Author: Bob Bauer

Gardening is great because you don’t have to be very good at it to enjoy it :). Puttering around in the dirt with plants and rocks doesn’t have to be goal oriented. You can create a small scene and tweak it for awhile before moving on. The scenes can connect into an area, and you can admire your work for […]

Many years ago I planted two Asters next to each other. One was purple flowered and one was white. The purple one died a few years ago and now the white one gets purple flowers at the end of the season. What kind of spooky reincarnation voodoo is this? Einstein’s quantum entanglement theory indicates there is a connection between two […]

I’ve taken the mini greenhouses off the spinach and lettuce because they could use the extra light and air circulation. Daytime temps in the mid 60s, and nights in the mid 30s are like springtime for them. I’ll put them back on when we see freezes on the horizon, and I’ll close the greenhouse door. Three pickings for each so […]

It’s a good time to divide your artichokes. Fall and winter is when the plants go dormant and is the best time to propagate. I have been remiss in this regard and had five new plants surrounding an established one. Popping them up out of the ground was easy with a four tined spading fork, but I needed a shovel […]

I decided to dig up the beets and try to figure out why they did so poorly. I discovered a web of wood like roots so dense that they held the soil together like sod. They were blackberry roots from the other side of the fence. I didn’t know blackberry’s sent out shallow roots because they can survive in the […]

The whiteflies have followed me up to the house. They are hanging out on the back deck. This is a good thing because it made me Google do they overwinter? I !earned a lot about them and will take very seriously their appearance next spring. They are a major agricultural problem and have four stages of development, so require more […]

As I punched my dibble into the soil to make holes for my garlic cloves the holes kept caving in. I realized the ground was dry. Having dew on the grass in the mornings made me think plenty of moisture was in the dirt. If the dew evaporates, and doesn’t trickle down to the ground, that is not the case. […]