May 1, 2009

Call it climate change, call it La Niña or just call it crazy Texas weather, but for the last three years we have endured a withering freeze each April.  This year’s freeze took out our larkspur, lilies and the first three crops of sunflowers, among many other things.  Many crops were in full bloom. Our […]

I’m a big fan of rolling bed markers and I’ve built quite a few.  The basic idea behind a rolling bed marker is that youcan walk or drive down a bed with the tool and by the time you get to the end of the bed there is a mark for exactly where to plant

Peppers are a warm weather vegetable in the nightshade family (Solanaceae). They are not at all frost hardy, and they require a fairly long growing season to ripen fully. They occupy their space for the whole growing season. Within the basic divisions of sweet peppers and hot peppers, there are numerous types.     Among

Have you ever had a year when it seemed to rain every time you put up a market tent? Not those drizzly little spring showers, but honest-to-gosh sidewalk-washers that made you glad to have good rubber boots, a decent slicker and that the ink used in U.S. dollars does not run? Here in the Northeast,

We’re growing multi-colored cherry tomatoes this summer, driven by a hunch that this is going to be one of 2009’s trendiest, most profitable crops.     I started thinking about this last summer, when a friend brought a many-colored selection of cherry tomatoes to a tomato tasting party. Nearly everyone agreed that the white and

Say you raise cattle on the finest, healthiest pasture, never once showing them a feedlot or a grain of corn. As a farmer, you are an artisan, producing some of the best beef available – beef that tastes great and may even lower your cholesterol. The challenge is finding a market for it. Meanwhile, a