Winter Delays

Here we go again. It is hard to contemplate gardens when you are looking out the window at a foot or so of snow, but the garden is still there, and stuff is still alive and waiting for spring. I can go over some of last years successes and failures, and will cover some stuff I did to get ready for winter. I have a big deer problem in my gardens, which accounts for a two strand electric fence around my gardens and a lot of my back yard. Despite the fence, the deer got in and ate the tops off my June bearing raspberries, which resulted in no berries in 2007. The plants survived, and last fall (2007) I put a snow fence around all of the June bearers. This stuff is fairly cheap, I got the 4 foot high stuff and put it up with whatever poles and stakes I had handy. So far, the berries inside that fence are still in one piece, as is the fence, so I am keeping my fingers crossed. For the Strawberries growing in raised beds, I mulched the hell out of them with leaves (once the frost finally stopped them), and that camouflage seemed to fool the deer (I will know in the Spring when I uncover them). Enough for Today - Happy New Year.

In the beginning

I have considered trying this for some time and am just now getting around to doing it. I previously wrote a gardening column for the Watertown Daily Times for several years and eventually gave that up. My column was mainly about how I handled my garden, and answered questions from fellow gardeners. At the risk of immodesty, my column was well received and I had a lot of reader response. As for my background, I graduated from SUNY Canton many years ago with an Associates Degree in Agronomy with a Horticulture Option. That was after many years of gardening on my own, and followed up by gardening ever since. My College training explained many things to me about why things happened, and my personal experience filled in the blanks, so to speak. I hope I hear from some folks and get back in business.