppers, fruit or leeks. But for best results it is good to eat frozen foods in year one, not year four or five.

 

The easiest way to keep food for eating all winter is to store it in a cool location. I have a cold basement and a cool area in the entry area of my house. Potatoes, carrots, kohlrabi, rutabagas store well in the basement with high humidity and temperatures in the 33 to 50 degree range. Cabbages store well there, too, but a fridge is better for long term storage.

 

Other veggies need low humidity and cool temperatures. Those include onions, shallots, garlic and winter squash. I keep them on a wooden rack I got from Gardeners Supply, their “orchard rack”. I have that in the main part of the house where I have a woodstove – hence low humidity. But I keep them near the mudroom, which is unheated. You can also keep squash under the bed upstairs in a spare bedroom with the heat off and the door closed.

 

When picking vegetables or fruit for later use, it’s important to pick when ripe – which is not always easy. Apples are easy. Pick one, slice it open and look at the seeds. If white or green, not ready. If the seeds are black or brown, they are ready to pick. They dry well for snacks all year.

 

Winter squash and pumpkins are trickier. You should use pruners to leave some stem when you pick, and that should be dry and a bit brittle. The outer skin thickens and toughens up more, the longer they stay on the vine. I recently ate a butternut squash that I’d stored on a shelf since last fall, and it was delicious.

 

Green beans get tough if you don’t pick them when ready. If you start to see the individual seeds as prominent lumps, they are probably over the hill. Cook some up and you may still find them edible, even if not perfect. Some varieties, such as ‘Kwintus’, are tasty even when big.

 

Garlic? When the leaves start to dry up at the base of the plant, you can pull them. I’ve been told to cure them in a cool, dry place before cutting off the stems. They are said to absorb some nutrients from the stalks into the bulbs.

 

The bigger your garden, the more you can store for winter. But you can also support your local farm stand and buy some produce in bulk for storage. I recommend it.

 

Although semi-retired, Henry still answers e-mail. Write him at henry.homeyer@comcast.net

There is much gloom and doom spread in the news and on social media. Many people believe that our ecosystem is irreparable – climate change is bringing death and destruction to many of the animals that we share the earth with. But some gardeners believe that although the climate is changing, they can still plant many species of plants that will sustain our birds, butterflies, bees, moths and all the little animals that we share our space with. I am one of those optimistic ones.

 

If you want to help save our ecosystem, here are some suggestions:

 

Start by reducing the size of your lawn. Yes, keep space for badminton and a grill, if you like. But think of lawn as an area rug, not wall-to-wall carpeting. Most Americans inherited a large lawn when they bought their house. I’ve read that American lawns cover an area as large as New England. We can all do with less. Perhaps you can develop a five-year plan to reduce the lawn and add trees, shrubs and perennials.

 

This is not a quick fix, nor an inexpensive one. But you need not plant large trees. In fact, small trees are less shocked at transplant time, and take off and grow like crazy while bigger trees often stall and sulk.

 

Choose your trees wisely: plant trees and shrubs that are native to New England, not Japan or China. Why? Native trees co-evolved with our pollinators. Bees, butterflies and moths look for plants that they instinctively recognize. Plants that will benefit them. We all know that Monarchs rely on milkweed, but most pollinators have similar habits – they eat what their ancestors ate.

 

According to PhD entomologist Doug Tallamy, author of Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard, oaks are the best trees to plant to support pollinators and birds. They are followed by other keystone trees: willows, birches, poplar and elm. Most maples, ash and beech are good, too.

 

You may wonder why native trees are so important. Dr. Tallamy explains in his book that all baby birds are fed caterpillars- even young hummingbirds. Using a game camera, he determined that a nest of chickadees needs between 6,000 and 9,000 caterpillars between hatching and fledging. Amazing! We don’t often see those caterpillars or the feeding they do on our trees, but they are there if we have native plants.

 

Birds need food, water, safe places for nesting and places to stay out of the wind in winter. A well thought-out garden can address all those needs. Yes, it is nice to offer seeds in feeders in winter, but birds need insects or seeds to eat all year. Native trees and shrubs can help significantly, particularly if all your neighbors plant well, too.

 

Plant trees in clumps – three, five or seven in a small grove. This way their roots will mingle, and if a storm with ferocious rain and high winds comes along, they will be much less likely to get blown over.

 

Instead of surrounding your new trees with lawn, think about planting native perennials, wildflowers or ground covers under them. When a caterpillar is ready to pupate and transform itself into a moth or butterfly, it will drop off the tree it has been feeding on. On a lawn compacted by heavy riding mowers, it will probably not survive. They need leaves to hide under, or soft earth they can burrow into. Autumn leaves make a great mulch, either chopped or whole.

 

As part of your planting efforts, remove all invasives. All New England states have laws naming the invasives to your state. These include, but are not limited to burning bush, barberry, Norway maple, oriental bittersweet, autumn olive, buckthorn, privet, honeysuckle and multiflora rose. Go on-line and educate yourself as to what these plants look like. Some can be dug out, but older specimens can be difficult to remove.

 

Apparently 82% of Americans live in cities or large towns. But city dwellers can make a difference, too. In Tallamy’s book he writes about a woman in Chicago with just a tenth of an acre of yard – right next to O’Hare airport. Over time she planted 60 species of native plants in her yard – and over time she identified 103 species of birds that visited her yard. Having water available, especially if it bubbles, is good. It also attracts migrating birds. Native plants provide food for migrating birds, too – insects and seeds that they need for their long flight.

 

Instead of just lawn, build rooms using native trees and shrubs where you and your family can relax – and observe nature. No, you will not see cougars in your garden, but seeing monarchs and bluebirds can give great joy. Build natural areas using 90% natives and start learning the names of the creatures that come.

 

Teach your grandchildren to watch nature with you, start them young to be love the outdoors – and gardening. My grandfather started me gardening when I was just a little tyke, and now, some 75 years later, I get great joy from my garden every day of the year.

 

Henry lives and gardens in Cornish, NH. Send questions to him at PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746 or by e-mail at henry.homeyer@comcast.net.