https://www.facebook.com/2024140087813101/

Country Roots Gardening, East Fishkill, NY (2026)

07/23/2024

Choosing what vegetables I’m going to grow is usually the first order of business, but the flowers are equally as important.

It felt like the pollinator presence was late this year, but now I can’t remember seeing so many bees. The amount of honeybees has been especially enjoyable to watch. Maybe someone close by has a new hive or maybe it’s because lots of plants are hitting full stride on the property this year. Probably doesn’t hurt when you basically have a field of white clover, I guess.

I grew a ton of sunflowers this year. There are probably about 50 plants, including volunteers. The abundance of pollen they provide is a major attraction for insects and those insects play an important role to help feed another animal…birds. The insect activity allows for much better pollination of the sunflowers which will provide large amounts of seed for birds in late summer and fall.

The plants that stood out the most, in terms of insect activity, were Mountain Mint(the most diverse insect population), Catmint, Catnip(huge honeybee presence), Sunflowers, Anise Hyssop, Creeping Thyme, verbena bonariensis, Butterfly w**d, lavender, veronica, liatris spicata, cosmos and Cornflower.

Curious to hear what others have experienced this year. What has been the pollinator magnet on your property?

02/18/2024

Processing a Jarrahdale pumpkin for puree.

Last summer I decided to throw some pumpkin seeds directly in the ground, outside of the raised beds, to see how it would do. After a delay in growth, the plant took off and produced 2, nice 10-11lb pumpkins.

I love the shape and color of these(they change color in storage!) and, as it turns out, they are great for making puree. This variety is low in water, has a beautiful flesh and they can keep for a very long time….1-2 years!

Making the puree couldn’t be easier. I cut the pumpkin into quarters, scooped out the guts and seeds, brushed lightly with olive oil and tossed in a 400° oven for 45 minutes. The time will vary depending on the size of the pumpkin, but you want them to be fork tender. You’ll now you’re good to go when you can easily scoop out the flesh with a spoon. Then it goes into the food processor and blended until smooth.

I filled a 12-cup muffin tray with the puree to freeze and then put in a freezer bag. The rest will be used for pumpkin pancakes, muffins, chocolate chip cookies, pasta or maybe even soup. It honestly tastes really good just eating the puree with a spoon. Tons of ways to use it.

Highly recommend this variety, whether you plan to eat it or use for decoration.

09/01/2023

Water droplets accumulate on late season flowers this dew-filled, chilly morning on the 1st day of September.

New England Aster, Sneezew**d and Goldenrod. Seeing them in bloom always gives me that bittersweet feeling. The growing days are coming to a close, but that refreshing, cool, Fall air is soon to take over.

Tired summer plants give their last, before either disease or the inevitable icy grip of frost takes them. Cool weather crops advance and thrive as temps dip.

Summer technically isn’t over yet, with 3 weeks remaining. The temps this weekend will remind us of that. Perhaps a last push for the summer crops to ripen up before the equinox.

Either way, I’m ready for Fall
🍁🍎🎃🍂🎃🍎🍁

08/25/2023

Eggplant lineup this year.

After a very slow start to the season, I’ve had a decent harvest so far.

The first eggplant is a variety called Diamond, which produces 6-7” slender fruit in clusters. Very prolific and has been the main source of eggplant this season. This variety is apparently great for short seasons, which was something I definitely needed this year.

Second is the Black Beauty. Produces more bulbous fruit, ideal for baba ganoush. While the plants have grown large and are loaded with flowers, I’ve only gotten 1 fruit so far. We will see if they produce more before the season ends. Perhaps these plants need a longer season.

Last is the Fairytale. These plants produce large clusters of small fruit. Very prolific and ideal for roasting and eating whole. We like to roast them hole and spread them on homemade crostini. Very photogenic fruit.

Always fun to try new varieties to see what works best for you. The Fairytale will remain on my list and I will probably bring Ping Tung Long back next year.

Which eggplant have worked well for you this year?

08/06/2023

First of the summer squash this year.

In an effort to elude the infamous Squash Vine Borer(SVB), I planted my summer squash in the beginning of July. This is a cultural method of Integrated Pest Management(IPM), which is done to avoid the flight period of the adult moths. The adult moths lay eggs near the base of your plants, then the emerging larvae burrow into the stems and begin to bore through the main stem. Once the main stem gets hollowed out by the larvae, the plant is unable to take up water. The telltale sign that you’ve been had by the great SVB is the whole plant will go limp and appear to be in desperate need for water. However, no amount of watering will revive it.

I also used a physical barrier while the plants were young, but again made the mistake of planting a vegetable in the same location as last year(crop rotation 101). So what happened? SVB adults began emerging inside the row cover 🤦‍♂️ The plus side is that I was able to kill them easily. They also need to mate before the female can lay viable eggs, so as long as I made sure to eradicate them before they got to business, I would be ok.

Once I removed the row cover, I began doing inspections for eggs, not entirely convinced they were done flying. Sure enough, I found some. But the difference between doing this in July vs June, when I’d normally be growing them, is I will probably have far less larvae to deal with in the stems, if any. On years that the SVB has destroyed my plants, I would find upwards of 10 larvae in a single stem at one time.

