Sept. 9 Column: Local Garden Felicia Heinz

This summer, it has been such a treat profiling local gardeners. After all, seeing how others garden gives us ideas for growing our own gardens, right? In today’s column, I profile Felicia Heinz who lives on Spokane’s north side. Here’s a link to it in The Spokesman-Review: Going vegan helps cultivate a green thumb.

I first heard about Felicia from the president of the Inland Empire Gardeners, ViAnn Meyer. TIEG holds a Garden of the Month contest during the summer months and they were so impressed with Felicia’s garden that they wanted me to have a look!

Well, I did and I was amazed at the size and scope of her garden. But it wasn’t just that. What warmed my heart was hearing what she does with a lot of the veggies she grows: Felicia loves giving the produce to anyone in need. And that is truly the spirit of gardening, right?

As I mentioned in my column, as soon as I walked through the gate into her backyard, the sheer magnitude of her garden just blew me away. All of the plants were healthy and grew with great exuberance. As Felicia led me through the circuitous pathways, I was impressed by the diverse types of plants she grows. And many of them were edible plants that you might not think of growing in our zone 5 climate. But I won’t give them away here. You’ll want to read my column to find out what they are!

In the photo to the left, you’ll notice Felicia’s handiwork in creating a place for solitary bees to nest and hibernate. All she did was drill hole after hole in this tree stump. Very easy and very effective.

It’s also time for this week’s “Everyone Can Grow a Garden” video. Since we’re all in the middle of harvesting season — and that particularly applies to tomatoes — I decided to shoot a video on how easy it is to make oven-roasted tomato sauce. It is a huge time-saver and produces fabulous, flavorful sauce. Here it is: