Garden & farm

Forget the white picket fence. Hedgelaying may be the perfect fencing option for your homestead. Here's what you need to know to try it. A European buckthorn hedgerow in Caledon laid in the Midland style. | Photo by Jim Jones …
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Fragrant flowers make a lovely, aromatic addition to any garden. If you are accustomed to growing primarily edible crops, though, there are a few considerations for fragrant gardening for your first foray into these beautiful blooms. The…
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Sugar maple trees at Coopers Maple Products in Windham, Maine. | Photo by Abigail Curtis Temperature plays an important role in determining where plants can and can’t grow. In fact, growing zones are determined primarily by minimum…
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Mealworm in an oat substrate. | Photo courtesy of Robert Nathan Allen & Little Herds Good news: if your mealworms eat something nasty, you can still feed them to your chickens — even if they’re munching on plastic laced with toxic…
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Farmers in the Midwest are increasingly looking to older model tractors to avoid the software issues of modern tractors.|Photo by Julia Bayly It turns out the nation’s farmers are just discovering what northern Maine farmers have known…
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Photo by Gabor Degre This year, multinational health supermarket giant Whole Foods named regenerative agriculture first in its top food trends for 2020. “Farmers, producers, academics, government agencies, retailers and more are…
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A few weeks ago, I declared my second planting of shell peas a failure. And true to form, Mother Nature wasted no time in letting me know how wrong I was. Not a day after publishing the column, I went to my garden to find flowers all…
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The tiny lava of the Swede midge can destroy cruciferous crops. For the first time the insect has been confirmed in Maine. | Photo by David Fuller State and University of Maine officials are warning farmers and gardeners to be on the…
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My community garden bed in all its glory this spring. | Photo by Sam Schipani When I moved to Bangor last winter, I had no idea where I was going to garden in the spring. My second-floor apartment on the outskirts of Little City was…
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Photo by Gabor Degre Temperatures are dropping, once-hearty stems are shriveling and the first frost is fast-approaching. Another growing season has come and gone, and it is time to prepare your garden for winter. Garden winter prep is…
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Photo by Gabor Degre When the gardening season comes to an end, it is easy to get distracted from the pre-frost clean-up. Learning how to prepare a raised garden bed for winter, though, is essential to prepare for the season to come,…
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BDN File Photo Corn mazes are a staple of autumnal agritourism. It can be a vast undertaking, though, to lay down the intricate trails through fields of corn, sometimes forming charming pictures when viewed from the sky. Even for…
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