Nantucket Today

Root Crops for Fall Harvest

Plants take months to grow and it is our job as gardeners to plan ahead and forecast the changes that will take place in the coming months. This lesson is harsh and ongoing, and it is

the reason that the...

Nantucket’s Newfound Penchant for Pools

Who can resist the lure of a swimming pool, just steps from your back door? Lounging by the pool on a hot summer day, entertaining poolside, swimming laps or taking a quick dip provides us with exercise...

Beating the Heat

Summer is here and the garden is in full swing. Tall tomato plants are loaded with fruit soon to ripen, cucumbers are weighing down their vines and your neighbors have probably learned to avoid you if they...

Sowing the seeds of self-reliance

People garden for many reasons, but one underlying motivation, especially in these coronavirus times, is self-reliance. Taking ownership of something as fundamental as our own nourishment can be a...

Finding joy in discovering new seed varieties

Few things can fuel a gardener’s excitement like a seed catalog in the early spring. The glossy pages filled with pictures of perfect produce can induce a type of hypnosis. Speaking from personal...

Make Your own Compost

Learning to create quality compost is one of the most important fundamental skills of any gardener. Too often, growers overlook soil health and instead focus on bottled or bagged fertilizers. Fertilizers...

Magic in Madaket

In 1969 Dan and Connie Driscoll came to the island to visit her brother and his young family who had rented a house in town. Like many visitors, they fell in love with the island immediately.

“We loved...

Native American: the Squash

Nantucket has its own variety of winter squash, which came to this island along the intersecting currents of history. The word squash is derived from the Narragansett Native American word askutasquash.

Big, Beautiful, Tasty Tomatoes

Tomatoes are the gods of the summer garden. No other crop demands so much dedication, sacrifice and preparation from the grower, and no other crop offers a comparable reward.

To the uninitiated, who have...

The Constant Gardener

Gardening is an interesting choice for a hobby. We freely subject ourselves to untold hours of toil preparing soil and weeding beds. Strange behavior indeed. In an attempt to become a better grower, it is...