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 Morning, know its been awhile but between Feburary and June is the busy season for us. In this chapter we'll be exploring growing fruits in cold climates. We expirement with alot of season extension techniques but my focus here will crops we can get to harvest without hoophouses and greenhouses. Goji Berry or Wolf Berry is where we'll start, Goji's are one of my favorite fruits and they are incredibly easy to grow. I have had first year Goji's survive highs of 37 celcius and lows of minus 48 celcius. They are incredibly hardy as well as productive. They have...

Warning this post may be even more scattered than our typical post.  Well lets just jump right in, where to start. Do you have prime exposed soil full of organic matter just waiting for you to sow some seeds or you have a brown site where you dont want your soil to touch the ground? Lets assume somewhere in the middle, something most folks are dealing with. Medicore soil with medicore drainage and not alot of organic matter all covered in some scrubby grass.  If asthetics and time arent the greatest concerns but budget is I'd start planning a simple...

 As the title implies we have a challenging discussion ahead of us today, growing a crop like garlic in extreme cold! The standard in our part of the world is fall sowing hardneck garlic and spring sowing softneck. Just a quick point of clarification Hardneck varietys are the slower maturing more cold hardy garlic that produce a scape, possibly even a head that will produce small bulbs. Softneck garlic on the other hand is quick to mature, produces no scape, yields more bulbs and needs warmer temperate weather.  We start both hardneck and softneck garlic by doing  a late winter...

Shallots are an ancient allium originally hailing from somewhere in central Asia, from there they came to India earning the nickname little onion. Onward from India the little onion was brought to the near east, then traded with the Roman's and Greek's. Through time and trade they came to western europe were most bulbs and seeds are produced today. Though that balance is shifting yet again as more producer's are becoming involved in North America, Canada and the United States in particular. Today the vast majority of Shallot seeds are grown in North western Europe, The Netherlands in particular. In recent...

Here at Green Wtich Acres we love doing trails with fruits, we wish cherrys, berrys and melons were produced locally more oftern. We have had a few successes over the years and even more failures.We'll start with the biggest failure, our attempts with Plum trees. We've tried them from seed, sprout and grafted root stock. We tried in an area that was firmly zone 3 to an area charitably considered zone 6. No luck, we even had some rabbits naw through one tree like they were beavers. The Plum tree trials lasted 4 years with us throwing in the towel...