[Snakeroot Organic Farm logo]
 • HOME
 • What's New Here
 • Snakeroot Poultry

THE BASICS
 • About Our Farm
 • Annual Farm Tour
 • Community Supported
    Agriculture Plan (CSA)
 •
Directions to our Farm
 • From a Run Out Hayfield to
    a Prosperous Organic Farm
    in Ten Easy Years

 • Get Real. Get Organic!
 • History of Our Farm
 • Pictures of the Farm
 • Where We Buy
 • Where We Sell
 • Our Yearly Work Schedule
 • Just Pretty
 • Subscribe to our e-newsletter.
 • Newsletter Archive.
 • What We Will & Won't Ship

OUR PEOPLE
 • Working Here
 • Our Apprentices
 • Our Farm Workers
 • Pictures of Us at Market

WHAT WE GROW
 • Fresh Vegetables
 • Fresh Fruit
 • Fresh Herbs
 • Perennials
 • Aloe - a magical plant
 • Our Bird Houses
 • Lupines
 • Rosemary Plants
 • Lovage, Tansy & Yarrow
 • Our Product Brochures
 • Dried Vegetables
 • Dried Culinary Herbs
MAPLE
 • Maple Syrup
 • Maple Syrup, p.2
 • Sugarin' Is Like Ice Fishin'
 • Our New Sugarhouse
TOMATOES
 • Tomato Seedlings
 • Tomato Seeds We Offer
 • Tomato Seed Production
 • Paste Tomatoes
GARLIC
 • About Garlic
 • Garlic for Sale
 • Garlic Year Round
 • Mulching Garlic
 • Growing Rounds from Bulbils
 • Whole Bulbil Cluster Method
 • Planting Garlic

MULCHING
 • Using Mulches
 • Combatting Quackgrass
    with Mulch

 • We Want Your Leaves!
 • In Praise of Chips

FOOD & FARMING INFO
 • Buying in Bulk for
    Storage, Canning & Freezing

 • Winter Storage Tips
 • How to Freeze Our Veggies
 • Building Techniques
 • Our Outbuildings
 • Evolution of the Farm Table
 • The Story of Our Cooler
 • Prepping Veggies for Market
 • Crop Rotations
 • Drip Irrigation
 • Low Pressure Water
 • Planting with Spreadsheets
 • Greenhouse Vegetable
    Production

 • Let-tuce Begin
 • Recipe Favorites
 • Our "Remay Roller"
 • Gardening Class Notes
 • Your Most Expensive Crop

OPINIONS & IDEAS
 • Being Green
 • Digging Potatoes by Hand
 • Farmers' Markets in 2012
 • History of Pittsfield
 • Hybrids or Open Pollinated?
 • Making Websites
 • Open Source Software

FARM TRANSITION…
    Our Retirement Plan
 • How Should a Farmer Retire?
 • Impediments to the want-to-be     farmer
 • Reducing the Value
    of the Land

 • Who Will Farm Here When
    We're Gone?

 • Apprentice Terms and Stages
 • From Apprentices to Partners
 • Transferring Farm Ownership





…and now for something completely different…

At dawn
Canoe bow waves are quickly lost
    on the shoreside
But go on out of sight
    on the lake side.

-1986


The constant swish-swish of skis
    On a day long ski.
The constant swish-swish of wiper blades
    On a day long drive.

-1990


My dog, trotting barefoot
Steps on a garden slug
And thinks
Nothing of it.

-1999


Word spreads quickly
as I approach the pond.
All becomes quiet.

-1997


Hidden in the vines
a large warted cucumber
jumps out of reach.
A toad!

-1997


Delicate puffs
of marshmallow snow
carefully perched
on a branch,
await the trigger of my hat
to melt their way down my back.

-2010
Deep in the tomato jungle
Fruits of yellow, purple and red
Tell of their readiness
To go to market.

