Growing Points
Jean English lives in Lincolnville.
Recent Posts by Jean English
Vermicomposting: Winter project prepares for spring planting
By Jean English - Feb 04Tired of trekking out to the compost bin in winter? Consider vermicomposting. Vermicomposts, according to the Soil Ecology Laboratory at the Ohio ...
Joe Pye Weed: It’s for the birds (and bees, and butterflies)
By Jean English - Jan 21Looking to make a splash in the flower border or perennial garden? Consider planting a mass of the native perennial Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium ...
Dawn redwood: A tree for the new year
By Jean English - Jan 07The new year is a good time to think about planting an old tree – one so old that it was virtually unknown until fossils of it were found in 1941. ...
Take steps this winter to support pollinators
By Jean English - Dec 25With the solstice on Dec. 22, gardeners begin to anticipate longer days. From the shortest days of eight hours, 50 minutes, 51 seconds on Dec. 21 ...
Plot landscape plans now
By Jean English - Nov 26With the squashes and potatoes stored for winter, garlic planted for summer, bulbs planted for spring, there’s one more garden project that’s ...
Storage crops for winter
By Jean English - Nov 13Did you grow enough squash, onions, garlic and other easily stored crops to last through winter? If not, consider getting these crops now at a ...
Hügelkultur: Making garden beds with woody material
By Jean English - Oct 16Here’s a new gardening term, for me, at least: Hügelkultur. A German word for “mound beds,” hügelkultur involves gardening in beds or windrows ...
Nature abhors a vacuum
By Jean English - Oct 02You know the old saying that nature abhors a vacuum? That was certainly true for the Japanese beetles in Carole Whelan’s Hope garden this ...
Plan now to extend the growing season
By Jean English - Sep 18With a little planning and perhaps some construction now, you can have greens from your own garden all winter and spring. A cold frame; some low ...
Inclined to garden
By Jean English - Sep 04An article called “Ending the Hunger Season” by Fred Brahnson, in the Energy Bulletin ~ discusses SALT: Sloping Agricultural Land Technology. The ...
Japanese beetle management: Daily shakedowns work best
By Jean English - Aug 20Japanese beetles are such party animals. They like to congregate on the tops of leaves or inside flowers, chowing down on the tissues and skeletoni...
Permablitz in Belfast creates edible landscape
By Jean English - Aug 06"Look closely at the present you are constructing. It should look like the future you dream of." Alice Walker’s quote is one of several on the ...
Infatuated with passionflower
By Jean English - Jul 24This spring a couple of Unity College students gave me a blue passionflower plant that they had grown from a cutting. Watching its growth and ...
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Of swallows, bugs, Christmas trees and bayberries
By Jean English - Jul 09Have you ever been dive-bombed by a tree swallow? When I went out to the garden one time, years ago, to harvest greens into a colander, a swallow ...
Lincolnville herbalist focuses on community
By Jean English - Jun 26Kathi (Katheryn) Langelier, now of Lincolnville, grew up in Turner, where she gained a love for farming and for beautiful farmland. As a teenager, ...
Elderberry bounty
By Jean English - Jun 12Two elderberry plants now diversify our little home orchard. I have visions of 15 pounds of berries coming from each shrub, to be used in elderberr...
Two new cookbooks feature luscious local fare
By Jean English - May 31Two new cookbooks by Maine authors will have your mouth watering and your wallet opening at farmers’ markets and other local food venues. They are ...
Sweet woodruff: Pretty, potent, maybe aggressive
By Jean English - May 20I tried to grow sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) once, only to have it die out. Maybe the soil got too dry that summer. Maybe I was lucky and ...
Day-neutral strawberries for long-season harvest
By Jean English - Apr 30When my children were young, the end of the school year was soon followed by the first field trip of summer: To a pick-your-own strawberry ...
Straw bale culture
By Jean English - Apr 16A friend said she’s going to try straw bale gardening this year, since bending down to tend ground-level gardens is getting troublesome as she ...
Ten steps for starting vegetable seeds indoors
By Jean English - Apr 021. Start with viable seeds — seeds that are alive and capable of germinating. Check the germination percentage and date of the germination test on ...
Seedlings need light, good light
By Jean English - Mar 22The equinox is near, the vegetable seedlings cheer. Twelve hours of daylight! Just what the plant doctor ordered. When vegetable seedlings don’t ...
'Queen of the Sun'
By Jean English - Mar 05"Queen of the Sun" is a gorgeous new video about the importance and predicament of bees. It takes us around the world visiting organic and ...
Designing a flower bed
By Jean English - Feb 06I look upon our abundant snow and see a blank slate, a canvas waiting to burst into color. And winter, often forcing us to slow down, and hiding ...
Use seed testing to grow microgreens
By Jean English - Jan 23January is a good time to test seed germination. Place 25 or so seeds on a damp paper towel, roll it up and keep it moist but not soaking. In a ...