Another thing worth mentioning is that when you provide a host plant to an insect, they are able to reproduce. So the more eggs that hatch, the more larvae that are able to munch on your squash plants, then drop into the soil and pupate over winter. Then come next year, your SVB problem could be tenfold. While the moths can fly from anywhere, limiting the population in your garden may be helpful to you and your neighbors.

05/30/2023

Baby Bok Choy

First time growing baby bok choy and I will say that it is a pretty quick and easy spring crop here in NY. When I say easy, I mean it’s easy if you keep the crop covered the entire time, so the Cabbage White Butterfly doesn’t turn it into Swiss cheese.

I’m going to knock on wood, but I haven’t seen any of the Cabbage Whites flying around, like at all. I’m thinking the late cold spells we’ve had here maybe set their emergence day back. This has been a very weird Spring to say the least. While we had a couple of crazy warm days early on and, overall, perennials have emerged earlier than usual, we were hit with a FREEZE after our average last frost date! We also touched the upper 30’s again just last week and the low here tonight will probably be 42°. Of course on Thursday and Friday it will be 90° though 🤦‍♂️ So yeah, maybe nature is a little confused 😵‍💫

The variety is Green Fortune from Renee’s Garden seeds and it was direct sowed.

05/24/2023

Sunchokes or Jerusalem Artichokes

Sunchoke(Helianthus tuberosus) is a rhizomatous perennial that is native to North America. The plants can get up to 10’ tall and have sunflower-like flowers(only smaller). The underground tubers are edible when cooked various ways.

Will it attract pollinators? Yes
Will birds enjoy the seeds? Yes
Will deer it eat? Yes
Will it take over your entire garden? YES

This plant is very aggressive, spreading like wildfire via its tubers in a short amount of time. Picture 1 is what my parents’ garden area looked like 1 year after I put 6 tubers in the ground. It spread under the fence and into the raised beds! This was probably partly to do with the fact that the seeds matured and dropped, too.

If you want to grow these, keep them away from the deer, but also plant them somewhere they cannot get out of control. Pots are a good option! You’ve been warned! 😂

05/22/2023

Why, you ask, why would I build this odd structure around the entrance of my shed?!

Lonicera sempervirens, AKA Trumpet Honeysuckle or Coral Honeysuckle. This vining plant, that has red, tubular blooms is native to the Southeastern US, but has naturalized all the way up to Canada. It’s very hardy and the blooms attract hummingbirds and other pollinators, while the fruit attracts some other species of birds. Up here, it’s a deciduous plant, losing its leaves in winter. It’s a woody perennial, but is low maintenance, tolerant of a range of soil conditions and can grow in some shade, but prefers full sun.

The reason for the large trellis is because this honeysuckle can grow 3-6’ wide and 10-20’ tall! I built the trellis to grow over the shed doors and under the birdhouse I mounted. This gives birds an area to perch and, hopefully, feed on berries! I am on a mission to provide a wide variety of berries for birds. In another post, I’m going to show exactly what I’ve planted on my property to help support different species of birds.

A couple of other cool things about this plant is that George Washington himself had this growing at his house in Mount Vernon! He even makes reference to it in his diary! This variety is called Major Wheeler and it was named by Patricia Wheeler, in honor of her husband, Charles Wheeler, who was a major in the US Air Force 🇺🇸🫡 🇺🇸

05/21/2023

The spinach bed took its sweet time to get established, but it’s been really thriving the past couple weeks. Enough for a few harvests and probably a couple more.

BUT it’s that time of year I’m afraid. The nights are short enough now that it has triggered the spinach to flower. I could let them all flower and save seed, but I need the space for other veggies. Spinach plants are typically dioecious, which means plants are either male or female, so when it comes to saving seed, the more plants the better.

I don’t need this bed for another week or 2, so I’ll get what I can from these and maybe freeze what I don’t eat. I find that when I start plants in Fall and overwinter them, I get an earlier and, therefore, longer harvest. So I’ll do that next time.

05/20/2023

Strawberries!

I planted 2 beds of strawberries this Spring, in hopes to be inundated with strawberries in future years for jam, baking, fresh eating and freezing. I used the “matted row” method(kinda), spacing them 12” apart in rows and about 2-3’ apart between rows. I’ll let the runners fill in the area. Realisticall, I’ll probably try to keep the runners from getting too out of hand and prune some back.

I’m growing all June-bearing . Allstar, Honeoye, Earliglow and Jewel. June-bearing plants are the determinates of the strawberry world. They’ll set a large amount of fruit for about 3 weeks of the year. Usually from June to July. This is ideal for when you need a lot for a recipe and it also means they only need your attention(and protection)for a short amount of time.

Picture one is a blossom that has been damaged by frost and the second shows a normal blossom. June-bearing strawberries blossom early in the year, so if you get a late frost or freeze like we just did, it can damage the flowers. Damaged flowers likely won’t produce fruit or if they do, it will be distorted, so it’s best to pinch them off.

Since I just planted these bare root plants this year, I pinch all of the flowers they produce. First year plants need time and energy to get established and allowing them to set fruit means they’ll be using more energy for that.

If you’ve never grown strawberries before, I highly recommend it. The difference in texture and flavor from a store-bought berry is unbelievable!

Country Roots Gardening

07/23/2024

02/18/2024

09/01/2023

08/25/2023

08/06/2023

05/30/2023

05/24/2023

05/22/2023

05/21/2023

05/20/2023

Address

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Shortcuts

Share