Agriculture

We all have bad habits. Some people chew their fingernails; others mow their grass too short in the summer. You can guess which one bugs me the most.
The odd thing about many of the worst bad habits in the garden is that they have become so commonplace. The worst offenses are repeated everywhere to the extent that gardeners think they are the rule.
Over-mulching, for example, has been an epidemic problem for many years despite the fact that research spells out trouble for our plants when we bury their roots under a foot of hardwood mulch.

I like a book that tells a story while teaching me a little something along the way.  I like when the writer’s personality is revealed in their prose, and I like when a book makes me feel like I am not the only one that marvels at what nature and people can do.
Here are my 2010 picks for just this sort of thing:

Picking out the perfect Christmas tree is serious business for me.Some may find it a trivial chore, but I want a tree that will be worth the effort of cleaning, moving furniture, hauling boxes, lights, step ladders and more.

But once the mundane is done then the fun begins.Each ornament that adorns the tree has a story to tell about my grandparents, parents or me.

Did you know that the cranberry used to be called the “craneberry?”

When the colonists first learned of this berry from their American Indian hosts in the New World they thought the blooms of the native shrub looked liked the long neck and bill of the crane. Eventually, as language goes, it was shortened to cranberry.