A gardener recently wrote in:
"When is the best time to prune
roses?"
The answer I'm providing is geared towards west coast
gardeners in mild winter climates. According to a workshop
I attended several years ago with Nina Rumely, Ocean View Farms'
resident rose expert, we should stop cutting our roses in October and cut
watering to once a week. This encourages your roses into
dormancy.
...
Moving right along in our series on raised beds, we have now come to the part where sweat and elbow grease come in handy.
After a trip to the hardware store to pick up a non-rusted blade for our dusty Skilsaw (keeping in mind that Trex Decking can dull blades faster than wood), a box of 3 inch galvanized deck screws, a roll of 4 foot x 25 foot galvanized poultry fencing, tin snips, and two carloads of Trex Decking (19 12 foot boards were needed for our job), we were ready to build our raised beds.
On Day 1 - we opted to cut and assemble the beds before clearing the space of the old raised beds.
Okay, this isn't so much a garden as it is a farm, but the idea is the same - broad spectrum appreciation for what the earth can give us through growing plants.
I leafed through the guidebook to find the page highlighting a tour of lavender fields. We only had half a day, after having spent the morning in Tarascon at the farmer's market, where we bought some cheese, bread and tomatoes for lunch later on. We headed onward to Aix-en-Provence. We stopped in Aix for lunch; a peasant's lunch on a stone bench. ...