“All [kayak rental] transactions occur at the Arcadian Shop,” Arcadian Shop co-owner Chris Calvert told The Berkshire Edge during a July 9 phone interview.
Once root-bound specimens are out of their pots or dug from the garden, divide them by cutting with a knife, hatchet or saw, whatever is most appropriate for the particular situation and most safely done.
When we grow our own roots, greens, herbs, flowers and fruits – plying mostly with human-powered tools and ingenuity – we build body and spirit and contribute to the health of our world.
South side natives and North Shore residents of every ethnicity imaginable stood side by side, weathering the cold to get tickets to an unimaginable moment: a speech commemorating our first black President and his eight years in office.
By day’s end, 15 inches of snow had whitewashed whatever we’d wished to accomplish in the garden before winter. Snow accentuated every landscape and architectural feature, creating new beauty.
At this time of moving between preparing outdoor and indoor spaces for winter, dig and pot a few of the frost hardy plants still in the ground. Where trees have grown so tall as to block hours of direct sunlight from the vegetable garden, late fall and winter are good times to harvest them for firewood.
We are fundamentally light farmers. Harvest as much sunlight energy as possible by having as much green leaf as possible — therefore as much of the year as possible.
There’s still time to plant more radishes and broadcast seeds of lettuce, spinach and Asian greens in beds where alliums, spring beets and potatoes grew.
There are vast nutritional differences among the varieties of a given fruit or vegetable. …..To this day, the nutritional content of our man-made varieties has been an afterthought.
-- Jo Robinson, Eating on the Wild Side
Although the vegetable gardener is focused on growing staple foods, immeasurable benefit is gleaned when “edge elements” are included. Plants of purely botanical and ecological interest invariably attract beneficial birds and insects.
I aimed the cold-water spray through the trellis wire to the outer row, swinging the hose slowly, deliberately. Into the midst of my concentration on the task, a ruby-throated hummingbird flew, suspending its colorful little body in the spray I was creating.
We developed a design that took a straightforward approach. From the driveway, we built a bluestone walkway about 25 feet long that connects the drop-off point to the front porch. I like to have wide landings outside front doors, so that more than one person can stand together and then enter the home.
The garden has thrown off its snow blanket and frost-hardy vegetables are growing despite occasional nighttime temperatures in the 20’s when the top layer of earth freezes solid.
