Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

I've been taking a lot of vacation over the past couple of months, and when I have been in the office things have been really busy – so I have been ignoring the blog.

For that, I am sorry.

The garden is pretty much closed down. I will have to rake in the next couple of weeks. I got rid of a lot of leaves by doing a final mowing last weekend.

I did harvest our kohlrabi and ate one of them sliced and raw, and I kind of liked it.

There are a couple of important events being held Saturday that I found out about after I got back from vacation – too late to put in my column. So, I thought I would mention them here.

First, a Maine Pesticide Summit is being held from 9 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Saturday at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 15 Pleasant St., Brunswick. Keynote speaker is Paul Tukey, founder of Safelawns.org and the force behind "A Chemical Reaction," a movie about the efforts to ban lawn chemicals in a Canadian town. You can register by contacting Laura Stevens at 871-1810 or laura@toxicsaction.org.

Discussions at the summit will look to ways to phases out the use of pesticides for esthetic purposes.

Also, the Department of Agriculture has scheduled a meeting fron 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Fryeburg Fairgrounds. It will include information on preventing the Asian longhorn beetle and emerald ash borer from damaging Maine forests. The program is cosponsored by the Saco River Recreational Council. People can register at anne.bills@maine.gov  or they can just sshow up. 

About the Author

Tom Atwell has written the Maine Gardener column in the Maine Sunday Telegram since the spring of 2004. He has worked at the Press Herald/Sunday Telegram since 1974, about the same time he started gardening with any seriousness.

He gardens with his wife, Nancy. She not only is the better gardener of the pair, but also knows the botanical names of plants. They have two grown children and four grandchildren.

Tom was born in Skowhegan, grew up in Farmington and graduated from the University of Maine with a BA in journalism. His goal each year is to have continuous compost from his three compost bins, continuous bloom in his low-maintenance garden and more fruits and vegetables on his family table than the garden pests eat in the field.

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