Mar
09
0
We may have several feet of snow left on the mountains, but down low.. spring has suddenly arrived. Time to start season two of NewEnglandGardener.com.
Mark Brown of Andover Massachusetts reports tulips growing rapidly. This photo is from Tuesday March 9, 2010.
Same at my house, tulips grew 5″ this week, catching up with daffodils. The daffodils will bloom first.. April First that is
Mark also reports way too many pine cones raining from our sunny sky.. left over from last year’s excellent White Pine growing season.
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One week after watching the Patriots play in the snow, this Sunday (Oct 25, 2009) was the final day for our Garden. And what a Fun Day! We all took turns cutting a pumpkin from the vine. Though our first frost is yet to occur, this is Halloween Week, so there is no excuse but to put the ‘Garden to Bed” as Amy did last week. It was a sad year for Tomatoes, but the Pumpkin Productivity brought plenty of smiles. The harvest is a three step process:
Summer of 2009 started cold and wet here in New England. Our tomatoes, pumpkins, and blueberries suffered badly with the worst late blight in years. Though late blight is named for a fungus that usually shows up later in summer. This year we had an early outbreak, before our weather turned warmer and drier in August and September. We now have reports of a fine apple crop, and though we hear sad stories form many pumpkin growers, this writer had his best pumpkin years in years. I guess I lucked out a bit.. I certainly had my worst tomato season ever, and am concerned about my fungus riddled blueberry leaves. Let’s talk about the fun stuff.
I just wanted to write 09-01-09.. Welcome to September in New England 2009 where we may actually have a week without a Hurricane Threat. Our NECN forecast shows sunshine into Labor Day. I am taking advantage of a quiet weather pattern to talk about, and hopefully, get some time in, the garden. There has been no improvement to my tomatoes, many of the vines have completely died. I left the tomatoes on the vine anyway, though I am sure they would ripen equally if I picked them on placed on the window sill. 
During my last in depth discussion, my final though was ‘more on pumpkins next time’. I was going to talk about pruning the vines to possibly increase quality, perhaps at the expense of quantity. I was going to reduce the number of vines from the individual plants. But.. I never got to pruning those vines, now the pumpkins have taken over. I agree with Amy form her weekend post, pumpkins are easy to grow, but you never know how many you are going to get.
