As we celebrate the season's bounty at our Thanksgiving table, our Self-Taught Gardener Lee Buttala is thinking about the alternative feast going on outdoors.
In the snow-covered winter landscape above the Arctic Circle, Lee Buttala realizes that trees connect us to the season we are in, and to the seasons yet to come.
As winter turns toward spring, I’m inspired to dig deep into my pantry and pull out dried seeds that may have been there for many seasons; to look them over and turn them into the fresh food I crave – by sprouting.
Beginning with an aspect of the backstory of seed development seems fitting as the old year turns to the new and all of us have already or will soon choose seeds for our gardens and farms.
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.
A gardener can simply collect seeds, sow them the next year and see what comes up, but a little understanding of the process can greatly impact the results.
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.
In the first of her biweekly columns about growing and gardening in the Berkshires, Judy Isacoff writes: "Stars, the sunlit moon and planets circle the expanse of frozen, fertile ground during these long nights. There’s the sense of a night shift at work underground."
