The Patch Post

Prairie stories, growing tips, and reflections from our Kansas garden. Follow the seasons with Autumn Prairie Pumpkins.

Good Soap for Garden Hands: The Case for Cold Process

By late afternoon in July, my hands tell the whole story of the day. Soil worked into the knuckle creases, a little tomato-leaf green on...

Every July the same war starts under the leaves. You lift a big Seminole leaf, and there they are: those neat bronze rows of squash...

The Long Island Cheese out in the north row is about the size of a dinner plate now, and this morning it held a bead...

The first one showed up where I never planted it, right at the shoulder of the compost pile, two fat lobed leaves reaching up out...

The best part of a July morning is the walk out before the heat sets in, coffee in one hand, dew still on everything. That...

I walked the patch first thing this morning with an empty wheelbarrow and came back with it full of yellow leaves. If you have grown...

A neighbor stopped by the fence this week while I was thinning vines, watched me drop a handful of leafy tips into a basket, and...

There is a moment most mornings when the coffee is poured and the filter basket is still full of warm, dark grounds. For years I...

The first one started up a little after four in the afternoon, somewhere in the cottonwood at the edge of the patch. One long, dry,...

The dog walked me down to the fence line before six this morning, and that is where I found them. Wild black raspberries, the first...

The first one blinked on around nine, low over the squash leaves, while the coffee in my hands was still too hot to drink. Then...

The first one always catches me off guard. I went out at sunrise with my coffee, expecting nothing but blossoms, and there it was under...

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