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The Constant Gardner Blog Index
October 19, 2007
Blog hibernating for winter

Our garden is creeping to a close and my gardening blog is going to hibernate for the winter.

My only suggestion now is to make sure that your gardens are cleaned out. Get the rotted vegetables and plant foliage cut down, raked up and into your compost. And get rid of any weeds you see, as well. Then settle in for a good winter – plenty of snow cover and temperature not too much below zero along the coast.

Also get ready for some good garden catalog reading during the cool days. I especially enjoy the Maine catalogs, Fedco, Johnny's Selected Seeds, Pinetree Garden Seeds and Wood Prairie Farm,the organic potato company in Aroostook County. Fedco is especially well written, but it doesn't have pictures.

For national catalogs, Plant Delights Nursery is very funny, and Bluestone Perennials is great. I always get tempted by the selection in Vermont Bean Seed Company.

Keep reading the Maine Sunday Telegram column. If there is breaking gardening news over the winter, I will put it online at pressherald.com as a news update.

And I will be back to posting regularly in late March or early April. To know when I've posted, go to the section called Updates under my bio, type in your e-mail address and you'll be notified when I've written something new.

Posted at 11:58 AM

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Comments

Before you get too far into hibernation, will you report out on the sweet potatoes? I'm considering them next year and am hoping to hear how yours did.

Ali

Posted by Ali
October 22, 2007 10:04 AM

I actually just harvested the sweet potatoes yesterday, and am planning to report on the results in my yearly roundup column Nov. 4.

In brief, I got sweet potatoes from all three varieties: Vardamann, Georgia Jet and Centennial. None were huge, but it took the plants a long time to get going in the spring.

Of the three, Georgia Jet, with a red skin, got largest. I have yet to do a taste test, however.

Posted by Tom Atwell
October 22, 2007 12:33 PM

Nice post...

Posted by Oscar
November 30, 2007 04:24 AM

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Tom Atwell has written the Maine Gardener column in the Maine Sunday Telegram since the spring of 2004. He has worked at the Press Herald/Sunday Telegram since 1974, about the same time he started gardening with any seriousness.

He gardens with his wife, Nancy. She not only is the better gardener of the pair, but also knows the botanical names of plants. They have two grown children and three grandchildren.

Tom was born in Skowhegan, grew up in Farmington and graduated from the University of Maine with a BA in journalism. His goal each year is to have continuous compost from his three compost bins, continuous bloom in his low-maintenance garden and more fruits and vegetables on his family table than the garden pests eat in the field.



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