Upstate Gardeners' Journal

06/28/2025

06/28/2025

06/28/2025

Did you know that the plastic "clam shell" containers much of our food comes in are not recyclable? Let us reuse them for you!

Our South Lawn Farm would love to receive donations of CLEAN plastic containers and berry baskets like those pictured here. These containers will be used to hold the produce we grow and provide to local food pantries, so you are helping the environment and your community by donating!

Feel free to drop off containers anytime on our side porch. If you have a large number of containers, we ask that you wait to drop them off during business hours. 9am-4pm Mon. - Thurs. and 9am-12pm Fri.

Thank you!

06/21/2025

TRAILING VINES: It’s been a bit since I‘ve shared something here and when better with the official start of summer during Pollinator Week! I’ve been seeing this bounce around in my feed and couldn’t help but to share. It is absolutely true! But your tiny native garden could be the difference between survival and death for not only migrating butterflies. Other than the raw, elemental stuff like sun, soil, and water, our entire ecosystem here in New York is built on two things: plants and insects.

Few insects migrate. Many are year round residents that need untended (or at least lightly tended) spaces containing their host plants. They feed, reproduce, and they or their offspring over winter in the same space. Our native insects, unlike the much hated alien Japanese beetle and the emerald ash borer, have controls. Birds eat them. Frogs, toads, other insects, arachnids, small mammals, and more do as well. The whole pyramid starts there.

As I have noted many times, baby song birds are fed almost entirely soft bodied insects like caterpillars. No caterpillars, no baby birds and no birdsong to greet you on a sunny morning —which I am listening to now.

The best time to start native plant gardening? Twenty years ago. The next best time? Now. Start a native plant garden this summer! Learn about the insects, birds, etc. you are inviting in with those plants. Choose plants to encourage the species you like best, if you wish. And rethink lawns as blank canvas for a new garden! Rethink what successful gardening looks like. Rethink insects. Bugs aren’t icky. They are needed and necessary neighbors.

Experienced flooding this week? Add more trees and shrubs. They too are key insect host plants and they provide a lot of storm water control. Put in rain gardens to help slow rain water and let it infiltrate into the ground. Pollinators like rain gardens too. Sure, climate change caused extreme weather events are going to be difficult to handle. But if EVERYONE was adding more trees, shrubs, and managing the water that falls onto their properties, those impacts would be diminished.

So start today planning your next and probably most important garden!

Kimberly Burkard, Upstate Gardeners' Journal

06/19/2025

🌻 Advertise in the July-August UGJ! - https://mailchi.mp/bdff7510a3e7/advertise-9945582

06/15/2025

Slow down and stop to help them! We built the roads over their land.

06/06/2025

Anyone try this??

This year, when you plant your tomatoes outside, don't just stick them upright in the ground. Lay them on their side and bury the whole stem. This sideways tomato planting trick stimulates huge root growth and gives your tomato plants the foundations to produce giant yields. Here's how: https://www.ruralsprout.com/sideways-tomatoes/

06/06/2025

Anyone else rearranging schedules, work, etc. just to make the most garden time on few sunny days we have been having?