There’s nothing delightful about carrot roots that have bolted. Yet, I’m here to sing their praises. Carrots are biennials, and are supposed to wait until year two to produce flowers. When they bolt in year one, instead of sending their energy into root production, that energy gets moved into reproduction, aka flowering, leaving the root…
Category: pollinators
Showy Milkweed – Weed or Wildflower?
When it comes to differentiating between a weed and a wildflower, the answer lies in one’s perspective. Many farmers find that milkweed gets in the way. I wouldn’t exactly say that my husband and I qualify as farmers. Though we do live on a small farm and keep farm animals, we earn our living from…
Fall Color on the Farm
As much as I love gardening during summer, the transition into autumn makes me want to give a big sigh of relief. Along with the cooler weather, some glimpses of fall color seem to bring a promise of rest and rejuvenation to come. And while flowers may not be what you think of when I…
Watching Our Pollinator Neighbors
Once the days are warm and the flowers in bloom, one of my greatest and most simple pleasures is watching insects – and our garden affords many opportunities to do just that. Actually, harvesting food from our garden makes me quite happy, but honestly, not as happy as watching these little “neighbors” of ours buzzing…
We Grew It from Seed – Lauren’s Grape Poppy
I’m not sure why, exactly, but I decided to grow several different types of poppies from seed this year. Lauren’s Grape poppy was one of my favorite varieties. With deep purple flowers, this poppy variety was pleasing to the eye – but also to our local pollinators, affording me many pleasurable moments snapping up photos…
Wildlife: Painted Lady Butterflies
Last summer we had some borage come up as volunteers in our garden. Did I say “some”? I meant thousands of plants. We didn’t have borage plants, we had borage patches. This was our first year with a borage explosion, so we thought we’d let some of it live, not realizing just how hardy it…
Hearthwilde 