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The Garden in March: Peppers Under Lights and the Long List of What Comes Next
Read more: The Garden in March: Peppers Under Lights and the Long List of What Comes NextThe pepper plants are three inches tall under the shop lights in the basement, and the onion trays are thick with hair-thin green shoots that look too fragile to become anything useful, though they always do. Outside, what passes for March in Bay City – a gray ceiling, intermittent sleet, the bay locked in a…
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The Opening of Trout Season: Hemingway, the Rifle River, and the Rite of Spring
Read more: The Opening of Trout Season: Hemingway, the Rifle River, and the Rite of SpringThere is a particular week in late April when I stop being a gardener and become a fisherman again. The onion trays are still under the lights in the basement. The pepper seedlings, started back in early March, have their first true leaves and are leaning toward the fluorescent tubes with a patience I admire.…
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Birds on Saginaw Bay: A Year of Watching from Freighter View Farms
Read more: Birds on Saginaw Bay: A Year of Watching from Freighter View FarmsOne of the things you don’t expect when you move to the Great Lakes shoreline is how much the birds change everything. The bay outside Freighter View Farms is on the western shore of Lake Huron, in the lower portion of Saginaw Bay. It’s a significant staging area for migrating waterfowl and shorebirds, and it’s…
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Michigan Native Plants in the Garden: What I’ve Added and Why
Read more: Michigan Native Plants in the Garden: What I’ve Added and WhyI came to native plants the way most gardeners do — through pollinators. You notice the bees have preferences. You start planting what they prefer. After a few seasons you realize you’re building something fundamentally different from the ornamental garden you started with. Freighter View Farms is on Saginaw Bay in Bay City, Zone 6a.…
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Heirloom vs. Hybrid Seeds: What Years of Growing Both Taught Me
Read more: Heirloom vs. Hybrid Seeds: What Years of Growing Both Taught MeI’ve grown both. For years at Freighter View Farms I ran side-by-side trials — heirloom varieties I’d saved myself next to modern hybrids from the seed catalog. The honest answer to “which is better” is: it depends entirely on what you’re optimizing for. Here’s what the ground taught me. What Heirlooms Actually Do Well Flavor…
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Seeds for a Different Season
Read more: Seeds for a Different SeasonBy October the light changes — lower, more sideways. The season is not over. It is transforming. This is when I start saving seeds and thinking about next year.
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Your First Seeds: A Simple Start to Saving Your Own
Read more: Your First Seeds: A Simple Start to Saving Your OwnThere is a moment in late September when the garden shifts from feeding you to trusting you. That is when I first understood what seed saving actually was. Here is how to start.
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The Second Bloom: An Amaryllis Returns for Valentine’s Day
Read more: The Second Bloom: An Amaryllis Returns for Valentine’s DayThe bay is frozen and the windows are dark by five o’clock, and there is nothing blooming in Michigan right now, not outside, anyway. The raised beds are under snow. The garlic is sleeping. The soil will not be workable for two months, maybe longer. February is the season of waiting, and a gardener either…
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The Onion Trays and the Long Light of February
Read more: The Onion Trays and the Long Light of FebruaryThe bay is steel-gray this morning, and the ice is thick enough now that nothing moves out there — not the freighters, not the gulls, not even the wind, which has been ruthless all week but today decided to rest. I stood at the window with coffee and watched the stillness. February in Michigan does…
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My Gardening Philosophy
Read more: My Gardening PhilosophyA small garden tended well produces more food and more satisfaction than an acre of neglected rows. At Freighter View Farms I garden in about 200 square feet — and it is enough.
Bay City · Zone 6a · Saginaw Bay
Chris Izworski · heirloom seeds, raised beds, and the slow weather of the Great Lakes
Hello,
I’m Chris
Freighter View Farms is my small raised-bed garden on Saginaw Bay: heirloom tomatoes, seed envelopes, spring trays under lights, and the slow work of learning one piece of ground.
Start here if you are new, or walk into the garden notes and see what the season is doing.
In the beds now
Come back with the season
I send garden notes when there is something worth carrying back from the beds.
