I know you’re reading this and looking out at your small (or large) patch of land and wondering what you’re going to do all winter long with nothing to look at.  Well, snap out of it!  I’m here to tell you there IS something you can do.  You can plant!

P.S. it’s bulb season, but I’m sure you already knew that! Putting the daffodils and tulips in the ground now, with a wee bit of fertilizer, will produce beautiful Buckets (that’s Bouquets) in the spring!  But while they may look good on the table, we can’t eat them.  So dig ye some holes, and fertilize with aplomb.

It’s time for strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries.  The cool night air and the hot sun in the morning make the perfect combination of growing goodness.  And listen, I live on a farm now, I should now!  Or at least the 150 year old farmer in the John Deere trucker hat telling me this at the local feed store should know!  He’s 150 after all!  With these plants, you get the watering out of the way in the fall.  They should be watered quasi-regularly until the first frost.  But after that, you’ll be saved the crazy watering of the spring.  And just so you know, you should chop off all the flowers on your strawberries the first year so they can focus on their root growth.  Doing this in the fall, you can let them bloom away in the spring!

It’s a rough world out there.  A dangerous world.  Bumblebees are crashing into police cars for goodness sake!  Control what you can.  Plants are easy.  Water and fertilize.  People say they kill plants.  Plants are like children.  And many of those people have children.  Think of the summer benefits – strawberry shortcake, blueberry crumble, and raspberries for salads! Jack Frost may be on his way, but Mother Nature is still the Heavy Weight champion.

AEK

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