Recent news has included discoveries of new planets, supernovas and even changes in the rates of the contraction of the original expansion of the Big Bang. A few friends have shared that these various cosmic phenomena make them feel a bit weird, depressed or anxious. In contrast, it makes me feel better, not worse. I […]
Some garden writers seem to have an obsession with lawns. Michael Pollan’s erroneous but extremely influential 1991 op/ed in The New York Times kicked off a two decade landscape architect parlor game. However, the debate over the ecological and environmental value of lawns is much older. Front or back worse? Side lawn okay? Organic lawn […]
Four years ago, I nearly came out of my skin with excitement about “GL 581c“, the second planet from the star (“a”), which is the GL, which stands for Gliese, the name of the astronomer who discovered it. So, the star—or sun—is Gliese. I do not know what the 581 stands for. Matrix number, most […]
Much is made of the aesthetic difference between the season long “show” of flowers and the end-of-season vegetable harvest. Keen gardeners know that a garden can be more nuanced than this; and, on closer inspection, most gardens are successional in both vegetable and flower form, from the beauty of the spring lettuces to the harvest […]
David Mamet wrote, “Money buys you things.” As with communication, it is the context of money that gives it meaning. The same words can light up a listener’s life, or bore another to death. So money can buy food, shelter and clothing; but the same amount can ruin your soul or tear a family apart. […]
Grace Romero is our Research Director. Here she is demonstrating the hybridization process to members of the press on August 19th. We received about 20 media folks per day for two days. This is in the Kitchen Garden at Fordhook Farm looking due south. It was hot, dry and gorgeous. Burpee Kitchen Garden looking north-northwest, […]
Before I put up a post about Media Day for 2011, our upcoming 135th year in business, I’d like to introduce you to the past President of W. Atlee Burpee & Co. before me, and the current President after me. On the left (my right) is William “Bill” MacDowell and to the right is Christos […]
In summer as children, we were allowed to stay out until dusk. In our northern part of the Central Time Zone, even on its eastern edge, dusk came late. I remember most the mosquitoes, fireflies, and bats. Some nights I would watch the bats as darkness fell. First there would be only one, then two, […]
Today, greener-than-thou gardeners crusade for heirloom seeds, while unjustly damming hybrids. Increasingly, their anti-science credo has hardened into a Luddite fundamentalism, resulting in confusion among the public between hybrids and genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Clearly, the hybrid versus heirloom imbroglio is about more than the quest for the biggest, most delicious tomato. As a […]
So close to the sun, canted to receive the longest days. So little cloud cover—or even precipitation in the air. Crops, including tests here at Fordhook Farm, are slowly drying out: roots, trunks, stems, branches, leaves. Petals wave in slow-motion. No wind; so all the desiccation comes from high temperatures and dry air. Stillness is […]