Plant asparagus this year
By Jean English - Jan 09Fresh, organic asparagus sold for $4 to $7.50 per pound in Maine in May 2010. You can buy 25 asparagus crowns, enough to plant about 25 feet, ...
Arborvitae: Tree of life
By Jean English - Dec 27Balsam fir may be the Christmas tree of choice, a symbol of life in the dead of winter, but a common landscape tree and woodland native, the ...
Make a living Sempervivum wreath
By Jean English - Dec 06What could be more symbolic of the holiday season than a Sempervivum — Latin for “always living” — wreath? Recently Jeanne Hollingsworth of the ...
Yews in the landscape: More than a foundation plant
By Jean English - Nov 27By Thanksgiving, the landscape can look pretty barren; but this can also be a time when plants with winter interest begin to stand out. Evergreens ...
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Winter Luxury pie pumpkin
By Jean English - Nov 13Long Pie pumpkin has long been my favorite pie pumpkin. From now on, however, it may have to share that spotlight with Winter Luxury, which I grew ...
Sweeetfern: valuable native for tough sites
By Jean English - Oct 30Whenever I drive to my mother’s house in New Hampshire, I think that her portion of the state is held together by sweetfern, which lines her dirt ...
A few new varieties
By Jean English - Oct 01Every year brings some new plant or variety to the garden. This year’s “finds” — new to me — are keepers. Top of the list is ‘Klari Baby Cheese’ ...
Monroe garden thrives using 'lasagna method'
By Jean English - Sep 18Seven years ago, Lynn and Charlie Biebel of Monroe attended a demonstration at the Common Ground Country Fair about the “lasagna method” of ...
Organic gardening: It is for the birds
By Jean English - Sep 04When a family of cedar waxwings took up residence in one of our balsam firs this summer, I was glad we do not use synthetic pesticides in our ...
Gather ye rose hips while ye may
By Jean English - Aug 18Most noticeable in the garden now are the big, reddening rose hips, the large fruits of Rosa rugosa and R. glauca (and, if you have them, R. ...
The Garden Institute focuses on edible ornamentals
By Jean English - Aug 04The Garden Institute in Camden is seeking its niche. The institute sits on the Mechanic Street site where Merry Gardens previously sold herbs, ...
Succession plantings in the vegetable garden
By Jean English - Jul 21When the midsummer harvest is keeping you busy, it's easy to forget to plant succession crops -- additional plantings that will keep your garden ...
Ready for zucchini
By Jean English - Jul 07Jokes about giant zucchinis aside, this crop is as productive and easy as the many recipes for its use. Three plants are enough for our small ...
Fowl talk at Small Farm Field Day
By Jean English - Jun 09The Small Farm Field Day held at the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association's Common Ground Education Center in Unity in late May offered ...
Nasturtiums for fragrance and food
By Jean English - May 19Nasturtiums love my little hoophouse, and I love growing them in there. Last year I grew them up the inside east and west walls of the hoophouse,...
Hosta: much more than a funky shade plant
By Jean English - May 12Hosta, named for Austrian botanist Nicholas Host, is also known as plantain lily and, my favorite, funkia, after the German doctor Heinrich ...
Seed pumpkins now for fall pies
By Jean English - Apr 28Pumpkins (and winter squash), although they ultimately become sizable, tough-looking plants, are somewhat delicate in their early days. They are ...
Cover crops and green manures protect and enhance soil
By Jean English - Apr 14Got a bare patch of garden space where you want to protect or even enhance the soil? Cover crops and green manures are one way to do this. Cover ...
Make a garden bed
By Jean English - Mar 31Growing vegetables in beds is a good way to maximize the amount of food you produce in a given area. Beds can be densely planted because they ...
A low-tech, scissors and paper garden planning tool
By Jean English - Mar 17My last Growing Points column listed U.S. Department of Agriculture data showing how many pounds of various vegetables, on average, each U.S. ...
How many pounds of veggies can your garden grow?
By Jean English - Mar 04The U.S. Department of Agriculture cites a figure of 420.1 pounds for U.S. per-capita vegetable consumption in 2008 and gives the figures in the ...
Saving seeds
By Jean English - Feb 21Completing my seed order this year made me think: I've got to find time to save more seed of more plants this summer and fall; and I've got to do ...
Colorful flowers fill winter dreams
By Jean English - Jan 31The cold, white winter is fertile ground for colorful flower dreams; so as I order seeds for the vegetable garden, lots of flowers creep into the ...
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A new year, a new interest: mushrooms
By Jean English - Jan 10Thanks to two Maine mycologists (experts in fungi) who each published a book in 2009, 2010 will be the year of the mushrooms for me. Those books ...
The beet beat
By Jean English - Dec 27Have you checked your stored beets lately? Keeping an eye on all your stored vegetables is important as winter begins, and using those vegetables ...
Squash chowder: filling fare for chilly days
By Jean English - Dec 06With the cold weather closing in, we're enjoying the labors of last season's garden in hot, filling soups, stews and chowders. These easy meals ...
