Rosemary At Home In The Cold Frame

I've grown the same Rosemary bush for the past 6 years.  It has endured root division, transplanting, trimming, pruning, frigid winters and hot summers.  I owe a major part of its resilience to the cold frame I keep it in during the winters.  If I were to keep the Rosemary outside unprotected for the winter it would surely die.  If I were to keep it in my garage with my figs it would succumb to withering.  Rosemary does not like to be kept in indoor low lighting as it wants sunlight all year long.  The cold frame allows me to give it just that.  You can see in one corner of the cold frame I'm experimenting with a Bay Laurel to see how it does overwintering in the cold frame. So far so good.

Watering The Bay Laurels & Figs

Today was an unseasonably mild 61 degrees for a Pennsylvania January.  It was a perfect time to water the bay laurels and figs as well as get the snow blower ready.  I have three bay laurels per container and this spring each plant will get its own container.  The figs were root pruned this past August so they are ready to go out to the garden once spring arrives.  All the plants you see below have been over wintering in my garage since October.

Kicking The Potted Fig Outside

Over at Garden Rant one of the blogs I visit, I stumbled on a sad article. Turns out that Michele is growing tired of lugging her potted fig back inside for the winter. The 4 figs a year she gets from the tree is also contributing to kicking the fig outside and back into the ground.

Here is some unsolicited advice I have for Michele if she decides to rethink kicking the fig out.

1. Make sure your potted fig isn't root bound in its container. If there are too many roots the fig will not produce well. Even two year old figs can send out crazy amounts of roots and become root bound. A yearly pruning of the root ball will help.

2. Make sure your fig gets even and steady watering all summer long. Drought is one of the main reasons why baby figs created in the spring drop during the summer. They become hollow and rubbery and once this happens no amount of water will rescue the aborted baby fig.

3. Set your container fig out as soon as possible for your region. Here in the northeast you can put the fig out in March provided that the temperatures doesn't go below 30 degrees. The more time the fig has outside the more figs it will produce.

And finally if you are going to plant the fig in ground make sure that either you wrap the fig for the winter or bury it. Those that think the fig will regrow from the roots once spring comes are correct. But this isn't enough time for the fig to produce anything. Although they are prolific growers starting from zero each spring is a sure fire way of guaranteeing an October harvest of small green lifeless figs.

Hope you change your mind Michele.

Late September Fig Harvest

This time of year is when the figs hurry up and ripen overnight. All the rain we've received this summer has surely helped the figs along. Figs love even and consistent watering the entire growing season, the end result is plump sweet figs. Here are some Gino Figs and Italian Everbearing I picked today.

Deboning A Whole Chicken

After watching Jacques Pepin debone an entire chicken in less than five minutes I felt the need to recreate this at home. Watch the video 5 or more times and then attempt it yourself. It was fairly easy, just make sure you have a sharp deboning knife available.

Here is the master at work