Welcome to Rabia Stevenson’s Gardening Blog
This page is a compilation of information I have gathered from the internet that I personally have found helpful. Some of it is from my own experience. I am by no means an expert in this field but hopefully my amateur advice can help someone else who is new to gardening.
Specially Crafted and Curated Articles to Help You on Your Gardening Journey
Rabia Stevenson – Gardening Adventurer
Welcome to my page! I made this mostly for myself but if anyone else finds it interesting I’m happy to share. I started getting into home gardening a few years ago when I bought a house with a patch of black raspberries in the yard. At the time I thought they were there intentionally, but eventually I realized they had worked their way into the prior landscaping and taken over. The house was sitting on the market for a while before we moved in and so I don’t think anyone had noticed.
Those black raspberries were our breakfast for the entire month of June (they’re amazing with oatmeal and you can never seem to find them in stores). We started cultivating the raspberries and after that I was under the mistaken impression that it would be easy to just start growing my own fruit at home. I WAS WRONG. Since then I have spent an unreasonable amount of money and time failing at this hobby and somehow I still love it.
Ready To Start Your Gardening Journey?
Featured Gardening Articles
Fire Blight Resistant Fruit Trees
Fire blight comes on quickly and decimates young fruit trees. There are treatments for it but it seems the easiest thing is just to avoid trees that are highly susceptible to it to begin with. Read more here…
Soil Problems
The soil in Rochester is very heavy in terms of clay content. The question of whether or not to amend the soil is a surprisingly complicated one. Read more here…
Keeping Bunnies Away
Deer, bunnies, etc. I have turned into the anti-Snow White. The adorable wildlife that roam my yard have become my sworn nemeses. I don’t seem to have the stomach to actually kill any of them, so my warfare consists of fencing and spreading stinky things through my yard. Before I starting fencing the trees, the deer ate an entire thriving peach tree. Buy a post driver, it’s worth it. Read more here…
Fire Blight Resistant Pollinators
Some fruit trees are self-fertile, but many need a companion tree for pollination. Not every cherry tree will pollinate every other cherry tree, and this is true for all fruits. So every time I have carefully selected a tree and found it has not survived the winter, I have needed to make sure that the replacement tree will also work with the other trees that I have in terms of pollination. For a while I kept a spreadsheet of all my trees printed out on my fridge (teenagers will mock you endlessly if you get excited about a spreadsheet, fair warning). Eventually though I learned to just keep the tag on the tree. It is so much easier. Read more here…