So it begins, a new season in many ways. First and foremost, my perennials are starting to emerge from their slumber under a pile of leaves from last fall. I was out raking and blowing leaves off my flowerbeds this past week and  everything is starting to sprout. 

My hellebores are starting to flower already, and I have heard from numerus people about their crocus blooming and daffodils coming up. Now we are still between seasons as it is still too early to plant outside, but you can get things like tomatoes and peppers going inside. 

Outside you can put down lime and fertilizer both on your lawn and in your garden as the frost has come out of the ground, except for some places in Claryville, which I know are still snow covered. 

With the icy roads this winter, a lot of salt was used and you should add gypsum to any areas that receive run-off from your road. Putting down a three to four foot wide line of gypsum will help to bind up any road salt, so that it won’t adversely affect your lawn, until we get all the spring rains to leach and dilute the salt out of the soil. 

Putting gypsum down also helps to break up heavy clay soil which is something we have a lot of around here. Most local garden centers carry gypsum, but make sure you ask for garden gypsum if you go to a big box store as they will direct you to sheetrock as it to is comprised of gypsum. 

You don’t want to be putting sheetrock down on your lawn. If you were out raking leaves like me on those nice days this past week, they make a great base for a compost pile. You can buy composters or make one easily by nailing three pallets together so that you have a three sided box. 

Just keep throwing all your organic plant materials in overtime including kitchen food scraps like egg shells and you will get rewarded with some beautiful compost over time. You can buy compost activators at most garden centers that will help to break down plant material quicker, but worms and mother nature will do the job over time. 

The other major development I saw this past week was when I took a rare trip to the grocery store. With Robert F. Kennedy as the head of Health and Human Services, I was watching to see if processed food items were going to start changing.

 I am happy to report that they are starting to change as I looked at children’s breakfast cereals and started to see that most cereals have replaced corn syrup with sugar. 

This might not seem like a huge change as there has been a lot of talk about getting rid of added sugars, but corn syrup contains something that sugar does not, which is RoundUp herbicide. 

Trace amounts of glyphosate, the active ingredient in RoundUp, show up in all corn syrup, yet our FDA say that it is below acceptable levels. I’m sorry, but no amount of glyphosate is acceptable in food, especially food marketed to children. 

Kellogg’s and Post now have ninety percent of their cereals changed back to sugar while General Mills is currently around sixty percent. It has been less than two months since RFK was confirmed as HHS Secretary and toxic artificial colors are being removed from foods and now sugar is beginning to replace corn syrup. 

Within a couple months we should start seeing sugar back in soda instead of corn syrup which is a good thing if you drink a lot of soda. I only go grocery shopping with my wife about once a month so when I do I notice these big changes, whereas if you go every week, you might just overlook the change.