Last month I tilled a bed in our garden in southwestern Massachusetts to plant garlic. This was a bed I first dug this past spring, which required a heroic effort. My wife, Suzanne, jokes that creating any new garden space in this hilly Berkshire landscape involves “mining for soil,” that is, you prospect t until [...]

Read Full Post »

9

Read Full Post »

In the course of recent talks with turf grass breeders I’ve learned about all sorts of new and superior grass cultivars. But when I go to the garden center, what I find is mostly seed of the conventional lawn types: perennial rye grasses and Kentucky bluegrass that produce handsome, emerald-green turf but at an unsupportable [...]

Read Full Post »

I’ve planted two small no-mow lawns this fall. One I planted for a Connecticut neighbor who had removed several overgrown Norway spruces and had been left with 1,600 square feet of bare earth as a result. The other lawn occupies an area around my Berkshire cottage that had previously been left to weeds. To keep [...]

Read Full Post »

A dinner invitation from the Eisners, our neighbors in Middletown, Conn., sets my mouth to watering, but also provokes the itch of envy. Both Marc and Patty are great cooks as well as great conversationalists: Marc is an inspired raconteur, and Patty has perfected a dry style of contrapuntal commentary that takes me back to [...]

Read Full Post »

I love the fall. The return of cooler weather drives the mosquitoes and deer flies out of the New England woods so I can hike the old logging roads without suffering the barrage of bites that make summertime walks miserable. I love the clear, slanting sunlight of autumn afternoons, whose rays seem pitched at the [...]

Read Full Post »

The season of the leaf rake and blower is upon us once again—or maybe not, if you garden sustainably.
Rather than removing the leaves from your lawn, you can grind them up in place; a mulching lawn mower will do this if you attack the blanket of leaves before it becomes too thick. Then let the [...]

Read Full Post »

I spent this morning (August 28, 2009) with Dr. Karl Guillard, a professor at the University of Connecticut who, among other things, is researching types of lawn grasses that require smaller inputs of water, fertilizer, and pesticides. He has been a key figure in the University’s “Fescue to the Rescue” program.
One of the primary [...]

Read Full Post »

“Stoop-ed?” the old Yankee farmer is supposed to have said. “Yuh think I’m stoop-ed? Yuh should see my old lady—she’s re-e-ally bent ovah.”
After a summer of lifting and moving stones to build a dry-stack wall, I too sometimes feel distinctly “stoop-ed.” Fortunately, though, I’ve discovered a few simple, non-polluting devices that have taken the worst [...]

Read Full Post »

I love the look and durability of stone and the fact that once installed it requires virtually no maintenance. From the perspective of sustainability, however, it gets a more mixed report card.
When I decided to build a wall in the Berkshires (see photo), I found an abundant supply of stone on the property. Few [...]

Read Full Post »