Author Archive for Henry Homeyer
Henry Homeyer is a lifetime organic gardener living in Cornish Flat, N.H. He is the author of four gardening books including The Vermont Gardener's Companion. You may reach him by e-mail at henry.homeyer@comcast.net or by snail mail at PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, N.H. 03746. Please include a SASE if you wish an answer to a question by mail.
Henry Homeyer: 2022’s lessons from the garden
By Henry Homeyer © 2022 Telegraph Publishing LLC Happy new year! At the end of the year I always like to take a little time to reflect on what worked well in the garden – and what didn’t. This year I also called some gardening friends – some experienced, some less so – to ask […]
Henry Homeyer: What to do after a big storm
By Henry Homeyer © 2022 Telegraph Publishing LLC We recently got hit by a big winter storm that dropped at least 15 inches of heavy, wet snow. It clung to branches, breaking some and bending others to near their breaking points. If you suffer the same sometime this winter, here are some things you might […]
Henry Homeyer: Your guide to the winter landscape
By Henry Homeyer © 2022 Telegraph Publishing LLC Normally at this time of year I can go out to the stream behind my house and pick stems of a shrub called winterberry (Ilex verticillata) to use in vases and on my wreath. It is generally loaded with small red berries that persist until mid-winter when […]
Henry Homeyer: It’s winter, let’s compost!
By Henry Homeyer © 2022 Telegraph Publishing LLC When I was a boy it was one of my many jobs to take out the kitchen scraps every few days and dump them in our woods in a compost pile. Like the postman, this was a job I did no matter what: “Neither snow, nor rain, […]
Henry Homeyer: Holiday gifts for your gardener
By Henry Homeyer © 2022 Telegraph Publishing LLC First on my list for holiday gifts for the gardener is this: a donation to this newspaper. Our local papers need donors in order to deliver to you the news you want but cannot get anywhere else. From local news, gardening tips that fit your climate, obituaries, […]
Henry Homeyer: How to care for your trees in winter
By Henry Homeyer © 2022 Telegraph Publishing LLC Living in New England is a joy, but we gardeners do have some challenges: cold winter winds, deer, rocky soil and more. As we get ready for winter, one of the biggest challenges for many of us are the deer. They are hungry and relentless. In my […]
Henry Homeyer: Feature your own veggies in your holiday feast
By Henry Homeyer © 2022 Telegraph Publishing LLC I personally think that the Canadians have the right idea: they have their Thanksgiving feast the second Monday in October, right after the harvest. By the time our Thanksgiving rolls around, many gardeners have eaten all their home-grown veggies. It need not be so, of course, if […]
Henry Homeyer: Let’s bring nature inside this winter
By Henry Homeyer © 2022 Telegraph Publishing LLC When I was in the third or fourth grade, way back in the 1950’s, I decided I wanted to grow something indoors in the winter months. My mom grew African violets, but I had little interest in them. I wanted to bring inside some wild plants that […]
Henry Homeyer: Improve your soil now for better spring results
By Henry Homeyer © 2022 Telegraph Publishing LLC After you’ve weeded your garden, raked your leaves and cut back some of your perennials (and left some for the insects and birds), you may think you are done. You are not. This is a great time to work on improving your soil. Soil amendments do not […]
Henry Homeyer: forced bulbs make for lovely spring blossoms
By Henry Homeyer © 2022 Telegraph Publishing LLC I love tulips. Fortunately, our dog Rowan keeps the deer away so I can grow them in our garden. But if you have a deer problem and can’t grow tulips (deer think you’ve planted treats for them) – I have a solution. Plant some in pots now […]
Henry Homeyer: Planting your spring bulbs
By Henry Homeyer © 2022 Telegraph Publishing LLC As a boy I was surrounded by hundreds of spring daffodils every year. We lived in rural Connecticut, and the people we bought our house from had planted daffodils by the hundreds in our woods. The woods consisted of sugar maples, huge ones, with a sprinkling of […]
Henry Homeyer: ‘Garlic Is As Good as Ten Mothers’
By Henry Homeyer © 2022 Telegraph Publishing LLC Back in the 1980s the Dartmouth Film Department showed a film by Les Blanc called, Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers. It was shown in “Smell-o-Rama.” Cooking garlic smells were mysteriously introduced to the air system, filling the 900-seat auditorium with the delicious odor of roasted […]
Henry Homeyer: Putting your garden to bed
By Henry Homeyer © 2022 Telegraph Publishing LLC Frost has already lightly brushed my garden, and hard frost is not far behind. Even in warmer spots it is good to start getting ready for winter. Let’s look at some of the key activities for all of us. First, remember to visit and support your local […]
Henry Homeyer: Grow good apples without chemicals
By Henry Homeyer © 2022 Telegraph Publishing LLC I love the saying that something is “As American as apple pie.” I love apple pie and would have some for breakfast every day if I could. But oddly enough, apples are not native to the United States. They came from Kazakhstan, in central Asia east of […]
Henry Homeyer: Skunks – the good, the bad, and the stinky
By Henry Homeyer © 2022 Telegraph Publishing LLC Most New Englanders have had an interaction with a skunk at some point in their lives. That includes my almost 2-year old Golden Retriever-Irish Setter mix, Rowan. He met his first skunk recently, and while avoiding a direct hit, did get a little “eau de skunk,” which […]
Henry Homeyer: Fall flowers to fall in love with
By Henry Homeyer © 2022 Telegraph Publishing LLC Many gardeners go to the plant nurseries in June, and buy things in bloom for their gardens – and rarely go back until the next year. But that means that now, as summer winds down, they have few flowers in bloom. Not me. I buy perennials in […]
Henry Homeyer: Are your plants suffering from drought?
By Henry Homeyer © 2022 Telegraph Publishing LLC Many of my readers are suffering from a serious drought, enough so that plants are losing leaves and going dormant long before they should. Most well established plants will recover from the effects of drought, even if they lose their leaves now. And new things? If you […]
Henry Homeyer: Preserving your harvest
By Henry Homeyer © 2022 Telegraph Publishing LLC Now is the time when gardeners often have too much fresh produce. People joke about locking their cars to keep neighbors from placing unneeded zucchinis in them. Our mothers and grandmothers labored over hot stoves on hot days to put up tomatoes in jars for winter, or […]
Henry Homeyer: Time to find a place for the ferns
By Henry Homeyer © 2022 Telegraph Publishing LLC Many gardeners who focus on flowers and flowering shrubs are missing out on a beautiful and easy addition to their landscape: ferns. A few ferns are a bit aggressive and can elbow their way into flower beds uninvited, but most are polite and offer different textures and […]
Henry Homeyer: Are biennials worth the effort?
By Henry Homeyer © 2022 Telegraph Publishing LLC Biennials are some of the least planted flowers we can grow. Why? The year they are planted by seed, they generally do not flower. They only have a clump of low-growing leaves. The second year, the send up a flower spike, bloom, and then die. That’s right. […]
