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Not THAT long ago. Pigs were raised on acorns in Appalachia right up through WWII. WRT Indiana Amish vs. other Amish groups...Yeah, I agree--the "hard core" Old Order folks I grew up with in PA are indeed a lot stricter and fussier about hygiene on their farms than some of the Ohioan and...

I tried the old standby San Marzanos for a few years. They are good, work well enough, make a very nice pizza/pasta/soup tomato, quite productive. Amish paste also good. But honestly, the very best canned tomatoes I've made, I used all sorts of odds and ends of whatever tomatoes were...

1. Not generally. You will need at least one more apple. There are several sites on the internet, but without knowing which apple specifically I'm not sure which to refer you to. 2. Reasonably hardy. If horrible, evil deer don't eat them, they will do pretty well. I have a few good russets...

Dwarf, for sure. Standards are just freakin' HUGE. You will barely be able to cram enough standard size trees into a 70x100' orchard to get more than a few kinds of fruit. My orchard is 84 x 72' and has space for 30 dwarf/semidwarf trees. I'd have room for more, but there is an upper limit to...

Ummm... Call me a dirty brainwashed hippie if you will, but could farmers not plant tree crops like fruit and nuts, thereby getting both a moneymaking crop AND the carbon sequestration credit $$? Two birds, one stone, and all that? Why the heck shouldn't farmers convert some of their land to...

That also works on other herbs. Basil, thyme, oregano, lemon verbena, scented geraniums all get more intense with a little wilting once in a while. Just a little bit, you don't want it to really curl up, but if it looks a bit depressed before you water, makes a huge difference.

I like to let mine wilt just a little bit before watering them. Seems to intensify the oils. Worked awesome on Thai Dragons.

You can make them into a tree shape. Bush shapes are usually easier. Hollies are fairly slow-growing critters though, so yes, you can over-prune them. For 3-4 season plants, I really like Mahonias. Yellow blooms in spring, blue-colored berries in late summer, foliage turns bright red/orange in...

Standard, no, but if space is a real issue, I'd go with training semidwarf apples or pears as espaliers or cordons: Apple trees grown as cordons That way you can grow a whole bunch of varieties in a quite small space.

If you get a tolerably warm day, now is a good time to do any pruning. Easy to see the shape of the thing, what needs done. On older "wild" trees that haven't been maintained, the usual issue is a whole lot of sprouts and branches need to be hacked out of the middle, any diseased limbs taken...

For me, the local garden center charges a small fortune ($4/seedling for veggies--no kidding), and my garden is large enough that starting from seed is by far the cheaper option--I usually need something like 20-30 tomatoes, 10-15 peppers, 15-20 curcurbits, etc. I have to use heating mats...

1. Yes, angle towards the south or however your site is so that it will catch the most light. 2. Depth depends on what you wish to grow in it, if you need to amend the soil, how cold it really gets where you live, if frost heaving is a problem. Mine is on a spot that previously had a...

If you live in the frigid North, where your growing season is quite short, this distinction becomes very important--you may only have 90 days of warm enough weather in which to grow a tomato. ;) Up here we have to use hoop houses to get any late tomatoes to ripeness.

seedcorn, I give up. First they are right to sue their customer base for IP infringement, then they don't sue after all when it's not good for them, then all the other companies are doing it so it's OK for them to do after all. There is no reason to label GMOs, there is no test for GMOs...

I provided a citation with data, so now it's your turn to show me evidence. There are many, many commercial hydroponics farms currently in operation: Eurofresh Farms in Arizona is one of the biggest, but heck, there's an aquaponics farm about an hour down the road from me--they're even hiring to...

I'll repeat: It's not OK to pollute in ANY industry. And yes, people do live where they pollute. I've heard this argument many, many times. It does not take a PhD from Google U. to find about a million examples of people living in their own garbage and seeing nothing wrong with it--I do...

Umm... What? Do you mean "would be" rather than "are" in that first bit? Because one of the saddest things I have seen has been self-employed farmers lose the farms they have inherited for centuries due to medical expenses--even after insurance has paid a percentage. Think you are setting up a...

Um, I'm not sure how to answer this except to suggest you do some research on antitrust laws in the US. I think the word "monopoly" does not mean what you think it means. Farmers' markets are made up of multiple suppliers, not single suppliers, similar to a shopping mall that has storefronts for...

Define "fairly" :P I'm trying to remember, maybe 2-3 strawberries/day? A little handful (about 1/4 cup) per week from six plants, so I added more plants in 2009. In number of berries, about the same number I ever get out of the regular strawberries, my soil is really clayey. It's just that the...

Wow, sounds nice! Well done Hidelight! Here in Winter Wonderland, I'm eating my own turkey sausage (the turkeys ate some of my garden produce, does that count?) and sauerkraut from home-grown cabbages out of the root cellar. Yesterday we had oatmeal with defrosted strawberries picked in June...