THORNDIKE, Maine — Every spring in Maine, there are things you can count on, like the steady dripping of maple sap, the lengthening days and the first green glimpses of new growth.
For the last 22 years, another clear sign of spring has been the annual Rural Living Day, organized by the University of Maine Cooperative Extension and held this year on Saturday, April 2, at Mount View High School in Thorndike. Attendees can learn about beekeeping, pasturing chickens, making maple sugar candy, building small homes, raising pigs and much more.
“All our topics are awesome,” said Caragh Fitzgerald, an association professor of agriculture at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. “It’s a great day. There are always really interesting topics, and it’s a good chance for people to catch up with gardening friends. I just really enjoy the diversity of it all.”
Fitzgerald will be sharing tips on extending the gardening season during the afternoon session, an idea she said recently has been taking root in Maine, where gardeners contend with a shorter season than their counterparts in warmer states.
“People are trying to find ways to get more produce out of the growing season,” she said.
Ideas for doing this can be simple, such as staggering plantings to spread the harvest out, or they can be more complicated, such as using row covers or high tunnels to increase the temperature for the plants. However, any kind of enclosed structure requires management that gardeners don’t always anticipate, Fitzgerald said.
“The big issue with an enclosed structure is how you manage water and temperature,” she said. “It might be 28 degrees and cloudy on a morning in March. But if it gets up to 45 degrees and it’s bright and sunny in the afternoon, and the tunnel is enclosed, it gets very hot in there.”
Gardeners need to have someone around who is paying attention and can roll up the sides of the structure so that proper ventilation can take place. And that’s not possible for everyone, she said.
“I like to give gardeners a sense of all the options that are available, but not everybody is willing or able to tackle the more complex options,” Fitzgerald said.
But lots of home gardeners might benefit from planning their plantings to get two crops of carrots in the growing season instead of one, she said.
“A lot of gardeners like to tinker and try new things to keep innovating and refining their strategies in the garden,” she said. “I just encourage them to look at season extension techniques as one piece of that. It can help keep it fun.”
The 22nd annual Rural Living Day will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, April 2, at Mount View High School in Thorndike. For more information, visit www.extension.umaine.edu.