life on garden time
Apparently we here in the Northwest are getting the heat the rest of the world is lacking. It’s downright summery these days! So, with sun on your shoulders and soil rapidly drying out beneath your feet, what needs to be done in the NW Edible Garden in May? Plan & Purchase Warm season edibles-tomatoes, peppers, [Continue Reading...]
Here in the Maritime Northwest, year round growing is easier and, to my mind, more rewarding, with season extension techniques. Perhaps the cheapest and easiest semi-permanent option for season extension is the low tunnel cloche. With a low tunnel cloche, any garden bed can be turned into something like a very petite hoophouse with some [Continue Reading...]
So, it’s the time of year out here in the Maritime Northwest where periodic nice days start to happen. A few legitimately sunny Spring days in Seattle send thoughts to the veggie patch, and gardeners everywhere start running to buy plant starts. This can become a caveat emptor situation pretty fast, because baby plants are, [Continue Reading...]
Something amazing has happened. I no longer loathe my lawn. For nearly ten years, I have hated my lawn, and muttered curses at the landscaper who insisted that, “with small kids, grass really is the easiest thing to maintain,” before hydroseeding everything in sight. Lies, damn lies. I am no shirker. In fact, I like physical work. [Continue Reading...]
Every year about this time gardeners start inflicting all manner of experiments upon the humble spud. We drop them into burlap sacks, grow pots, wood towers, mesh towers, tire towers, garbage cans, straw bales and more. We attempt the Square Foot method, the Ruth Stout method, the Hilled Row Method, the Plastic Mulch Method. The [Continue Reading...]
If you can get over the ewwww factor, pee-cycling your own urine into the garden makes good sense. Fresh urine is high in nitrogen, moderate in phosphorus and low in potassium and can act as an excellent high-nitrogen liquid fertilizer or as a compost accelerator. Components of Urine The exact breakdown of urine varies depending on the [Continue Reading...]
My gardener Spidey Sense tells me that we Maritime Northwest Gardeners aren’t going to see some crazy late super cold snap this month. I could be wrong, for sure, and your microclimate milage may vary, but I think it’s safe to start thinking Spring is here-ish. Here’s what Maritime Northwest gardeners should be doing this [Continue Reading...]
At a certain point I might as well admit that we drink a rather obscene amount of coffee. It’s almost all frugal, brew-at-home type coffee, but still: that stuff ads up. Luckily, the grounds are almost as valuable as the liquid coffee, and we save them for use in the garden, thereby getting the most [Continue Reading...]
As a gardener, there is no end to what you could spend your money on. Take seed starting – what do you really need? Are those peat pellet kits really worth it? Can you start your seeds in yogurt tubs, or is that somehow not….correct? Here’s my opinionated opinion on what should get your money [Continue Reading...]
So the past week my kids have taken turns with the sickies. First the girl spent a week coughing her lungs out, then just when she had recovered enough to return to school, the boy spent a night puking all over me. Good times, good times. So, what does this have to do with gardening? [Continue Reading...]
Hi guys – sorry about the lack of posts this week. I’ve got two sick kids at home and a list of posts almost done as long as my arm. But, I did want to share that I’ll be giving a presentation about year round vegetable gardening this Saturday, February 2nd, at 10 am in Edmonds, [Continue Reading...]
The problem with year-round garden planning is that you are being asked to work in 4D, when most of us are accustomed to only planning things in 2D. When planning your upcoming crops, you have to think about the spacing of the plants (width and depth, the simple 2D dimensions of a paper world) and [Continue Reading...]
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