I write. I fish. I dig earth, raise plants, live for food and kill wild animals. I drink bourbon, Barolo or Budweiser with equal relish and wish I owned a farm. But most of all I think daily about new ways to cook and eat anything that walks, flies, swims, crawls, skitters, jumps – or grows. I am the omnivore who has solved his dilemma. This is my story.

Hunter Angler Gardener Cook – Finding the Forgotten Feast

When the buds of a Christmas cactus look as if they’re about to open, make sure you water the plant regularly and keep it cool.

From The Old Farmer’s Almanac.

Kirby cucumbers, like other greenhouse cucumbers, are milder than garden grown slicing or pickling cucumbers. As a result, to some people they seem to be easier to digest, resulting in less burping. The greenhouse cucumbers now known as “Kirby-type” were developed to produce fruit parthenogenically, that is, without pollination of the flowers. Thus, Kirby-type would produce fruit in a greenhouse. The Kirby’s have no seeds, a very tender skin, and a distinctive long, slender shape. The selection process that resulted in the seedless, thin-skinned cucumbers also selected out some of the compounds that produced the digestion problems. Nowadays, the easy-to-digest qualities of the Kirby-type cucumbers have been re-selected by plant breeders. Home gardeners can choose from a number of seed sources for burpless cucumbers. Look for varieties that are long and slender with solid dark green skins.

From The Old Farmer’s Almanac.

If you till your garden in the late fall, you will expose insects hiding there to harsh winter conditions and reduce their populations next year. Fall tilling may help kill corn borers, cucumber beetles, squash bugs, earworms, and vine borers. Tilling has the added benefit of making the soil easier to work in the spring.

From The Old Farmer’s Almanac.

You may just need to be patient. Cucumbers, like squash, pumpkins, watermelons, cantaloupes, and many other plants, produce male and female flowers separately on the same plant. They often begin producing male flowers several weeks before the females appear. The males make pollen and are necessary, but they do not produce fruits. Look to see if there is a little cucumber behind the flower. If you see a baby cucumber, you have a female flower. If you just see a slender stem going right up to the back of the flower, you have a male flower. If your plants have female flowers and the fruits still aren’t setting, be sure that the plants are not excessively dry. The leaves may wilt on hot days, but they should recover as the temperature drops in the evening. If they are still wilted by morning, you are not watering them enough, or you are watering too shallowly and too often. Excessive nitrogen fertilization also could be a problem. If the nutrients are unbalanced, the flowers will drop. Also, if there are no bees to pollinate your cucumber flowers, you will have to transfer pollen from the male flowers to the female flowers by hand. Use a cotton swab or soft-bristle paintbrush to transfer pollen.

From The Old Farmer’s Almanac.

As a general rule, a fruit tree’s production depends on the overall health of the tree, its environment, its fruiting habit, the variety, the rootstock, adequate pollination, and good cultural practices. If just one of these conditions is off, the annual yield can be reduced or nonexistent. Apples are notorious for this kind of behavior. You may increase your chances of a good yield by early thinning of heavy fruit.

From The Old Farmer’s Almanac.

From The Old Farmer’s Almanac.