-2010
Sugarin' Chores
Snowflakes hurry through my flashlight beam,
As my boots knead new snow with spring mud,
On my nightly Hajj to keep the boil alive,
For as long as possible until the dawn,
To match the power of the flowing sap,
With my meager evaporator and will.
The prize at the finish line are jars of syrup
And Spring.

-2013

Perennials

~ Beauty for our yard ~

[Snakeroot Organic Farm]
on the Snakeroot Road in Pittsfield, Maine
3645 Snakeroot Road, Pittsfield ME 04967,
ph (207) 487-5056
Gardeners to the public since 1995.


Click on photos to enlarge.
Our perennials are available at market in May and June, and again in October, or at the farm from April to November.
All of our perennials are grown from our own seed, divisions or cuttings.

Also see our Fresh Vegetables, Fresh Fruit, and our Fresh Herbs pages.


Angelica, large clusters of greenish-white blossoms in mid June - mid July. Plant grows to seven feet tall, and dies back by late summer. Mother plant will drop seeds which develop into an angelica patch—to prevent this remove flowes once they have gone by. Red stalks, green leaves make a dramatic showing. In the celery family, emerging spring stalks may be cut for celery-like vegetable in May.


Echinacea, purple cone flower. We grow Echinacea Purpurea the variety most commonly used for echinacea tincture.


Hollyhock, lemon yellow flowers. Related to marshmallow, hollyhock begins flowering it's second year. Flowering Hollyhocks are about 5-6 feet tall.


Lupines, multcolored flowers from the Russell Strain. Blooms from early June to early July in one foot flower spikes on 2-4 foot stalks. During blossoming season we offer blooming lupines in pots (left photo). These one year old plants are dug from our lupine nursery (right photo) in late April and will continue to blossom for up to ten years, each year producing seeds to expand the patch. Lupines seedlings begin to blossom starting the second year. More info and more photos of our lupines here.


Marshmallow, white flowers. Related to Hollyhock, the flowers are similar but smaller, and the plant is just as tall, about 5-6 feet. Altho nowadays marshmallow flavoring is synthetically produced, originally the flavor came from the long white roots of four or more year old plants. Marshmallow is very hardy, and altho the tops entirely die back every year, the next year's plants will reliably emerge in mid May. Several stalks arise from each root; the picture on the right is a single row of plants.


Rhubarb Plants, May through November, altho during the height of the summer season we only bring them to market upon request. These are two year old rhubarb plants started from seeds from our own rhubarb patch. Altho rhubarb can be planted from our pots into your garden any time of year, spring and fall transplantings will allow the rhubarb to acclimate better. You should be able to begin harvesting rhubarb stalks when they are a half inch wide, which should be beginning about two years after you plant your patch. Altho a single rhubarb plant will do just fine, having several allows you to harvest all you want for pies, sauces and freezing.


Red Leaf Rose, pink flowers with single row of petals. Self-supporting vase-shaped bush grows to ten feet tall. Bush at left is eight years old and is slightly smaller than the lilac next to it.


Tansy, clusters of yellow button-like flowers from July to frost. 3-4 feet tall. Very hardy, often planted around foundations as decoration and to repel ants. Top tentirely dies back in fall, to resprout in the spring. Tops may be cut in fall and left piled where a new tansy patch is desired. Slowly spreads via rhizomes. Will grow in little more than gravel, but also appreciates a good soil and at least a little sun. More information on Tansy here.


Valerian, white flowers from July to August. Plants grow 5-6 feet tall. Flowers smell like chocolate. Valerian is very invasive, and once you have one blossoming, you will see others next year anywhere in the yard. To stop this, cut off flowers as soon as they finish blossoming. Blossoms begin the second year.



27 Organic Farm Road, Pittsfield Maine 04967
http://www.snakeroot.net/farm
owned and operated by
Tom Roberts & Lois Labbe
Tom: Tom@snakeroot.net (cell) 207-416-5417
or
Lois: Lois@snakeroot.net (cell) 207-416-5418

Gardening for the public since 1995.



top of page File name: Perennials.shtml
Version: Tuesday 17 January, 2012
Creative Commons License This website is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.