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PLEASE NOTE: In the autumn of 1995, we hatched the idea for a free, local gardening publication. The following spring, we published the first issue of Michigan Gardener magazine. Advertisers, readers, and distribution sites embraced our vision. Thus began an exciting journey of helping our local gardening community grow and prosper.
After 27 years, nearly 200 issues published, and millions of copies printed, we have decided it is time to end the publication of our Print Magazine and E-Newsletter.
We will continue to update our Website with articles and enter current gardening events in our website Event Calendar. All the best wishes for 2024 and beyond.
As you are planting your tomato plants, it’s worth revisiting a problem that hit our area several years ago. That problem is late blight. Given the drier conditions so far, late blight isn’t expected to be that much of an issue in 2012. This video by NPR’s Science Friday is a good primer on what blight is, how to identify it and what is done to combat it.
Check out the USDA Late Blight website which traces outbreaks around the U.S.
Fruit growers, from Southwest Michigan all the way to Traverse City, are dealing with a disaster the likes of which have not been since 1947. That disaster is the result of the very early warm weather we had in March which helped fruit trees blossom early and left them vulnerable to the April freezes we experienced. As a result, fruit tree crops have been devastated.
Herald Palladium:
WATERVLIET – This is shaping up to be the worst year for Southwest Michigan’s fruit belt in more than 65 years, according to Mark Longstroth, fruit educator for the MSU Extension.
At Rodney Winkel’s 240-acre apple orchard on North Branch Road in Bainbridge Township there are no apples developing on the trees.
Mother Nature played a cruel trick on fruit trees in March, enticing fragile buds to bloom when the weather was like two hot summer weeks. And then, in April, a common late spring hard frost hit the crops and damaged the buds so badly that most of the fruit is not expected to materialize this year.
The damage in Michigan will be in the billions of dollars, Longstroth said.
Many of you will be planting all sort of things this weekend, including strawberry plants. Before you do, you might consider reading this story which recently ran on NPR’s food blog, The Salt, about strawberry growing in California. It answered a lot of questions we have had when shopping for strawberries.
May is the month we see strawberries explode in the market. There are strawberry festivals in every corner of the nation celebrating the juicy ruby beauties, and Strawberry Queenscrowned galore. Those traditional harvest time festivals make us think our strawberries are mostly grown on the farm just down the road.
But in fact, one state — California — supplies 80 percent of America’s strawberries, and the percentage is growing.
The reason? California’s fields are stunningly productive. They yield ten times more strawberries, per acre, than strawberry farms in Michigan; twenty times more than farms in the state of New York. And there’s a complex web of reasons why.
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